A national alert test will buzz US TVs, radios, and any phones that opt-in at 2:20PM ET

Test Wireless Emergency Alert message | Image: FEMA

At approximately 2:20PM ET, FEMA will conduct a test of both the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) covering radio, TV broadcasts, and mobile devices in the US, but you might not see it on your phone. That’s because this time around, unlike the Presidential Alert test in 2018, it will only reach phones with a setting to receive test messages and by default, most phones are set to opt-out.

According to this document (PDF) from the FCC, on Android phones, there should be a Wireless Emergency Alerts section in your settings menu with an option for “State/Local Test alerts” that you can turn on or off. The process described for iOS is more complicated, but Apple’s support page explains how you can opt-in:

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Nuro will spend $40 million to build a factory and test track for its robotic delivery cars

Image: Nuro

Nuro is building two new facilities in Nevada for its autonomous delivery robots. The first is an end-of-line manufacturing facility, where it hopes to soon begin cranking out its large toaster-shaped vehicles at scale. And the second is a closed-course test track, where it will validate its bots before sending them out in to the wild. The company says it will spend $40 million to construct the facilities, both of which will be located in southern Nevada.

Nuro, which was founded by ex-Google engineers in 2018, has been testing its driverless grocery delivery service in Arizona and Texas for months now, and hopes to begin ramping up a more official commercial service in several states next year. The company was recently approved to begin...

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How to preorder the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

As expected, Samsung took the wraps off the Galaxy Watch 4 and the aptly titled Galaxy Watch 4 Classic during its Galaxy Unpacked event this morning, confirming recent leaks and introducing the first two devices built on Google and Samsung’s co-developed smartwatch platform, Wear OS 3. Both watches also sport Samsung’s new Exynos W920 processor, 1.5GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and come with a host of health-related features thanks to the inclusion of Samsung’s 3-in-1 BioActive sensor.

Although neither model is set to arrive until August 27th, both are available for preorder starting today at varying price points.

How to preorder the Galaxy Watch 4

The Galaxy Watch 4 is essentially the next iteration of the Galaxy Watch Active 2. The...

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Android 12 Beta 4 promotes order over chaos

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

Google released the first public beta for Android 12 during its I/O event in the spring, and now Beta 4 is rolling out to compatible devices. Instead of a few previously unseen features like earlier beta releases, this version moves things into the “platform stability” section of the timeline.

Android 12 beta release schedule

For users trying to dive into the next version of Android as soon as possible, this means things are stabilizing as development proceeds toward a release candidate. The people this release is really important for are Android developers, who can test their apps for compatibility now that the APIs, features, and layout have been locked down. With Google introducing the biggest system redesign in...

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Google Pay and Messages updates are coming to existing Wear OS watches

Google Pay on Wear OS. | Image: Google

Today’s smartwatch news has been dominated by Samsung’s new Wear OS 3-powered wearables, but Google wants you to know it hasn’t forgotten about smartwatches running Wear OS 2. Updates to Google Pay, Messages, and other third-party apps will be coming to current devices in addition to Wear OS 3, giving existing owners something to look forward to as they roll out over the coming weeks.

For starters, Google Pay’s support for contactless payments from smartwatches is expanding to 16 new countries: Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Slovakia, Sweden, Taiwan, Ukraine, and United Arab Emirates. It’s previously been possible to use Google Pay from smartphones in these...

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Tetris Effect: Connected is finally coming to the Switch in October

Image: Enhance Games

The greatest Tetris game of the last decade is finally coming to the Switch. As a part of today’s Indie World Showcase, Nintendo announced that Tetris Effect: Connected will arrive on the Switch October 8th.

Coming off its timed exclusivity period with Xbox and Xbox Game Pass, Tetris Effect: Connected_is the multiplayer expansion of 2018’s Tetris Effect._Designed by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the creator behind the trippy musical shooter Rez, Tetris Effect combined speedy block stacking with slick and impossibly pretty visuals and sounds. In Tetris Effect, classic Tetris gameplay remained unchanged. Players still dropped various shaped blocks into brain-pleasing configurations, clearing rows as stacks of blocks slowly piled up. But Tetris Effect...

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Instagram will let you limit DMs and comments from people who don’t follow you

Instagram

Instagram has been in the news this summer after Black soccer stars in England were bombarded with racist messages following their team’s Euro 2020 final loss. Today, the company’s trying to prevent some of that behavior from happening again with the introduction and expansion of three safety features.

