Gambling apps are coming to Google’s Play Store in the US and 14 other countries

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

An upcoming change to Google’s Play Store policies will allow gambling and betting Android apps that use real money in 15 more countries, including the US, according to 9to5Google. Currently, gambling apps are only allowed in four countries: Brazil, France, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

The new rules will be applied starting on March 1st, and they’ll permit gambling apps in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. Of course, each country will have its own limitations on what kind of online gambling is legal, with some countries allowing online casinos, sports betting, lotteries, and daily fantasy sports, and some being more...

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Stadia’s biggest (timed) exclusive won’t be exclusive anymore

Crayta ’s timed Stadia exclusivity is coming to an end soon, with developer Unit 2 Games confirming that the title will be making its way to PC “very soon.” Originally announced as a “First on Stadia” timed exclusive, Crayta ’s jump to other platforms was always more a question of “when” rather than “if,” but the announcement marks the first official indication of the regular PC port.

The news — originally spotted by 9to5Google, citing a tweet from Twitter user @Yogarine — comes from an announcement by Unit 2 Games in the game’s Discord chat. The company promises that it’ll have more information (including a launch date and the digital storefront where Crayta will be offered) in the coming weeks, but it does promise that it’s “still every...

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Epic Games Store users claimed 749 million free games last year

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Epic Games Store released a bevy of stats to show off how its game storefront grew in 2020 compared to 2019, its launch year. It announced that there are over 160 million accounts now on PC, up from the 108 million users registered in 2019. It almost doubled in monthly active users from 32 million in December 2019 to 56 million last month. Epic also saw its daily active user count go up to 31.3 million, which the company claims is a 192 percent boost. Its peak concurrent player count hit 13 million in 2020, almost doubling its 7 million peak in 2019.

Unsurprising to no one, giving away free games each week is a nice way to keep people coming back to your storefront. (It also helps when your store is the sole provider of Fortnite on PC.)...

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Robinhood will allow ‘limited buys’ of stocks like GameStop starting Friday

Robinhood has announced that, beginning on Friday, January 29th, it will allow “limited buys” on restricted stocks, potentially signaling the end of a brutal day-long hold on GameStop, AMC, BlackBerry, Nokia, and other stocks.

“Starting tomorrow, we plan to allow limited buys of these securities,” the company said in a blog post. “We’ll continue to monitor the situation and may make adjustments as needed.” The company’s statement does not elaborate on how limited purchases will be for GameStop and the other restricted stocks.

"“To be clear, this was a risk-management decision”"

On Thursday morning, Robinhood restricted purchases of GameStop and the other stocks, which had been driven to unusually high prices by coordinated activity on the...

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Go read why r/WallStreetBets was founded and how its creator left

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Wall Street Journal has written an excellent profile of the man who started r/WallStreetBets, the subreddit that’s been embroiled in controversy this week. His name is Jaime Rogozinski, and if you’re wondering how he’s been feeling about this whole thing, he likens it to “watching one of those horror films where you can see the bad guy slowly going up the stairs.”

The article gives the impression that the subreddit, which is now trying to raise the price of GameStop stocks to the moon, wasn’t only created for profit — it was created for fun. Rogozinski was apparently bored with the usual stock market advice about just buying index funds and was looking for actual discussions about individual stocks. He also talks about how the...

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E-Trade confirms it halted GameStop and AMC stock, will let you buy some Friday

Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Financial services company E-Trade has restricted purchases of GameStop and AMC stock, the company has confirmed to The Verge — and, like Robinhood, it plans to resume trading of both stocks on Friday.

The two stocks have become popular on forums like the r/WallStreetBets subreddit and seen their prices skyrocket to unprecedented highs over the past week. (GameStop hit $483 earlier on Thursday and briefly went above that during the day. Last Thursday, the stock closed at $43.)

