Supercell’s next game is all about co-operation

Supercell, the Finnish developer best-known for mobile hits like Clash of Clans and Brawl Stars, announced its next game today — and it looks to be a big departure. Called Everdale, it’s described as “a peaceful building game based on cooperation and friendship.” There are plenty of mobile games about building towns or villages, but Everdale’s hook is that you’ll do that alongside other players.

Here’s the basic set-up:

Your village is actually part of a larger valley, where you and nine other players work together to build a big, wondrous utopia. In the valley, you’ll meet an eclectic cast of characters, make handcrafted goods, and trade with merchants from far off lands. More still, you can jump into local adventures, and level up your...

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OnePlus Buds Pro review: these earbuds get a lot of things right

The company’s most refined earbuds yet

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The farmers market is moving online

Illustration by Claudia Chinyere Akole

The pandemic brought rampant growth for local food distribution platforms

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This tiny Simpsons TV lets you watch tiny Simpsons TV

A DIY Simpsons TV that plays 11 seasons of episodes. | Image buba447

Reddit user buba447 has created an iconic _Simpsons_TV with working dials that plays episodes of the long-running animated sitcom whenever it’s turned on.

The palm-sized TV was designed in Fusion 360 and printed using an Ender-3 Pro from Creality, according to its creator. Inside you’ll find a tiny Raspberry Pi Zero running Jessie Lite connected to the 640x480 display. The top dial turns on the TV (actually, just the display and speaker) while the lower dial adjusts the volume. Its 32GB SD Card is loaded with 11 seasons of compressed episodes that play in random order. The whole thing is powered by a USB port with a cable running out the back.

I designed and printed a working Simpsons TV. Plays the first 11 seasons at random...

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Sony’s new PS5 model is lighter and doesn’t need a screwdriver

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Sony has quietly launched a revised PS5 model in Australia. Press Start, an Australian-based gaming site, reports that the revised PS5 models include a new screw for the base stand that no longer requires a screwdriver. Sony reportedly swapped in a new screw with a grip around the top so it can be easily adjusted by hand.

Press Start also reports that these updated PS5 models are around 300 grams (0.6 pounds) lighter than the original, but it’s not clear what Sony has removed or changed to bring the weight down. The new PS5s ship with a CFI-1102A model number, instead of the CFI-1000 found on the original.

Image: Press-start

The updated PS5 stand screw.

Australia appears to be the first country to take stock of...

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Higher-end Mac Mini reportedly landing ‘in the next several months’

The port configuration on the current M1 Mac Mini. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Apple is planning a new model of the Mac Mini that will replace the pro-focused Intel-based model it still sells, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter. A “high-end, M1X Mac Mini” is expected “in the next several months,” and is said to have “an updated design and more ports than the current model.”

Apple released a Mac Mini with its own M1 processor late last year, but that model was intended as a replacement for the entry-level machines, and consequently had fewer ports than the higher-end Intel version introduced in 2018. The M1 Mini has two fewer Thunderbolt ports, only one of which can be used for an external display, although a second monitor can still be hooked up over HDMI.

If the “M1X” nomenclature...

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New Trailers: Eternals, Foundation, The Hand of God, and more

Angelina Jolie stars in Eternals, coming to theaters November 5th. | Marvel

I think I have found the max number of streaming shows I can keep up with/commit to at once and that number is three and a half. I just added Manifest back into the rotation because Netflix dropped season three and The White Lotus ended. Good timing, thanks, streaming channels! A few quick recaps of the past week’s shows:

The White Lotus finale. While the theme song will forever haunt me, this deeply unsettling show remained unsettling to the very end. I didn’t love it but I can’t stop thinking about it, so figure that out for me. Kathryn VanArendonk has an interesting interview in Vulture with WL creator Mike White who says he accepts the criticism of the show.

Ted Lasso episode 5 (official title: Rainbow): If it makes me a sap, fine,...

