Sony completes acquisition of Crunchyroll from AT&T

Sony officially owns AT&T’s Crunchyroll.

Sony’s deal to acquire Crunchyroll was first announced in December 2020 and sees Crunchyroll join Funimation, Sony’s existing anime streaming property, under one roof. The ultimate goal of the unification of the two anime properties under a single roof is to develop “a unified anime subscription experience as soon as possible,” said Tony Vinciquerra, Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, in a statement.

The deal is priced at $1.175 billion, and AT&T — which had been reported by The Information to be shopping the service around for $1.5 billion — will use the funds to help pay down the debt it amassed from its spending on streaming. In a radical shift away from its streaming strategy,...

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Apple keeps shutting down employee-run surveys on pay equity — and labor lawyers say it’s illegal

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The company bans surveys that include diversity data

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SpaceX to acquire small satellite startup Swarm Technologies

36 SpaceBee smallsats launch to space aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in January 2021, during SpaceX’s Transporter-1 mission with 107 other satellites on board. | Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is acquiring the small-satellite data provider Swarm Technologies, scooping up the startup’s roughly 30 employees and its network of 120 tiny satellites. The deal, struck last month, is extremely rare for SpaceX, which normally manufactures its rocket and satellite hardware in-house or hires subcontractors.

Swarm revealed the acquisition plans in an August 6th filing with the Federal Communications Commission that requested approval to shift ownership of its satellite and antenna licenses to SpaceX. The merger agreement, in which Swarm will become a direct and wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX, was inked on July 16th, the filing said.

SpaceX benefits from “access to the intellectual property and expertise developed by...

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Netflix is working on a bunch of new reality shows, and you’re invited

Netflix is tripling down on its reality TV programming by renewing its most popular shows and opening up casting for future programming to anyone over the age of 18 in the US, Canada, United Kingdom, or Ireland, the company announced Monday.

Anyone interested who meets that criteria can submit a one-minute video on Netflix’s new dedicated reality TV site. The application can be used for multiple shows on Netflix’s current slate, from baking competitions like Nailed It! to saucier romantic options like Love is Blind.(Netflix also offers the option to apply to all of its shows at once if you prefer a more “spaghetti meets wall” approach.)

Image: Netflix

Netflix will let you apply for shows across a broad spectrum...

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Amazon and GoPro are suing Chinese sellers over counterfeit tripods and grips

The camera is not a counterfeit. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Last June, Amazon created a Counterfeit Crimes Unit to fight the knockoffs plaguing its gigantic storefront, and today, it’s announcing its first action against purveyors of fake gadgets.

Amazon and GoPro have sued seven Chinese nationals and a pair of businesses for distributing hard-to-detect knockoffs of its “Handler” floating camera hand grip and “3-Way” tripod grip, ones that blatantly use GoPro’s own logo, in an April 2021 lawsuit that’s just now being unsealed — because there’s a parallel criminal investigation in China against these same sellers, the complaint reveals.

While the lawsuit doesn’t say how many people actually bought these counterfeit GoPro accessories, it suggests at least some buyers were fooled by the fake...

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Dish says its will launch wireless 5G service in beta at the end of September

Dish aims to cover 70% of the US population by mid-2023 with wireless service. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

On an earnings call today, Dish Network execs said that its Las Vegas 5G wireless service is in the final phase of construction and will launch in beta by the end of September. That keeps it just in line with the Q3 deployment goal it gave earlier this year.

The beta launch is an important first step toward its commitment to covering 70 percent of the US population by June 2023, a target that’s looking more ambitious by the day as the company continues to lose wireless customers. It lost 161,000 subscribers in Q1 of this year, and it just reported a net loss of 201,000 wireless subscribers in Q2. The company stands to lose even more of its remaining 8.9 million wireless subscribers as T-Mobile has unveiled a generous promotion aimed at...

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Hackers reportedly threaten to leak data from Gigabyte ransomware attack

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Gigabyte has been the victim of a cyberattack, which was reportedly the work of a ransomware outfit called RansomEXX. According to The Record, the attack didn’t have an impact on any of the company’s production systems, but it did affect some internal servers. Currently, some parts of Gigabyte’s website, including its support section, are down, giving customers issues when trying to access warranty repair information and updates. The hackers who claim to have carried out the attack are reportedly threatening to release data from the company, including confidential documents from Intel, AMD, and American Megatrends.