Here’s E-Trade’s full statement:

Amid the extraordinary volumes in GME and AMC, we chose to limit client activity in these names late in the trading day in order to ensure that we could continue to serve our broader client base. We take actions like this seriously,...

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Leaked images suggest Sony’s camera-focused Xperia 1 III might have a much better zoom lens

Alleged leaked renders of the upcoming flagship show Sony sticking with a minimalist design and tall form factor. | Image: OnLeaks

An early look at Sony’s next flagship phone shows it might be getting a more powerful zoom lens, thanks to some leaked renders posted by OnLeaks. The Xperia 1 III’s rear camera bump appears similar to its predecessor’s at first glance. But if you look closely at the bottom camera, it features a squared- off housing consistent with periscope designs. Previous Xperia phones have offered standard telephoto lenses with 2x or 3x optical zoom; a periscope design would allow for 5x or more of optical reach without sacrificing image quality.

OnLeaks also reports that the Xperia 1 III will include 5G, practically a requirement for any flagship phone in 2021. Unlike the Xperia 1 II, it seems likely that Sony will offer 5G support for 1 III devices...

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Senate to hold hearing on the stock market after Reddit GameStop squeeze

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), the incoming chair of the Senate Banking Committee, announced Thursday that he plans to hold a hearing on the “current state of the stock market” in the wake of unprecedented volatility around GameStop, AMC, and other stocks.

The volatility has been most pronounced around the retailer GameStop, which has more than quadrupled in value over the past week in the face of a Reddit- organized campaign to boost the company’s value. But with several markets blocking further purchases of the stock to stem hedge fund losses, the incident has sparked a broader conversation about institutional bias in US financial markets.

“People on Wall Street only care about the rules when they’re the ones getting hurt. American workers...

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AOC and others call for investigation into Robinhood’s GameStop freeze

Photo by Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) called on Congress to investigate the Robinhood app after it banned small investors from buying stock in companies like GameStop. Over the last week, Reddit users have shorted the bemoaned video game retailer’s stock in what some are calling the “squeeze of a lifetime.”

In a Thursday tweet, Ocasio-Cortez called Robinhood’s decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock in companies like GameStop and Blackberry “unacceptable,” and that’d she’d “support a hearing if necessary.” Ocasio- Cortez is a member of the House Financial Services Committee, which has jurisdiction to oversee the stock market and “securities and exchanges” more broadly.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) retweeted her message, saying...

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Here are the best AirPods deals you can get right now

Apple’s AirPods Pro wireless earbuds | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Apple AirPods are among the most popular headphones on the market. They’re compact, easy to pair with your devices, and offer reliable connectivity, which can sometimes be a problem with truly wireless earphones. So there’s a chance that you might be looking for a deal on them.

Surprisingly, they’re no stranger to the occasional price cut. There are often discounts on even the more expensive AirPods Pro, which offers noise cancellation and better sound than the standard second-generation model.

We’ll run through all three of the current models below, including the standard AirPods, the more expensive AirPods that include a wireless charging case, and finally, the AirPods Pro.

AirPods deals

These are Apple’s entry-level wireless...

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Apple retakes second place in smartphone shipment rankings as sanctions bite Huawei

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple overtook Huawei to reclaim its spot as the second-bestselling smartphone manufacturer in the world in 2020, according to new research reports from Counterpoint Research and Canalys. Samsung was still the leading seller in terms of number of smartphones shipped, while Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo took the next three spots, according to Counterpoint.

It was just under a year ago that the same research analysts reported that Huawei had overtaken Apple to take second place in 2019. But since then, US trade sanctions seem to have hit Huawei hard. The Chinese company’s smartphone shipments were 21 percent lower in 2020 compared to 2019, according to Counterpoint, and Huawei dropped out of the top five entirely in the fourth quarter of the...