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Go read this story about Ehtesab, a crisis alert app giving Afghans on-the-ground news

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

As conditions in Afghanistan continue to deteriorate and the Taliban gain control of its major cities, it’s been a challenge for its citizens to get accurate information about what’s happening from moment to moment. Rest of World tells the story of Kabul-based startup Ehtesab, which relies on crowdsourced reports from vetted users to track everything from electricity outages to bombings to traffic jams, and feeds the information to its app, which then sends out push notifications.

Ehtesab means “accountability” in Dari and Pashto, and the app, formally launched in March 2020, offers streamlined security-related information, including general security updates in Kabul to its users. With real-time, crowdsourced alerts, users across the...

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US orders six commercial airlines to provide planes to transport Afghans and Americans in Middle East

American Airlines is one of six commercial airlines ordered to assist with evacuations from Afghanistan | Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III on Sunday activated stage 1 of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF), ordering six commercial airlines to provide passenger planes to help evacuate people from US military bases in the Middle East, the Department of Defense said in a news release.

The planes won’t fly in or out of the Kabul airport in Afghanistan, but will help transport Afghans and US citizens who have arrived at bases in Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The plan calls for 18 planes total; four from United Airlines, three each from American Airlines, Atlas Air, Delta Airlines, and Omni Air, and two from Hawaiian Airlines. The DoD said in the release it doesn’t expect the CRAF activation to have a major impact on...

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Facebook releases shelved content transparency report after criticism it wasn’t being transparent

Facebook has released a content transparency report it initially withheld | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Facebook released a report (.pdf) late Saturday about its most-viewed posts in the first quarter of 2021 that it had initially shelved reportedly because it made the company look bad.

As first reported by the New York Times, which obtained a copy of the Q1 report before Facebook released it, the most-viewed link on Facebook between January and March of this year was a since-updated news story that suggested a Florida doctor’s death may be linked to the COVID-19 vaccine.

Facebook policy communications manager Andy Stone tweeted Saturday that the criticism Facebook received for not releasing the report “wasn’t unfair,” but tried to unpack the complexities of how it handled that most-viewed link:

“News outlets wrote about the south...

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CEO of Saygus smartphone company that never released a phone charged with fraud

This is the Saygus V2, which authorities say was never released.

A Utah man who touted a revolutionary new smartphone for several years but failed to produce one, has been charged by the US Attorney’s office in Utah with securities fraud. a new filing shows. Chad Leon Sayers solicited approximately 300 investors to invest $10 million in Saygus, promising “imminent billion-dollar success,” according to the Justice Department.

Instead of using the funds he raised to create the promised smartphone, he paid personal expenses and debts, and paid older investors with funds he raised from newer ones, which the US Attorney’s office in Utah called “Ponzi-like.” Sayers allegedly spent $2.17 million of the money raised on office rent, about $800,000 of the funds to settle other lawsuits, $500,000 on legal fees,...

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Samsung Pay wallet now lets you store a digital version of a COVID-19 vaccination card

Samsung now lets you store your vaccine card in Samsung Pay | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Samsung devices that support Samsung Pay can now store digital versions of users’ COVID-19 vaccination cards, through a partnership with healthcare nonprofit The Commons Project, the smartphone company announced.

Users have to first download the free CommonHealth app from the Google Play store, and follow the instructions to access their COVID-19 vaccine record, from participating pharmacies, health systems, and health providers (not all providers are connected to the system yet). Once the user has access to their COVID-19 credential within the CommonHealth app, they can add it to their Samsung Pay wallet. The Covid-19 Vaccine Pass will then be available on the Samsung Pay app home page.

Samsung

Samsung Pay lets...

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Go read this story of why Aaliyah’s ‘One in a Million’ album took 20 years to come to streaming

Aaliyah attends the 2000 MTV Movie Awards | Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage

The 1996 album “One in a Million,” by Aaliyah finally came to streaming platforms on Friday, almost 20 years after the singer’s death in a 2001 plane crash. A huge star in the 1990s and early 2000s, much of Aaliyah’s music has been missing from streaming platforms for the past two decades. As Billboard magazine reported in a lengthy feature earlier this month, Aaliyah’s uncle, music producer Barry Hankerson, and her estate, controlled by her mother Diane Haughton and brother Rashad Haughton, have been at odds for years.