Gigabyte is mainly known for its PC components such as motherboards and graphics cards, but it also has a line of laptops...

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Instagram is now testing ads in the Shop tab

Image: Instagram

If you thought Instagram had run out of ad real estate, think again. The company confirmed to TechCrunch today that it’s starting a new test that’ll involve putting ads on its Shop tab. Ads will involve either a single image or carousel of them, and of course, will be shoppable. Only certain advertisers will have access at first, but there are plans to expand the product in the future. (Initial US-based partners include Away, Fenty Beauty, and Clare paint.)

Of course, it’s no surprise Instagram is trying more ads in more places — that’s Instagram and its parent company Facebook’s main revenue driver. Earlier this year, Instagram officially rolled out ads in Reels, another new format that debuted only last year. The company also began...

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Substack is getting into comics

Image: A teaser for one of James Tynion IV’s Substack projects | Michael Avon Oeming

Substack is trying to put a new spin on webcomics. The newsletter platform announced today that it’s signed a number of comics creators up to use its platform. They’ll email comics out to readers and use Substack’s subscription tools to charge directly for access to their work.

It’s a new type of content for Substack, which has predominantly been focused on (written) newsletters covering topics like politics, tech, and culture. But the expansion to comics makes plenty of sense. Comics have long been successful online, but they’ve largely been supported by ads and merch sales. Substack offers comics creators a chance at something a little closer to selling readers a new issue at the store each month.

Substack has started funding...

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Facebook’s updated data transfer tool can port events to Google Calendar

Image: Facebook

Facebook has updated its data transfer tool, Transfer Your Information, with two new destinations for information associated with your Facebook account: Photobucket and Google Calendar (via Engadget). Facebook allowed photo transfers to services like Google Photos in the past, but the company says Facebook Events are a new data type for the tool it created as part of the Data Transfer Project.

Support for Photobucket and Google Calendar comes alongside a larger redesign of Transfer Your Information, which Facebook claims makes the service “simpler and more intuitive.” Among the improvements, it should be easier to see the status of each transfer, start multiple transfers to the same location, and filter through and select what data you...

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Senators reach deal over cryptocurrency tax reporting in infrastructure package

Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

A bipartisan group of senators reached an agreement Monday on a cryptocurrency tax reporting requirement that complicated passage of the $550 billion infrastructure package late last week. Still, it’s unclear if the amendment will receive a vote.

Last week, the Senate released an over $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package that included over $550 billion in new spending to strengthen roads, bridges, and other physical infrastructure like high-speed broadband. The bill also sought to institute new tax reporting requirements for cryptocurrency transactions, a provision that would raise an estimated $28 billion to offset some infrastructure costs.

“We’re not proposing anything sweeping or anything radical”

But the digital assets...

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Fantasian wraps up with part two release on August 13th

When Fantasian, a beautiful roleplaying game from Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, first debuted on Apple Arcade, it wasn’t actually the full game. Instead, it was described as the first part of a longer story. Now the conclusion to that story is almost upon us: part two of _Fantasian_is launching this Friday, August 13th as part of Arcade’s weekly update.

According to developer Mistwalker, the second half features “anywhere between 40 to 60 hours for players to experience.” It also introduces 50 new handcrafted vistas to explore, along with 34 new songs from famed composer Nobuo Uematsu. (His work on the game is also currently streaming on Apple Music.)

In a statement, Sakaguchi said that:

The release of Part 2 of Fantasian...

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Ariana Grande’s Fortnite tour was a moment years in the making

It’s hard to overstate just how weird Fortnite is. At one point, while I was waiting for the game’s virtual Ariana Grande concert this weekend, three identical versions of Rick from Rick and Morty surrounded me and started dancing. Later, I walked by a pair of Marshmellos lounging in identical yellow beanbag chairs. The first show I went to I dressed as Travis Scott; later, I wore a Toronto Raptors jersey and had a dancing baby Groot strapped to my back.

Fortnite’s crash commercialism, where seemingly every fictional world collides with real-world celebrities in a battle royale game, can definitely be off-putting at times. But it also leads to some extremely cool moments, particularly when it comes to live events. And the Ariana Grande...