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After buy ban, GameStop hypebeasts are looking for a Robinhood alternative

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In the wake of Robinhood’s surprise trading block, a new class of Reddit investors are looking for apps that will let them plow their money into their favorite stocks. On Thursday morning, Robinhood announced that it would temporarily block investors from purchasing or trading companies including GameStop, AMC, BlackBerry, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Nokia, all of which have been the subject of unexpected rallies over the past few days. But for the online communities that fueled those rallies, the block is being treated as an outright betrayal.

Discussion about switching ramped up on Twitter and in investment discords after Robinhood halted buying and trading on stock, citing “recent volatility” in the market with the aforementioned stock as...

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With Parler down, QAnon moves onto a ‘free speech’ TikTok clone

Clapper

After this month’s deadly attack at the Capitol, QAnon has been widely banished from the internet. Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok have all banned Q-related content, and the right’s favored platform, Parler, has been forced offline for weeks. But it hasn’t all disappeared. A new platform called Clapper, a “free-speech” TikTok clone, is becoming a home for QAnon followers.

Clapper launched last July as a “Free Speech Short Video” app — it’s basically TikTok, but the company promises a lot less moderation. In the six months since its launch, the app has been downloaded over half a million times, with a considerable amount of that growth coming in just the past two weeks.

Once you download Clapper, you can start scrolling through a...

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Open Roads is a game about riffling through the past while your mom watches

In Steve Gaynor’s attic, there is a box that does not belong to him. He bought his Portland home from a family who put the house up for sale after the death of its elderly owner. Months later, Gaynor and his wife discovered a cardboard box full of letters and other artifacts from a stranger’s life. “There was this backstory about this person who had been part of this family that was all contained inside this one cardboard box,” Gaynor said.

It’s an anecdote almost too good to be believed: a co-founder of Fullbright, a studio known for pioneering “walking sim” games, living out his very own Gone Home-style adventure. Gaynor wondered not just about the box’s owner, but the possibilities of these found items: “How can we express that...

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Facebook Oversight Board overturns hate speech and pandemic misinformation takedowns

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Facebook’s Oversight Board has issued its first round of rulings, upholding one removal and overturning four decisions involving hate speech, nudity, and misinformation. Together, the rulings take an expansive view of what users can post under the current policies, based on concerns about vague rules and protecting freedom of expression online.

The Oversight Board — composed of experts outside Facebook — accepted its first set of cases in December. While the original slate included six incidents, a user in one case proactively deleted their post, rendering the decision moot. Facebook has pledged to follow its rulings within seven days and respond to recommendations for new policies within 30 days. In a response to the rulings, Facebook...

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General Motors, maker of giant trucks and SUVs, vows to be carbon neutral by 2040

Xinhua/Joel Lerner via Getty Images

General Motors, an automotive company that sells hundreds of thousands of giant gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs every year, says it will be carbon neutral by 2040.

The company says it will achieve this goal by “removing emissions from all our products, including every vehicle we produce, and all of our global operations in the next twenty years.” And when removing those emissions aren’t possible, GM says it will purchase carbon credits to offset the pollution for which it is responsible. Notably, though, GM wouldn’t commit to ending its sale of gas- powered vehicles within its targeted time frame.

The announcement comes a day after President Joe Biden signed a series of executive orders aimed at combating climate change. The new...

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Razer’s new Viper 8K promises the fastest performance of any gaming mouse

The Razer Viper 8K weighs two grams more (71g) than the original Viper (69g). | Image: Razer

Razer’s Viper 8K is a refresh of the 2019 true ambidextrous Viper. For the most part, it’s identical and is now available at the same $79 asking price, but it has some key upgrades for competitive gamers who are hoping that tech might help them get the edge over their opponents.

First off, Razer now includes the Focus Plus 20,000DPI sensor used in many of its other 2020 mice, along with the latest generation of optical switches that have a more tactile click feel, according to the company (although it didn’t stand out as noticeable to me when I tested the mouse). The biggest news is that, according to Razer, the newly revised Viper can achieve the fastest polling rate of any mouse currently available: up to 8,000Hz — far higher than the...