According to_Billboard,_ Hankerson has made a distribution deal to release the entire catalog of Blackground Records— which includes Aaliyah’s music as well as recordings from other artists including Timbaland & Magoo,...

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China passes new privacy law aimed at protecting users’ personal data

China has passed a user data privacy law | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

China has passed a new privacy law aimed at protecting users’ personal data, state media reported. The new law comes as Chinese tech firms have come under renewed scrutiny in the country, and sets rules around how companies handle users’ information. The law takes effect on November 1st.

The law—formally called the Personal Information Protection Law— was passed by China’s legislature on Friday, Reuters reported, and calls for companies to get users’ consent before collecting personal data, and has rules for how companies should ensure users’ data is protected when it’s transferred outside of China. Tech companies that handle personal information must have a designated person tasked with overseeing its protection, and companies must...

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Clubhouse removed personal info from users’ accounts in Afghanistan as a safety measure

Clubhouse has removed some info from users in Afghanistan as a safety measure | Clubhouse

Social audio app Clubhouse has joined other social platforms in taking steps to protect the privacy and safety of its users in Afghanistan. Earlier this week, the platform reset tens of thousands of its Afghan users’ bios and photos, and made their accounts more difficult to discover in search. A spokesperson for Clubhouse said the actions didn’t affect the users’ followers, and all of the changes can be reversed if a user prefers.

A message form @Clubhouse to #Afghanistan’s users. pic.twitter.com/CpS4iz0L1J

— Zaki Daryabi (@ZDaryabi) August 19, 2021

Clubhouse has also been reminding its Afghan users that it does allow pseudonyms for human rights or safety purposes. The company consulted with free expression and violent extremism...

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Judge rules California Prop 22 gig workers law is unconstitutional

Drivers held a protest against Prop 22 in October. The measure passed in November, however. | Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images

California’s gig workers law, which allows companies like Uber and Lyft to treat workers as independent contractors— not employees— has been ruled unconstitutional and unenforceable by a judge. Voters approved the law as ballot initiative Proposition 22 in November, with companies like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash spending more than $200 million to campaign for the measure. Labor organizations, including the Service Employees International Union, opposed it.

California Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch ruled Friday that the law illegally “limits the power of a future legislature to define app-based drivers as workers subject to workers’ compensation law,” adding that “The entirety of Proposition 22 is unenforceable.” He also ruled that it was...

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The Apple Watch Series 6 is $75 off at Amazon and Walmart today

This weekend, it’s not just the red Apple Watch Series 6 getting a discount. | Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

The red Apple Watch Series 6 has already seen an array of big discounts, but you don’t always get nice pricing on the more subtle colorways. Amazon and Walmart are both currently offering $75 off the handsome navy-colored watch, as well as the white model, bringing them down to $325. Walmart also has a few more colors available at the same price, and both offer the red at an additional $6 markdown. In addition to a myriad of fun colors, Apple’s latest and greatest wearable also offers built-in sleep tracking, a blood oxygen sensor, and an always-on display. Read our review.

Amazon and Google may be paving the way toward a smarter home, but not every device under the sun touts smart capabilities yet. Luckily, there are devices like...

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Peloton’s app indicates a rowing machine may finally be coming

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Peloton’s rumored rowing machine may finally be on the way, according to text that 9to5Google discovered in the Peloton Android app. When looking through the app’s code, _9to5_discovered references to the rowing machine we’ve been hearing about for the past couple of years — including instructions on how to do a rowing stroke, as well as language suggesting Peloton will offer real-world water scenery that people could view on a screen while rowing.

Bloombergwrote about plans for a Peloton rower nearly two and a half years ago. More recently, there have been job listings mentioning a rower, and Peloton’s CEO has made multiple comments about rowers and rowing. If information about the rower is starting to show up in the app’s code,...