Among them is something called “limits.” Turning this on prevents anyone who doesn’t follow you, or who recently followed you, from commenting or sending a DM. The feature is available to everyone globally today, and Instagram points out that it’ll likely be most useful to businesses and creators who expect a flurry of responses. Of course, turning comments or DMs off entirely would also work, but Instagram says this is a solution for...

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Kidney transplant patients will test a COVID-19 booster shot in new trial

The National Institutes of Health is giving a boosterdose to 200 kidney transplant patients who did not have an immune response to the COVID-19 vaccine in a new trial that launched yesterday.

Many transplant patients, who have to take immunosuppressant drugs to keep their bodies from rejecting a new organ, don’t produce enough antibodies — or don’t produce antibodies at all — after getting the COVID-19 vaccine. The study will check to see if a third shot of an mRNA vaccine, given on top of the normal two-shot regimen, will generate antibodies closer to the levels seen in healthy people.

There are some indications that a third dose might help some people. In France, health officials started recommending in April that immunosuppressed...

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Axiom Verge 2, Boyfriend Dungeon, and more are out on the Switch today

Boyfriend Dungeon.

Nintendo’s most recent Indie World Showcase was full of lots of cool games, as per usual. But the best part is that many of them are out today.

That includes Axiom Verge 2 (a sequel to a Metroid-like adventure from 2015), Boyfriend Dungeon (a hack-and-slash game where you can romance your weapons), Necrobarista: Final Pour (the director’s cut of a visual novel about coffee and death), Islanders (a procedurally generated strategy game where players build island communities), Slime Rancher (where players run an alien ranch), Curious Expedition 2 (described as “a turn-based narrative roguelike set in a reimagined version of the late 19th century”), and Garden Story (a Zelda-like action-adventure game where you play as an adorable grape).

O...

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The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Flip 3: all the rumors, news, and announcements

Image: Evan Blass / Twitter (tweet now deleted)

Here’s everything Samsung might unpack (and unfold) on August 11th

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Google is adding an interactive periodic table to search

Google search now has an interactive periodic table you can check out to learn a lot more about the elements. You can find it by searching for “periodic table” and clicking the “explore elements” button on the right side of the page or by navigating to it directly right here.

I wasn’t the best chemistry student growing up, but I’ve had a lot of fun clicking on different elements and learning about things like an element’s atomic mass, melting point, and seeing a 3D model of each element, which I find particularly cool. Each element that I’ve clicked on also includes a short fact — like that thallium was used as the murder agent in an Agatha Christie novel, apparently

The periodic table is being announced alongside a few...

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How to preorder the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

It’s official: Samsung’s Galaxy Buds Plus are now considered last-gen. During today’s Galaxy Unpacked event, the company announced their long-rumored successor, the Galaxy Buds 2, a new set of true wireless earbuds that look to refine Samsung’s recent formula instead of reinvent it.

In terms of design, they’re not drastically different from the Galaxy Buds Plus. Each earbud is lighter and features a more rounded exterior. The Galaxy Buds 2 will also be available in four distinct colors (dark gray, green, purple, and white), and each earbud features a three-point microphone, active noise cancellation, and three sizes of silicone ear tips. Like Google’s Pixel Buds A-series, they also come paired with a wireless charging case, one that...

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Apple settles lawsuit against security startup Corellium

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple has settled its copyright lawsuit against Corellium, a company that sells virtual iPhone environments for security testing. Apple and Corellium agreed to a last-minute settlement yesterday, just days before a trial scheduled for August 16th. The terms of the settlement are confidential, but Corellium confirmed to The Washington Post that it would continue to offer virtual iOS systems.

Apple sued Corellium in 2019, claiming the company infringed on its iOS copyrights, and expanded the case with more allegations in 2020. A judge dismissed the copyright infringement claims later that year, saying Corellium’s product had a strong fair use case. But the judge let Apple move forward with claims that Corellium violated the Digital...

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The 5 biggest announcements from Samsung’s August Unpacked event

Image: Samsung

Samsung has finished up its Galaxy Unpacked event, where it announced the next generation of its foldables (it called them the new mainstream of smartphones), wearables, and earbuds. Here are the biggest pieces of news from the event.

Image: Samsung

Samsung is proud ofits improved durability.