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Rocket League’s next season brings changes to tournaments and a new cowboy-themed car

A new car available in_Rocket League’s_fourth season. | Image: Psyonix

Rocket League’s fourth season kicks off on Wednesday, bringing some big changes to tournaments, a setting to turn off copyrighted music, and a new cowboy-themed car.

The changes to tournaments, which developer Psyonix first revealed on August 5th, include a new 2v2 mode, giving you an option to team up with just one other friend in competitive play. Psyonix is also adding many more tournaments — there will be “between eight and 13” more tournaments in each region, Psyonix said. And in addition to the new 2v2 and current 3v3 mode, the studio will host Extra Mode tournaments that will cycle between modes like Rumble (which has randomized power-ups), Hoops (a basketball-like mode), and Snow Day (_Rocket League’s_take on hockey).

Get the...

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Workhorse is already redesigning its new electric van

Image: Workhorse

Ohio-based startup Workhorse says it has to redesign its flagship electric van to meet customer needs, after finally getting the vehicle into production this past quarter following years of struggles.

The company announced Monday morning that it needs to “revise the design [of] the vehicle” to increase the payload capacity, which has been reported to be around 6,000 pounds. The C-1000 van, as it’s called, has 1,000 cubic feet of cargo space. The company says the electric powertrain will remain untouched and that it will continue to deliver some C-1000s as they come off the line to customers who are fine with the van’s current capabilities.

“We’re going to go through full vehicle design reviews down to the bill of materials with both our...

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The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf’s new trailer teases a ton of monster-hunting action

Netflix’s anime Witcher spinoff film — The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf — is almost here, and a new full-length trailer shows off a lot more of the epic monster fighting and charismatic heroics of its protagonist, Geralt’s mentor Vesemir.

The film is set before the events of the live-action series and will look to explain more about the Witcher’s world, including how the magically mutated monster hunters are created. It’ll also provide useful backstory on Vesemir, who’s set to appear in the upcoming second season of the show when it arrives this December.

The new trailer for the anime spinoff also shows off a lot more of the expanded Witcher universe, and some rather impressive-looking fight scenes and effects, the sorts of which...

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Netflix’s Midnight Mass is the next horror series from the mind behind Haunting of Hill House

Image: Eike Schroter/Netflix

The mind behind one of Netflix’s most unsettling shows is back with a new series. Midnight Mass is a new seven-episode show from Mike Flanagan, perhaps best-known as the creator of The Haunting of Hill House and its follow-up The Haunting of Bly Manor. And while the new series — which stars the likes of Rahul Kohli, Zach Gilford, and Hamish Linklater — isn’t part of that anthology, the first trailer has some very similar, and creepy, vibes. Check it out above.

Here’s the basic premise, from Netflix:

Midnight Mass tells the tale of a small, isolated island community whose existing divisions are amplified by the return of a disgraced young man (Zach Gilford) and the arrival of a charismatic priest (Hamish Linklater). When Father Paul’s...

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Harley-Davidson’s custom electric chopper is up for auction, and I must have it

Serial 1, the electric bike company that spun out from Harley-Davidson last year, is making one-of-a-kind, custom-built e-bikes and auctioning them off online. The first one is the Schwinn Sting-Ray-inspired Mosh/Chopper, which the company describes as a “psychedelic, hand-painted banana seater,” and oh boy do I want it.

Unfortunately, my chances are slim to none. First of all, Serial 1 is only making, well, one of these. The Mosh/Chopper is the first product from the company’s new 1-OFF series, in which it’s custom designing, building, and releasing single-edition (i.e. runs of just one) e-bikes throughout the year and auctioning them off online.

I desperately want to put baseball cards in its spokes and attach streamers to the...

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Microsoft brings xCloud to Windows PCs with the Xbox app

Microsoft is bringing xCloud to Windows PCs through its Xbox app today. Xbox Insiders will be able to access a new updated Xbox app with Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) built in. Much like how xCloud works through the web, you’ll just need a compatible controller connected via Bluetooth or USB to access Xbox games from a Windows 10 PC.