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Google has already discontinued the Pixel 5

The Pixel 5 (top) and 4A 5G (bottom) will likely sell out soon. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Amidst the news of a new Pixel phone this week, Google quietly indicated that it’s the end of the road for two other Pixel devices: the Pixel 4A 5G and the Pixel 5. Both are currently listed on Google’s online store as sold out, and remaining stock at other retailers likely won’t last long. A company spokesperson offered the following statement:

With our current forecasts, we expect Google Store in the U.S. to sell out of Pixel 4a (5G) and Pixel 5 in the coming weeks following the launch of Pixel 5a (5G). These products will continue to be available through some partners while supplies last.

It’s not too surprising that the 4A 5G being discontinued given that the 5A 5G looks to be a fairly direct successor. However, it is a little...

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Facebook suppressed report that made it look bad

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

On Wednesday, Facebook released a report about what content was most viewed by people in the US last quarter. It was the first time it had released such a report. But according to The New York Times, Facebook was working on a similar report for the first quarter of 2021 that it opted not to share because it might have reflected poorly on the company.

The New York Times, which obtained a copy of the report, says that the most-viewed link in the first quarter had a headline that could promote COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, which has been an issue on the social media platform. The headline read, “A ‘healthy’ doctor died two weeks after getting a COVID-19 vaccine; CDC is investigating why.” The article was published by The South Florida Sun...

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OnlyFans shares its new policy banning sexually explicit content

Image: Alex Castro / The Verge

On Thursday the video and image sharing site OnlyFans announced plans to ban “sexually-explicit content” starting October 1st. While we’re still not sure exactly why it’s changing so drastically, it just sent out an updated Terms of Service policy to the creators who’ve built the site detailing exactly what won’t be allowed going forward.

Comparing the new OnlyFans Acceptable Use Policy to the old one makes the additions clear:

Do not upload, post, display, or publish Content on OnlyFans that:

• Shows, promotes, advertises or refers to “sexually explicit conduct”, which means:
• actual or simulated sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, between persons of any sex;
• actual or simulated...

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NASA’s Perseverance to attempt second Mars soil scoop, hoping rocks don’t ‘crumble’

A photo showing the hole drilled during Perseverance’s first sample collection attempt, that left the rover’s sample tube empty. | NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Mars rover, Perseverance, is getting ready for another attempt, in the coming weeks, to scoop up Martian rocks after its first attempt earlier this month didn’t play out as engineers expected. The rover’s sample-caching arm worked, engineers say, but the sampling tube turned up empty.

Now the rover, a science lab on wheels that landed on Mars in February, will drive to a new location called Citadelle for a second shot at picking up its first rock sample. This time, to make sure a sample is actually collected, engineers will wait for images of the sample tube to come back before it gets processed and stowed inside the rover’s belly.

‘No sample? What do you mean no sample?’

“We were just super excited that the hardware worked from...

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Go read this story on the tiny details that make game development so hard

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

While many video games might feel nearly effortless to play, letting you make impossible jumps, drive cars at breakneck speeds, cast magic out of thin air, and so much more, actually making those games is a superhuman feat of its own. Just one game often requires the efforts of a huge team laboriously crafting every minute detail, and very little of it that comes easy, as detailed by numerous developers who spoke to IGN’s Rebekah Valentine in this article that you should read.

Valentine’s article has a lot of fascinating stories from developers answering this question: “What is a thing in video games that seems simple but is actually extremely hard for game developers to make?”

Take elevators, for example, which, in a video game, aren’t...

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GM recalls all Chevy Bolts for fire risk

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

General Motors is expanding its recall of the Chevy Bolt to include all models — including the two new versions released earlier this year — after multiple fires in the electric vehicle’s battery packs caused by defects in the LG Chem cells found inside.

GM is warning owners not to charge their Bolts in or near their homes overnight, and to park the vehicles outside when not being charged. It’s also asking owners not to charge their Bolts above 90 percent, or to deplete the battery to below 70 miles of remaining range.

Owners should follow these guidelines until replacement modules — the groups of batteries that make up the pack — are ready. It’s not clear when that will be, though. GM says it will “only begin replacing battery modules...

