‘PlugWalkJoe’ arrested in connection with 2020 hack of famous Twitter accounts

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

Joseph O’Connor, a 22-year-old UK citizen who goes by the handle “PlugWalkJoe,” was arrested in Spain on Wednesday for his connection to the 2020 Twitter hack that compromised the accounts of former President Barack Obama and Elon Musk, and ran off with over $100,000 in Bitcoin. In a press release announcing the arrest, the US Justice Department writes that O’Connor is also being charged with “computer intrusions related to takeovers of TikTok and Snapchat user accounts.”

O’Connor was arrested on multiple counts of conspiring to and illegally accessing computers without authorization, and “with the intent to extort from a person a thing of value, transmitting a communication containing a threat,” among several other charges, the Justice...

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Clubhouse is no longer invite-only

Clubhouse

Clubhouse is going wide. Co-founders Paul Davison and Rohan Seth announced today that the app is no longer invite-only. Around 10 million people are currently on the waitlist, a spokesperson confirms, and they’ll slowly be added to the app over time. (Essentially, millions of users won’t be added today, but seemingly, if you attempt to sign up anew, you’ll be able to do so.) Along with the news, Clubhouse showed off a new logo, as well as a new app icon: Justin “Meezy” Williams, rapper 21 Savage’s manager.

“The invite system has been an important part of our early history,” a blog post about the changes says. “By adding people in waves, welcoming new faces each week in our Wednesday Orientations, and talking with the community each...

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WHO head cheers Olympic ‘hope’ as COVID-19 cases in athletes’ village rise

Photo by Michael Kappeler/picture alliance via Getty Images

Olympic athletes in Tokyo continue to test positive for COVID-19 by the dozens, the United States gymnastics team left the Olympic Village for a hotel in an attempt to avoid the virus, and the chief of the games’ organizing committee said there could still be a last-minute cancellation. Still, the head of the World Health Organization said Wednesday that the Tokyo Olympics could “inspire” and “bring the world together.”

“It is my sincere hope the Tokyo Games succeed,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday. He said it was impossible to expect zero cases of COVID-19, and that the most important thing would be to isolate people, contact trace, and stop the virus from spreading.

"Beyond competition, medals &...

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Amazon will let devs compete for your Echo Show’s screen and everything else Alexa just added

Amazon’s Alexa devices are ambient computers, not the kind you use all day. When you_do_ ask your Echo a question or glance at your Echo Show’s diminutive screen, the voice assistant only has a brief chance to impress. Today, Amazon is announcing it’s going to give more of those opportunities to third-party developers — including brand-new widgets and featured skill cards that might take up a chunk of your smart speaker’s precious real estate.

Here’s what to expect from those and everything else the company’s announcing at its Alexa Live event today.

As you can see in Amazon’s mockup above, widgets look pretty much as you might expect. In a blog post, Amazon describes them as “rich, customizable, glanceable, self-updating views of skill...

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Amazon promises most Echo speakers will get upgraded to Matter

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung, and dozens of other firms have agreed to try to make setting up smart homes easier with Matter, a cross-platform open-source standard coming later this year. Now, Amazon has revealed the scope of its initial commitment: it will be upgrading almost every plug-in Echo smart speaker to support Matter, including most Echo and Echo Dot speakers and every Echo Studio, Echo Show, Echo Plus, and Echo Flex.
In fact, the only Echo smart speakers that won’t get upgraded to Matter are the first-gen Echo, first-gen Echo Dot and Echo Tap, a rep tells The Verge.

While the company doesn’t provide a timeline for those upgrades, the general idea is that Matter will launch by late 2021, so it shouldn’t be long until Amazon’s...

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Instagram can now automatically translate text in stories

When a foreign language is detected, an option to ‘See Translation’ now appears. | Image: Instagram

Instagram is adding a new option to automatically translate text in story posts, the company announced today. Now, when the service detects a foreign language in a post, it will display a “See Translation” option on the top left of the screen, which users can tap to see a translation at the bottom. Instagram says the new translation feature will be available globally, and currently supports over 90 languages to make sharing content with an international audience easier.