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These great-sounding Master & Dynamic earbuds are $80 off at Best Buy

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

If you are in the market for a new pair of wireless earbuds and want something with an unconventional design, Master & Dynamic’s MW07 Go true wireless earbuds are $120 at Best Buy today. That’s $80 off their usual price of $200.

At first glance, the MW07 Go look like they might be uncomfortable inside your ears, but don’t let the looks fool you. The Verge ’s Cameron Faulkner reviewed these earbuds in 2019 and noted they are much more comfortable than their appearance suggests. These buds also have great sound, last up to 10 hours on a single charge, and include a USB-C charging case.

Amazon is currently selling Samsung’s 980 Pro NVMe M.2 SSD with 500GB for $112 today. Normally $150, this is the lowest price we have seen this internal...

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Microsoft turned its sustainability report into a Minecraft map

Microsoft released its annual sustainability report today, and Minecraft developer Mojang decided to turn it into something interactive. Called simply “Sustainable City,” the new Minecraft map is available as a free download in the Minecraft marketplace, and it’s also been added to the game’s educational offshoot.

The map features six included lessons, which Mojang says are “designed to give students a sense of stewardship for the planet.” The lessons cover topics like sustainable food production, water outflow and treatment, and responsible forestry. One lesson tasks players with exploring a home built entirely from sustainable materials; another has them venture to a landfill to learn what happens to non-recyclable materials.

The...

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Robinhood blocks purchase of GameStop, AMC, and BlackBerry stock

Robinhood has added new limits to its app to restrict users from buying or trading any of the popular Reddit r/WallStreetBets stocks, including GameStop ($GME), AMC ($AMC), BlackBerry ($BB), Bed Bath & Beyond ($BBBY), Nokia ($NOK), and more. Users will still be allowed to close out existing positions but won’t be able to buy more of the stocks. The company is citing “recent volatility” in the market as the reasoning behind the change.

We continuously monitor the markets and make changes where necessary. In light of recent volatility, we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only, including $AMC, $BB, $BBBY, $EXPR, $GME, $KOSS, $NAKD and $NOK. We also raised margin requirements for certain securities.

The...

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Discord has turned into a virtual trade floor with memes, stonks, and chaos

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

An online casino

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Olija is a dark, haunting action game without all the stress

There are plenty of great 2D action games about exploring dark, mysterious worlds. Think Hollow Knight , __Dead Cells, or anything inspired by Castlevania. Aside from similar themes, these games have something else in common: they’re almost always incredibly hard. Olija goes in a different direction. It still takes place in a world full of terrors to fight and secrets to uncover, and it features fast-paced action with lots of interesting weapons. But it’s also much more approachable. I wouldn’t call it easy, but it’s satisfying without being frustrating. You get the same haunting vibe without all of the stress.

In Olija, you play as a man named Faraday whose ship crashes in an incredibly cursed part of the world called Terraphage. He has...

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Apple’s next iOS 14 beta will begin forcing developers to ask for permission to track you

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple’s new privacy feature requiring developers ask for permission to track iOS users for ad targeting is at last going live in the next iOS 14 beta with a planned full release some time this spring for non-beta users, the company tells The Verge.

The announcement coincides with Data Privacy Day, as well as a speech on privacy from Apple CEO Tim Cook later today at the Computers, Privacy and Data Protection conference in Brussels. Apple initially planned for the feature to go live with the launch of iOS 14 last fall, but it delayed its implementation to 2021 in September of last year to give developers more time to comply. Today’s announcement narrows the launch window to this spring, but Apple is not commenting further on when...

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Garmin says the Lily is ‘the smartwatch women have been waiting for’

Garmin has released a new smartwatch called the Lily, and its main selling point is that Garmin claims it’s designed by women, for women. The Sport Edition, which is made of aluminum and has a silicone band, costs $199, while the stainless steel Classic Edition is $250 and comes with a leather band.