The Galaxy Z Fold 3 has dual 120Hz displays and a stylus

Samsung’s flagship foldable has some new tricks up its sleeve, including support for the S Pen, IPX8 water resistance, and an under-display selfie camera for the main screen. It is powered by a Snapdragon 888 processor, and its cover screen (the screen on the front of the device) now runs at an adaptive 120Hz.

The Z Fold 3 is also getting an experimental setting...

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How Samsung beefed up its new folding phones: metal, tape, and a dab of goo

The hinge and sweeper brushes on a Galaxy Z Fold 3. | Image: Samsung

Are the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 strong enough for everybody?

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Facebook is rebuilding its ads to know a lot less about you

Illustration by Alex Castro

Facebook’s massive business was built on its ability to track users across the internet. But now, thanks to looming regulation and other moves to restrict such data collection, that is changing. Hundreds of engineers are rebuilding how Facebook’s ads work to place more value on user privacy, according to Graham Mudd, a top ad executive at the company.

The moves by Facebook, which are still in their infancy, illustrate how the ad-supported internet economy is in the process of being fundamentally reshaped. Along with Google, Facebook is examining several privacy-enhancing techniques to deliver personalized ads without knowing anything about the specific individuals who view them. That’s an about-face from how ad targeting has worked...

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Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 review: nailing the basics with style

When the entry-level earbuds are this good, why go Pro?

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WhatsApp to allow chat history transfers between iOS and Android

The transfer process. | Image: WhatsApp

WhatsApp is adding the ability to bring your chat history with you when you switch from iOS to Android — including all voice notes, photos, and conversations. The long-rumored feature was announced during Samsung’s launch event today and will initially cover transfers from iOS to the company’s new Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 and other Samsung phones “in the coming weeks.” Eventually, the feature will cover all transfers between iOS and Android phones, though it’s unclear when it’ll be available for all devices.

The new feature should help address one of WhatsApp’s most frustrating elements, which is that it’s never been officially possible to transfer your chat history between mobile operating systems. If you choose to use WhatsApp’s cloud...

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A hacker stole over $600 million of crypto coins — now they might be giving it back

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

It’s estimated that over $600 million worth of cryptocurrency has been stolen as the result of a hack on a protocol called the Poly Network. And now, whoever stole it seems to be in the process of returning it, according to CNBC and Chainalysis. According to Bloomberg, it’s quite possibly one of the largest hacks in the decentralized finance, or DeFi, space.

The Poly Network is a protocol that lets people transfer cryptocurrencies between blockchains. And because of that role as a bridge, the stolen assets come in the form of hundreds of different typesof tokens — from Ethereum to Binance’s BNB to Dogecoin.

The Poly Network cites the massive amount of money stolen in a message to the hacker, which it posted on Twitter. The message...

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Start11 brings a classic Start menu back to Windows 11

Start11 includes an old style of the Windows Start menu. | Image: Stardock

Stardock is back again with another app to skin the appearance of the Windows Start menu. This time, it’s for Windows 11, which hasn’t even been fully released yet. Start11 is available as a beta, and it brings back the classic appearance of the Windows Start menu inside Windows 11.

“This first beta is designed to regain some of the lost functionality in the current Windows 11 Start menu,” says Brad Wardell, Stardock CEO. “We have a lot of exciting new features planned to make the Start menu not just more accessible but also more useful to companies and power users.”

Image: Stardock

Start11’s Windows 7-style Start menu.

Image: Stardock

Start11’s modern Start menu with classic features.

...

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Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 announced with much bigger, more useful cover display

What a difference a usable secondary screen can make

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Samsung announces Galaxy Buds 2 with active noise cancellation

Image: Samsung

In addition to launching two new foldable phones and a pair of smartwatches, Samsung today announced its latest set of wireless earbuds. The Galaxy Buds 2 cost $149.99 and will replace the Galaxy Buds Plus in the company’s lineup. (It’s still possible to find remaining stock of the Buds Plus at some retailers, but they’ll be gone once that inventory runs dry.) Preorders start today in a range of colors that include dark gray, white, purple, and green, and the Buds 2 will be available on August 27th.

They’ve got a design that’s similar to the more expensive Galaxy Buds Pro, only smaller. In fact, Samsung says these are the smallest and lightest true wireless earbuds it has made yet. Also like the Buds Pro, the Buds 2 have two-way drivers...