The feature, whose development was previously reported by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, means there’s now parity between Instagram stories and traditional posts. In 2016, Instagram added automatic translations to comments, captions, and user bios but failed to...

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Netflix’s Masters of the Universe erases the past to chart a new future

Image: Netflix

Part of what made She-Ra and the Princesses of Powerso good was the way it completely reimagined the classic cartoon. It was still set in a magical realm with talking horses and evil robot armies, but it took an old show — which, if we’re being honest, was created for the express purpose of selling toys — and gave its characters and world some real depth and meaning. It was funny and exciting, heartbreaking and beautiful, without a toy commercial in sight.

On the surface, Masters of the Universe: Revelation, which stars She-Ra’s long-lost twin brother He-Man, isn’t quite so exciting. It’s not a reboot but a direct sequel, one that’s meant to pick up right after the original cartoon ended in 1985. It has the same cast of characters, some...

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Google gives Pixel 4 XL an extra year of free repairs for power issues

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verg

If your out-of-warranty Pixel 4 XL has been exhibiting some problems, you might be able to get a free repair. Google recently posted a support page outlining a “one-year extended repair program” for the larger of its two 2019 flagships. Those who are eligible can receive a free repair for up to a year after their original warranty expires. As for who’s covered by this program, Google points to “certain power-related issues.”

More specifically, the company says these are the problems that “may” get a free repair:

• A Pixel 4 XL that can’t be powered on
• The Pixel 4 XL restarts or shuts down randomly without any user action
• Charging problems with the power adapter
• Wireless charging issues
• The battery on a Pixel 4 XL is draining...

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Adam Neumann’s WeWork debacle wasn’t possible without VC help

Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for WeWork

A new book explains how the failed IPO truly took a village

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Tumblr starts letting bloggers charge a subscription

Tumblr’s Post Plus feature lets blogs offer a subscription for exclusive posts. | Image: Tumblr

Tumblr is finally offering its writers a way to make money off their work: charging a subscription.

The 14-year-old blogging platform is starting to add the ability for writers to put their posts behind a paywall. The feature, called Post Plus, lets creators offer a $3.99, $5.99, or $9.99 per month subscription, which will give readers access to any posts they decide to designate as for subscribers only. For now, the feature is available in a “limited beta” for select creators only.

Like Substack, without the whole email thing

The formula sounds a lot like what Substack offers — a blog and an easy way for writers to charge for it — minus the whole emailed newsletter component. Facebook is also starting to test the waters in this area and...

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How to change your name on TikTok

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

When you start using TikTok, you’re asked for a profile name and a username. If you’ve been using TikTok for a while, though, it wouldn’t be unusual to decide that you want to change one or both. Perhaps you used your real name and weren’t aware at first that your name would be made public. Or perhaps the name you originally chose is no longer quite right for the type of content you’re going to post. Or perhaps you simply decided that you want to be known by something more exciting.

Either way, it’s simple to change either your profile name or your username. (In TikTok, the username is the one preceded by an @ sign.)

Go to your profile page (by tapping the “Me” icon in the lower-right corner).

• Select “Edit profile.”
• Select “Name” (to...

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The latest iPad Pro and iPad Air tablets are each $100 off today

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

If you’ve been waiting for a sizable deal on the new M1 processor-equipped 12.9-inch iPad Pro or the 10.9-inch iPad Air released last year, you can save $100 on either model now at Amazon. Starting with the iPad Pro, the base model in space gray that comes with 128GB of storage costs $999 at Amazon. That’s $100 off the usual cost, which is great considering this iteration includes a brilliant Mini LED Liquid Retina XDR display with more contrast and color depth than in previous models.

It’s understandable if you might be after something a little less pricey instead. At Best Buy and Amazon, you can save $100 on the base model of the 2020 iPad Air that has a 10.9-inch screen and — like the iPad Pro — a USB-C port for charging. Normally...