The updated Xbox app will include a new “cloud games” section, with access to all of the same games available on xCloud on the web. “We’ve also added some new features to help you get started, including easy-to-access information on controller and network status, social features to stay connected with friends, and the ability to invite people – even those also playing on cloud without the game installed – to...

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Samsung billionaire heir Jay Y. Lee gets parole, will be released from prison Friday

Jay Y. Lee, head of Samsung will be released from prison August 13th | Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

Samsung vice chairman Lee Jae-yong —known in the West as Jay Y. Lee— will be released from prison Friday after South Korea’s justice ministry granted him parole, the Financial Times reported. The billionaire heir to the Samsung empire, Lee, 53, had served six months of a 30-month prison sentence for offering bribes to South Korea’s former president Park Geun-hye.

Lee was first sent to prison in 2017 in the succession scandal that led to Park’s removal. He was accused of offering payments and horses as bribes to a friend of the former president to try to garner support for his succession at Samsung. Lee served just one year of a five-year sentence before a retrial was ordered in 2019. He was ordered back to prison in January.

In December,...

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Vodafone latest UK carrier to reintroduce roaming charges in Europe after Brexit

Photo by Michael McNerney/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Vodafone has announced it will reintroduce roaming charges in Europe for UK mobile customers from January next year. It’s the latest UK carrier to reintroduce the fees after the country’s departure from the European Union, and it follows a similar U-turn from EE in June. All major carriers in the country previously said they had no plans to introduce roaming fees in Europe after the Brexit vote.

The fees will apply to any Vodafone customers who sign up to or change their contract from August 11th, 2021, with the fees applying from January 6th, 2022. Costs are dependent on the specific plan, but most customers will pay £2 ($2.77) a day to use their UK allowance of calls, texts, and data in Europe, or £1 a day if access is bought in eight-...

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Apple’s 2020 iPad Pro is $200 off at Best Buy today

The 2020 iPad Pro 12.9 | Photo by Brennan King / The Verge

If you’ve been waiting for a sale on last year’s iPad Pro now that the new models have been released, today is perhaps your day. Best Buy is taking $200 off all configurations of the 2020 iPad Pro, including both 11- and 12.9-inch sizes and cellular-equipped models. Not all of the configurations are in stock everywhere, but popular options like the 256GB Wi-Fi versions of the 11-inch and the 12.9-inch are available as of the time of publish.

The 2020 iPad Pro features Apple’s A12Z processor, a 120Hz display, quad speakers, and a dual rear camera system with lidar. It’s compatible with the second-generation Apple Pencil, Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, and Smart Keyboard folio for iPad Pro. Read our review here.

Best Buy also has a sale on...

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What to expect from Samsung’s August Unpacked event

Image: Evan Blass on Twitter

The next Galaxy Unpacked event is fast approaching on August 11th at 10AM ET / 7AM PT — but you might’ve already seen what Samsung has lined up, thanks to a copious amount of leaks.

Samsung is expected to announce new additions to its high-end line of folding Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip phones. Based on leaks, both the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 seem more like refinements to Samsung’s existing designs with the newest specs. The new Fold and Flip should come with new color options and, in the case of the Flip, a reworked outside screen and camera housing.

Now that Samsung and Google have revealed their smartwatch partnership with Wear OS 3, it seems like Samsung might also launch two of the first smartwatches to run it. Leaks seem to...

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Valve is working with AMD to make the Steam Deck Windows 11-ready

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Valve is aiming to make its Steam Deck handheld gaming PC ready for Windows 11. While we’ve known for weeks that the Steam Deck can run Windows, it wasn’t clear how well this would be supported by Valve, or whether an option for a Trusted Platform Modules (TPM) would be enabled to get Windows 11 on the Steam Deck.

Now, Valve has confirmed it has been heavily focused on Windows support. “There’s work looking at TPM just now,” says Greg Coomer, a Valve Steam Deck designer, in an interview with PC Gamer. “We’ve focused so much on Windows 10, so far, that we haven’t really gotten that far into it. Our expectation is that we can meet that.”

Valve is working with AMD to make sure that TPM is supported at a BIOS level, and that the Steam Deck...