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Jeff Bezos reportedly used his unlimited wealth to put an ice cream machine in his house

Photo by Pradeep Gaur/Mint via Getty Images

We’ve made suggestions to Jeff Bezos about what he could do with his hundreds of billions of dollars before, and we’re certainly not the only ones to do so — but it seems like we’ve all been thinking small. While the public has been calling on Bezos to end world hunger or buy vaccines for almost two-thirds of the planet’s population, Bezos has been able to live out every child’s wildest dream by putting a soft-serve ice cream tap in his house, according to ice cream machine maker CVT Soft Serve.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by CVT Soft Serve (@cvtsoftserve)

The “What The Actual. Fuck? !?” part of CVT’s caption seems to express surprise that the billionaire would do this, but I’m honestly...

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Amazon is using a custom logging device to track the trucks moving its freight

Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Amazon has developed electronic tracking technology for the trucks used by its partners to monitor their movement and hopefully improve driver safety, according to The Information. Electronic logging devices (ELDs) are federally required to prevent fatigue-related accidents on trucks, but now it seems Amazon will offer its partners a custom ELD offering, possibly giving Amazon direct access to a lot more data from a tool it maintains itself.

Amazon’s Relay ELD — named after the company’s Relay platform for booking delivery jobs — works by plugging hardware into the diagnostics port of trucks to directly digest information from the engine, _The Information_writes. It then communicates that data over Bluetooth to be logged in an...

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How to install the Android 12 public beta

Photo composite by Amelia Holowaty Krales and Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Android 12’s public beta is now available, following Google’s deep dive into the new software at Google I/O 2021. My colleague Dieter Bohn got an exclusive in-depth look at the new Material You design language, as well as everything else that’s new. And good news: if you’ve got an eligible device, you can try it out right now, and that’s what I’m going to walk you through.

What’s great is that you don’t have to go through the tricky, fail-prone task of flashing your phone. Instead, you can easily enroll it to receive the update with a few clicks from your desktop or mobile browser, and in just a few minutes, you’ll be ready to install it on your phone.

When you set up the Android 12 beta on your device, you’ll be set to receive all...

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‘Nvidia controlling Arm could create real problems,’ UK regulator concludes

Remember when Nvidia’s CEO warned yesterday that buying Arm might take “longer than initially thought,” but that it was no big deal and “not one particular delay”? It sure sounds like a big deal as of today: on Friday, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has recommended a Phase 2 investigation, because it’s worried that Nvidia would be incentivized to stifle innovation.

“We’re concerned that NVIDIA controlling Arm could create real problems for NVIDIA’s rivals by limiting their access to key technologies, and ultimately stifling innovation across a number of important and growing markets. This could end up with consumers missing out on new products, or prices going up,” writes CMA chief executive Andrea Coscelli, in a press...

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How to take advantage of Android 12’s new privacy options

Privacy is probably one of the biggest buzzwords in tech these days, and even the data-loving Google is getting in on the action.

The Android 12 update boasts a handful of privacy-related additions you’d be wise to explore. (The software is currently at the tail end of its beta phase and expected to launch any week now.) Some of them are under the hood and automatic — such as the new Private Compute Core that’ll allow certain types of sensitive computing to happen in an isolated environment, entirely on your device. But others are more on the surface. And that means it’s up to you to take advantage of them — or at least understand what they’re doing.

Here are the three most significant privacy-related additions in Android 12 and what you...

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You won’t be able to play Halo Infinite co-op or edit multiplayer maps at launch

A screenshot from_Halo Infinite._ | Image: Microsoft

Halo Infinite is set to release this holiday season, but at launch, you won’t be able to play the campaign mode cooperatively with your friends or edit multiplayer levels in Forge mode, developer 343 Industries announced Friday.

“When we looked at these two experiences — campaign co-op and Forge — we made the determination [that] they’re just not ready,” Joseph Staten, head of creative on Halo Infinite, said in a video. “So we’re going to keep campaign co-op and Forge in the oven for a little bit longer. When they’re ready, we’re going to release them as part of our seasonal roadmap next year.”

Campaign co-op is targeted for season two while Forge is set for season three

343 Industries is targeting shipping campaign co-op in season two...

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