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Nobuo Uematsu’s beautiful Fantasian soundtrack is now on Apple Music

One of the most exciting things about Fantasian — a Final Fantasy-style roleplaying game that debuted on Apple Arcade earlier this year — was how it reunited two industry legends. Hironobu Sakaguchi served as the creative director of the handcrafted adventure, while longtime Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu returned for the soundtrack. Now, all of that beautiful music is finally available to stream on Apple Music.

It’s a hefty album, too, with 58 songs spanning more than two and half hours of music and a wide range of genres. Prior to Fantasian’s release, Uematsu said that he was worried this might be his last soundtrack. “Will I get another chance to work on an entire game?” he said. “I didn’t want to have any regrets.” Sakaguchi...

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The Biden administration should take the First Amendment as seriously as Facebook misinformation

White House / Adam Schultz

Last week, the White House declared war on anti-vaccine misinformation and Facebook’s moderation system. President Joe Biden said that Facebook and other social networks were “killing people” by hosting false information about vaccines, although he later softened the attack. Facebook disputed the accusation sharply, promoting its vaccine efforts. And yesterday, the Biden administration hit back with a troubling — and unnecessary — promise that it was “reviewing” internet law in response to misinformation.

I want to be clear: the White House’s vaccine push is a good thing. American COVID-19 cases are abruptly rising as the virus’s Delta strain spreads, fewer than half of all Americans are fully vaccinated, and nearly all recent US...

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Watch the latest teaser trailer for Netflix’s upcoming animated Witcher film

Netflix has dropped the latest teaser trailer for its animated Witcher prequel, giving us a better look at the film’s characters and allowing us to hear its English-language voice actors for the first time.

_The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf_focuses on the early life of Geralt’s mentor, Vesemir, “a cocky young witcher who delights in slaying monsters for coin,” as per Netflix’s synopsis. Available plot details are thin, but the film involves Vesemir confronting “a strange new monster” and “demons of his past” in a politically-fraught kingdom. (So far, so Witcher.)

The film is being made by Korean animation house Studio Mir, which has previously tackled a number of Netflix animations, including Dota: Dragon’s Blood and Voltron: Legendary...

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How to jump on TikTok trends

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

So you’ve started posting videos on Tiktok, and now you’re ready to up your game. One of the easiest ways to make your videos more entertaining and to potentially get more views is to jump on trends.

The way the TikTok algorithm is designed, it rewards videos that use certain trending sounds, effects, or hashtags. These videos are more likely to receive views because they’re pushed to other people who also enjoy that trend, and they’re easier to find when browsing in the Discover tab. Here’s how to improve your TikTok strategy by using trends to your advantage.

Identify trends

Trends can originate from a variety of features on the app: sounds, dances, transitions, or hashtags. One of the easiest ways to identify trends is to browse via...

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Zoom will now let you add third-party apps to your calls

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Zoom is furthering its ambitions to be your go-to app for virtual meetings and events by making Zoom Apps and Zoom Events widely available starting Wednesday.

Zoom Apps are third-party integrations that will show up right in your Zoom call. There will be more than 50 apps available, including apps like Asana, the Pexels backgrounds app, or even games like _Heads Up._If you’re on the latest version of the Zoom client, you’ll be able to install apps from a new Apps tab you’ll see on the toolbar during Zoom calls (though your company administrator may need to enable them).

Zoom’s events platform, Zoom Events, offers features to help you host robust virtual events. For example, you can make a hub that provides details about the event and...

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Ford’s self-driving cars will be available on Lyft’s platform in Miami and Austin

Lyft customers in Miami will be able hail a robotaxi from Argo AI, an AV startup backed by Ford and Volkswagen, by the end of the year, the companies announced Wednesday. Next year, riders in Austin, Texas, will be able to do the same. It’s the latest move to make more autonomous vehicles available for public use after initial predictions about the wide-scale availability of AVs failed to materialize.

For years, Ford promised that it would launch a full-scale autonomous vehicle business, including robotaxis and driverless delivery, by 2021. That later got pushed to 2022, with the automaker citing delays due to the coronavirus pandemic. It also said it would use a purpose-built autonomous vehicle without steering wheel or pedals to power...