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Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 announced with S Pen support and water resistance

The flagship foldable now has a 120Hz cover screen

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The Galaxy Watch 4 injects Samsung’s capable hardware with Google software

The Galaxy Watch 4 Classic, featuring a chunky rotating bezel. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Samsung and Google’s smartwatch collaboration is here

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Oversight board orders Facebook to restore post criticizing Myanmar coup

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Facebook Oversight Board has ordered Facebook to restore a post from a user in Myanmar criticizing the country’s new regime and its ties with China. The post was initially taken down for violating policies on racial hate speech against Chinese people, but the Oversight Board found the offending phrase was more appropriately viewed as political criticism of the Chinese government.

Issued on Wednesday morning, the decision turned on how Facebook moderators translated a specific Burmese word, rendered in the post as “$တရုတ်.” Facebook had translated the word as “fucking Chinese” and classified it as Tier 2 hate speech under the platform’s community standard. The user appealed the decision, describing the post as advice to elected...

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How to watch Samsung’s August 2021 Galaxy Unpacked Event

Samsunng

Samsung is holding its Galaxy Unpacked event today at 10AM ET / 7AM PT, where it’s expected to show off its next generation of folding phones. The foldable nature of the devices set to be announced today is strongly hinted at by the event’s teaser image, and we’ve seen plenty of leaks backing up the idea that Samsung will be announcing the Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip 3.

We’ve also seen leaks of the rumored Galaxy Watch 4, which could make an appearance at today’s event, featuring the new Samsung / Google smartwatch OS.

When does Samsung’s Unpacked event start?

The live stream is set to start at 10AM ET / 7AM PT today, August 11th (which is 11PM in Korea).

Where can I watch the Unpacked Event?

You can see things unfold at the top of this...

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Apple’s AirPods are on sale again for their lowest price to date

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple’s second-gen AirPods are more of a refinement than a revolution, but if you’ve been waiting for the price to come down before jumping on the AirPods bandwagon, now might be the best time to do so. Although they’re often discounted to just shy of $160, Apple’s iconic earbuds and their wireless charging case are now available at Amazon for $130, the steepest price cut we’ve seen on the in-ears to date.

The latest AirPods lack the noise cancellation and flexible design found on the AirPods Pro, however, they still manage to deliver satisfying sound quality and dependable battery life. Plus, they’re incredibly easy to use with both Apple and Android devices, even if you do lose the double-tap gestures and a bit of convenience with the...

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What If...? is a playful expansion of Marvel’s multiverse

Courtesy of Marvel Studios

Marvel’s _What If...?_is the first of its kind in a lot of ways for the MCU. It’s the first animated project in the interconnected web of movies and TV shows that Marvel Studios has been building out for the last decade.

Instead of focusing on a particular character or storyline, _What If...?_is an anthology series that explores different alternative universes and realities that spin off from Marvel’s established films and shows so far. And it works — after years of lore-heavy movies and shows, the animated show is a refreshing and fun break of bite-sized superhero shenanigans.

Light spoilers forWhat If...?,Loki, and the MCU follow

Courtesy of Marvel Studios

That flexibility was one of the most exciting things...

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Twitter is now obeying India’s new internet rules, government tells court

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter is now complying with the Indian government’s new internet rules, a lawyer representing the federal government has told a court in Delhi, Bloomberg reports. The social media company has now appointed a permanent employee to serve as both chief compliance officer and grievance officer, as well as a nodal officer — three roles required under the new legislation announced in February. Twitter said it appointed the executives earlier this month.

Although rivals Google and Facebook have reportedly been in compliance since May, Twitter has found itself in a tense standoff with the Indian government over the legislation. In June, the government warned Twitter of “unintended consequences” if it failed to obey the new rules, and the...

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Norton and Avast are merging into an $8 billion antivirus empire

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

NortonLifeLock and Avast are merging in a deal worth more than $8 billion. The deal will see NortonLifelock acquire all of Avast’s shares, and create a much larger cyber security firm. “With this combination, we can strengthen our cyber safety platform and make it available to more than 500 million users,” says Vincent Pilette, NortonLifeLock CEO. “We will also have the ability to further accelerate innovation to transform cyber safety.”

The combination should lead to antivirus products that include the benefits of Avast’s focus on privacy and NortonLifeLock’s experience in identity, all at a time when cyber security is critical for both consumers and businesses.

Ransomware is on the rise, with new high profile cases occurring on what...

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