Garmin claims it’s “the smartwatch women have been waiting for,” which seems based on its size and design, which is very fashion-forward. However, as reviewer Lily Katz from Android Authority points out in her review of the Lily, the watch may have given up a few important features to achieve those looks.

Image: Garmin To its credit, the Lily looks very much like a regular watch.

One of the Lily’s main selling...

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r/WallStreetBets went private — and now it’s back with a message

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The r/WallStreetBets subreddit’s own moderators made it private for a little less than an hour on Wednesday evening, Reddit confirmed to The Verge — but now, it’s back, with a new post from the moderators themselves that doesn’t quite explain why it vanished in the first place. The subreddit has seen a significant increase in attention in recent days following the meteoric rise in GameStop’s stock driven in part by traders on the forum.

“We have grown to the kind of size we only dreamed of in the time it takes to get a bad nights sleep,” reads a new post from the mods, one which you can read in its entirety at the bottom of this post in case it disappears. “We’ve got so many comments and submissions that we can’t possibly even read...

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Reddit vs. Wall Street: the latest in the GameStop saga

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The story of r/WallStreetBets

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Tesla’s new Model S will apparently play Witcher 3 on a built-in 10 teraflop gaming rig

If you can’t find a PS5 or Xbox Series X, how about an $80,000 electric sports car with comparable performance? Tesla just announced its refreshed Model S today, and a new “Plaid” powertrain isn’t its only performance enhancement — the company claims the car can now compete with next-gen gaming consoles, thanks to a 10-teraflop gaming computer that will apparently come with every new model.

Assuming that refers to GPU performance and Tesla isn’t wildly exaggerating, that might indeed be competitive with a PS5 or Xbox Series X, which offer 10.28 teraflops and 12 teraflops of raw GPU power respectively. There’s more to performance than teraflops, though.

Now, you might ask: who’s going to put a game in your car that might...

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Discord bans the r/WallStreetBets server

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Discord has banned the r/WallStreetBets server, the company confirmed to The Verge. Reddit’s WallStreetBets subreddit is the driver of an unprecedented rally of GameStop stock, and has received a great deal of attention in the press as the stock continues to soar.

Discord says it did not ban the server for financial fraud — rather, it was banned because it continued to allow “hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings.” The Verge gained access to the server and can confirm the claim that users of the channel were spamming hateful language, including racial slurs.

Here is Discord’s full statement:

The server has been on our Trust & Safety team’s radar for some time due to occasional content that violates our Community...

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Apple says there are now over 1 billion active iPhones

Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

Apple says there are now more than 1 billion active iPhones, an enormous milestone for the company that speaks to the phones’ continued success and longevity. There are now 1.65 billion Apple devices in active use overall, Tim Cook said during Apple’s earnings call this afternoon.

The milestone had been approaching for a while. Apple sold its billionth iPhone in 2016, and in January 2019, Apple said that it had hit 900 million active iPhone users. Apple counts a device as active if it has engaged with an Apple service within the past 90 days, a spokesperson told The Verge. The stat would suggest that a substantial number of the iPhones ever sold remain in active use, at least by Apple’s definition. BNN Bloomberg reported last year that...

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Cyberpunk 2077 bans unauthorized Keanu Reeves sex

Cyberpunk 2077 creator CD Projekt Red would kindly like modders to stop making Keanu Reeves into a sex object. Following a fan mod that allowed players to have sex with Reeves’ character, Johnny Silverhand, the developer told PC Gamer __ that __ user-generated content cannot be “harmful towards others” — especially when it comes to mods. “In the case of model swaps, especially those that involve explicit situations, it can be perceived as such by the people who lent us their appearance for the purpose of creating characters in Cyberpunk 2077, ” the developer said.

It’s worth noting that Reeves’ character does have an in-game sex scene, though it plays out from his perspective. As Johnny, the player has sex with a blonde woman who inexplicably...

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