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Google Maps will help you avoid crowded mass transit in way more cities

Where available, users can report on how busy a transit option is. | Image: Google

Google is expanding the number of cities where Maps offers information about public transport crowding. The number of cities covered is increasing from around 200 today, to “over 10,000 transit agencies in 100 countries,” the company says. As well as crowdedness, Google says Maps is also being updated to offer more information about past travel.

Google Maps’ crowdedness information originally launched pre-pandemic in 2019, but over the past year social distancing has made it more important than ever. Crowdedness information is generated from a mixture of historical location data, as well as self-reporting from Maps users on individual trains. Google says it anonymizes the location history data used.

Image: Google

G...

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The Dish ‘fix’ for the T-Mobile-Sprint merger seems more shortsighted than ever

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

To sell regulators on their $26 billion mega merger, T-Mobile and Sprint executives told anyone who’d listen that the deal would provide near-miraculous benefits. But economists warned that US telecom merger promises are historically meaningless, and the reduction in overall competitors would — sooner or later — result in higher prices and job cuts.

Instead of heeding their warnings and blocking the deal, US antitrust enforcers concocted an elaborate workaround: they would erect Dish Network as the nation’s new fourth major wireless carrier. Under the plan Dish received some T-Mobile spectrum, the Boost Mobile prepaid brand, and the assurance that T-Mobile would help Dish run a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) while it got its own...

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Apple AirPods update to arrive later this year with iPhone SE refresh coming 2022: report

The third-generation AirPods will reportedly have a shorter stem than current models (above). | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple will start production on updated AirPods next month, with plans to launch the third-generation earbuds later this year, according to a report from Nikkei. It’s the latest rumor regarding Apple’s product schedule, which will reportedly include an all-5G iPhone line-up in 2022, including a revamped iPhone SE sporting the as-yet-unannounced A15 processor.

A refresh of Apple’s entry-level AirPods have been rumored for a while now, with previous generations launched in 2016 and 2019. Back in May, Bloombergreported that the earbuds will have a design similar to the AirPods Pro, with “a new case and shorter stems poking out of the bottom of each one.” If Nikkei is right about production starting next month, we can expect to see the...

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Valve will replace Big Picture mode with the new Steam Deck UI

Big Picture, the mode that converts Steam’s user interface into a more console-like design better suited to TVs and controllers than monitors and mice, may not be long for this world. According to austinp_valve, a Valve employee posting on the Steam community forums, the plan is for the new UI from the just-announced Steam Deck handheld PC to replace Big Picture mode on the desktop version of Steam as well.

Valve announced Big Picture mode in 2011 and released it the following year. The mode formed the basis of the UI for SteamOS, the version of Linux that shipped on console-style devices that were part of Valve’s ill-fated Steam Machine project. With the Steam Deck running an all-new version of the operating system called SteamOS 3.0,...

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Green travel rewards app Miles raises $12.5 million

Image: Miles

Three years ago, a startup called Miles launched a free app with the goal of becoming a sort of rewards program for all travel — with an emphasis on clean transportation. Cover enough ground by bike, bus, subway, or even on foot, and you’d be rewarded with “miles” (aka points) that could be exchanged for perks at Starbucks or discounts to services like Audi Silvercar.

I was curious, so I used Miles for a little over a year. I lived in New York City at the time and did a lot of daily walking and subway-riding, with occasional biking and bus travel. I was in a great spot to rack up miles without having to change my habits, so I shook the icky feeling of letting another app know my location to see if that occasional free coffee would be...

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One of the biggest myths about EVs is busted in new study

Vehicle bodies on the production line of the manufacturing plant for Zeekr Co., an electric-car unit of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China, on Wednesday, April 14, 2021.  | Photographer: Gilles Sabrie/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A new study lays to rest the tired argument that electric vehicles aren’t much cleaner than internal combustion vehicles. Over the life cycle of an EV — from digging up the materials needed to build it to eventually laying the car to rest — it will release fewer greenhouse gas emissions than a gas-powered car, the research found. That holds true globally, whether an EV plugs into a grid in Europe with a larger share of renewables, or a grid in India that still relies heavily on coal.