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Apple pushes back against child abuse scanning concerns in new FAQ

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In a new FAQ, Apple has attempted to assuage concerns that its new anti-child abuse measures could be turned into surveillance tools by authoritarian governments. “Let us be clear, this technology is limited to detecting CSAM [child sexual abuse material] stored in iCloud and we will not accede to any government’s request to expand it,” the company writes.

Apple’s new tools, announced last Thursday, include two features designed to protect children. One, called “communication safety,” uses on-device machine learning to identify and blur sexually explicit images received by children in the Messages app, and can notify a parent if a child age 12 and younger decides to view or send such an image. The second is designed to detect known CSAM...

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SteamVR beta lets you arrange desktop windows inside your virtual world

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

As of its latest beta release, Valve’s SteamVR software can add floating desktop windows inside VR games, letting you keep an eye on other apps without leaving VR. It’s a helpful addition, allowing players to keep an eye on anything from Discord, to a Twitch chat, or Netflix during a lower-intensity game. Road to VR suggests you could even watch YouTube during longer flights in Elite Dangerous.

The ability to interact with the rest of your desktop from within SteamVR’s dashboard is not a new feature, but recently Valve has been making the system more flexible. Earlier this year it added the option to view individual application windows in the dashboard, and to be virtually attached to VR controllers ingame. This made apps viewable at a...

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New report reveals how the climate crisis is supercharging extreme weather

A home is surrounded by floodwater after torrential rains pounded Southeast Texas following Hurricane and Tropical Storm Harvey on August 31, 2017 near Orange, Texas. Researchers later determined that climate change supercharged the storm, and was was responsible for up to $67 billion of the $90 billion in damage caused by Harvey. | Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

We now have the clearest picture yet of how different the world is today as a result of human-driven climate change. The most comprehensive report to date on the physical science of climate change was published today by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Extreme events — from floods to heatwaves and droughts — have gotten worse, it says in a nutshell. And scientists are even more certain than they were before that humans’ greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide and methane (which makes up a majority of “natural gas”), are to blame.

“It is indisputable that human activities are causing climate change.”

“We’ve known for decades that the world is warming, but this report tells us that recent...

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New trailers: Venom: Let There be Carnage, Y: The Last Man, The Great, and more

Woody Harrelson and Tom Hardy star in Venom: Let There Be Carnage | Sony

So in addition to watching Ted Lasso, missing _Loki_on Wednesdays, and keeping my Paramount Plus subscription current so I can watch the extremely underappreciated show The Good Fight, I’m still slogging through _Manifest._I’m halfway through Season 2,and the plot has become weirdly elaborate and yet the show remains so cheesy that I must see how things end up. Of course, we’re awaiting word from Netflix about whether there will be any seasons past the show’s third, but recent developments look promising.

On to the latest trailers:

Y: The Last Man

The very long-awaited show based on the comic book series of the same name by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra is finally arriving. Every mammal in the world with a Y chromosome is suddenly...

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Tesla will reportedly require workers at its Nevada battery factory to wear masks

Tesla will reportedly require masks as its Nevada plant | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

All Tesla workers at the company’s battery factory in Reno, Nevada will be required to wear masks indoors beginning Monday, _The Wall Street Journal_reported. The plant already required workers unvaccinated against COVID-19 to wear masks indoors, but the new rule includes vaccinated workers as well.

According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, Nevada has seen more than 26,000 new COVID infections in the past month, and 298 deaths. The center estimates that nearly 47 percent of the state’s population has been vaccinated.

At the beginning of the pandemic last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk pushed back against COVID restrictions, including stay-at-home orders in Alameda County, California, where its Fremont plant is located. While...

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Tesla Cybertruck production delayed to 2022

Tesla Cybertruck production delayed to 2022 | Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge

Production on Tesla’s Cybertruck, the automaker’s first electric pickup truck, has been delayed until 2022 according to its order page on the company’s website. First reported by Electrek, under the “due today” section of the Cybertruck’s order page it now reads “you will be able to complete your configuration as production nears in 2022.” This appears to apply to the single- dual- and tri-motor versions of the vehicle.

The configuration page for Tesla’s Cybertruck as of August 8th, 2021.

The delay isn’t a huge surprise to those who have been following Cybertruck news closely. When Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled it in 2019, the plan called for the first Cybertrucks to roll off the assembly line in late 2021. In January...

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