Fossil fuels are driving the climate crisis

This shouldn’t come as a big surprise. Fossil fuels are driving the climate crisis. So governments from California to the European Union have proposed phasing out internal combustion engines by 2035. But there are...

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Brokered cell location data led to the outing and resignation of a Catholic official

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Location data from a cell phone, obtained and sold by data brokers, has lead to the alleged outing and resignation of a priest working for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, according to a report from The Washington Post. The traffic data, which was linked to the priest and appeared to show when and where he was using the LGBTQ dating app Grindr, was obtained by a publication and shared with the Conference, where the priest worked as the general secretary.

This incident is another example of how invasive the collection and sale of location and other personal data by brokers can be. While the data sold by these companies is ostensibly anonymized, it’s been shown that individuals can be picked out and tracked. The data broker industry...

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Samsung announces Unpacked event for August 11th with Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip teaser

Samsung has officially announced when it will hold its next Unpacked product event: August 11th at 10AM ET / 7AM PT. It is widely expected to announce the next version of the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 3 — both of which have already leaked quite a bit. Samsung’s not being shy about those expectations, as a quick look at its invite reveals the outline for both of those devices.

Samsung is also expected to announce new Galaxy watches, which would be the first to use the new combined Wear platform that was announced at Google I/O earlier this year.

Samsung is holding the event virtually again on its website, and it promises to post more details on the livestream here. It’s also keeping up another Samsung trend: letting customers...

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A fix is coming for those locked out of their Chromebooks by Google’s update

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge

A bad update to Chrome OS, version 91.0.4472.165, has left some users unable to log in to their accounts, or reportedly with boot-looping computers (via Android Central). If you’ve found yourself locked out of your Chromebook, help is on the way: Google posted on its system status page that it’s working on a fix, which it expects to release on Wednesday. It’s also pulled the update, which should prevent more users from experiencing the issue.

According to Google, the only options to immediately regain access to your Chrome OS device (if it unfortunately downloaded and installed the update) will lead to the local data on the device being wiped. If you can wait until the new fix the issue is released, though, your device should...

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An on-the-ground look at Blue Origin’s motley crew

Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark and Oliver Daemen walk off New Shepard’s landing pad as Wally Funk, 82-year-old aviation icon and the mission’s fourth passenger, remains in awe at the size of New Shepard, the suborbital rocket they all launched to space on. | Joey Roulette/The Verge

A record-setting flight

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Chrome for iOS will let you lock down incognito tabs with Face ID

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Chrome’s latest update for iOS will let you secure your incognito tabs with Touch ID, Face ID, or a passcode (via MacRumors). When the new feature is rolled out to you, you can turn it on by navigating to the settings menu, then tapping “Privacy,” then “Lock Incognito tabs.” I just updated the app and the option wasn’t there for me, so you might have to wait just a bit until you can flip it on. Google first revealed it was testing this new privacy feature in February.

The update brings a few other handy features to Google’s mobile browser, including the ability to take a full-page screenshot of a website. You can use it by snapping a screenshot with the button combination specific to your device, tapping the screenshot preview, and then...

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Instagram introduces a setting to control sensitive content in your Explore tab

Facebook is announcing a new setting that allows you to limit how much potentially sensitive content shows up in your Instagram Explore tab. According to Facebook, the new Sensitive Content Control setting will let you “see more or less of some types of sensitive content,” which may be “upsetting or offensive.” How much content the three levels, “Allow,” “Limit (Default),” and “Limit Even More” will or will not show is pretty vague, and we’ve reached out to Facebook for clarification.

On the support page for Sensitive Content Control, Instagram says that sensitive content could include sexually suggestive or violent posts, as well as posts that promote things like tobacco or pharmaceutical use. Facebook is clear that this setting is...

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