Metroid Dread’s latest trailer shows off Samus’ new nemesis

Nintendo

Nintendo debuted a new trailer for Metroid Dread ahead of its October 8th launch on the Switch. Whereas the E3 2021 trailer was claustrophobic, featuring the E.M.M.I robots that will stalk you throughout the game, this one shows off bigger environments, as well as other enemy types and bosses that you’ll encounter along the way. Notably, Samus goes up against a gigantic living Chozo warrior, one that appears to share a lot in common with Samus in terms of its armor and arsenal. There’s also a boss that looks a bit like Kraid from Super Metroid.

Additionally, the trailer lets you get a glimpse of some new skills that Samus will pick up during the story. There are familiar ones, like the ability to do Samus’ signature screw attack, getting...

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How small developers compete with the defaults on your phone

Illustration by Claudia Chinyere Akole

There are built-in calculator, camera, and to-do apps — but small devs can make them better

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The most popular posts on Facebook are plagiarized

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Being original on Facebook doesn’t pay, according to its own data

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Elon Musk: ‘Bezos retired in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX’

Elon Musk has criticized fellow centibillionaire and space cowboy Jeff Bezos for filing lawsuits against the former’s aerospace company SpaceX.

Earlier this month, Bezos’ space firm Blue Origin sued NASA after it lost a critical government contract to put astronauts on the Moon to SpaceX. This has had the effect of delaying SpaceX’s own work on the project. And now, this week, Amazon has urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to dismiss newly-submitted plans by SpaceX to launch another cluster of satellites to power its satellite internet service Starlink.

Replying to a story about the latter complaint, Musk tweeted: “Turns out Besos [sic] retired in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX …”

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Microsoft Azure cloud vulnerability is the ‘worst you can imagine’

Another day, another major Microsoft vulnerability. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft has warned thousands of its Azure cloud computing customers, including many Fortune 500 companies, about a vulnerability that left their data completely exposed for the last two years.

A flaw in Microsoft’s Azure Cosmos DB database product left more than 3,300 Azure customers open to complete unrestricted access by attackers. The vulnerability was introduced in 2019 when Microsoft added a data visualization feature called Jupyter Notebook to Cosmos DB. The feature was turned on by default for all Cosmos DBs in February 2021.

A listing of Azure Cosmos DB clients includes companies like Coca Cola, Liberty Mutual Insurance, ExxonMobil, and Walgreens, to name just a few.

We were able to get access to any customer database that we...

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No More Heroes 3 is as stylish and shoddy as ever

I was having a good time with No More Heroes 3 until I somehow lost my save file. I don’t think it was the game’s fault, but unfortunately since it’s coming out today for the Nintendo Switch, I wasn’t able to finish it in time for a full review. I did get several hours into it, though, and it was already feeling like a worthy followup to the Wii original, which I was a big fan of back in 2007.

Developed by Grasshopper Manufacture, there wasn’t anything quite like the original No More Heroes, an action game that saw video game nerd protagonist Travis Touchdown climb the ranks of the world’s deadliest assassins through a series of increasingly ridiculous boss fights. The game also featured an open-world structure where you had to perform...

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Apple finally agrees to let app developers communicate with their customers

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

As part of a proposed agreement to resolve a class action lawsuit from US app developers, Apple says iOS developers will finally be able to contact their customers, with permission, using information collected inside their apps. The change will mark a major shift to the anti-steering policy that has been a significant point of contention between Apple and its critics for years.

“To give developers even more flexibility to reach their customers, Apple is also clarifying that developers can use communications, such as email, to share information about payment methods outside of their iOS app,” Apple said in its press release. “As always, developers will not pay Apple a commission on any purchases taking place outside of their app or the...

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Hacker claims responsibility for T-Mobile attack, bashes the carrier’s security

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A person claiming to be behind the T-Mobile data breach that exposed almost 50 million people’s info has come forward to reveal his identity and to criticize T-Mobile’s security, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. John Binns told the _WSJ_that he was behind the attack and provided evidence that he could access accounts associated with it, and he went into detail about how he was able to pull it off and why he did it.

According to Binns, he was able to get customer (and former customer) data from T-Mobile by scanning for unprotected routers. He found one, he told the_Journal_, which allowed him to access a Washington state data center that stored credentials for over 100 servers. He called the carrier’s security “awful” and...

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Palantir invested $25 million in Faraday Future

Data-mining firm Palantir invested $25 million in Faraday Future shortly before the electric vehicle startup became a publicly traded company in July, according to a previously unreported Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) document filed late last week.

In addition, Faraday Future signed a commercial contract to use Palantir’s software, according to one of Palantir’s most recent SEC filings. Neither company disclosed how much Faraday Future is paying, though Palantir’s filing notes the contract will last between four and six years. Representatives for both companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Palantir says its software is meant to serve as a “central operating system” for companies that need to sift...

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Pokémon TV app now available on Switch

Nintendo

The Switch still doesn’t have apps like Netflix or Twitch, but Nintendo decided to do us one better by announcing that Pokémon TV — the media app devoted to all things Pokémon — is now available on the console.

Pokémon TV is an app that Pokémon enthusiasts can use to watch episodes of the long-running cartoon series, videos offering tips and tricks to players, and competitive Pokémon broadcasts. The app launched in 2019 on mobile and smart TVs and is now available for free on Switch.

In addition to being able to watch episodes from all seven series of Pokémon shows free of charge, the Pokémon TV app is also launching a Junior category with programming geared toward younger players and fans.

Twenty-five years after its debut in Japan, P...

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Streamlabs launches monthly tipping service as an alternative to Twitch subscriptions

Image: Streamlabs

Streamlabs, the popular livestreaming software company owned by Logitech, is rolling out a “monthly tipping service” as an alternative way for streamers to earn money from their fans. Streamlabs Creator Subscriptions will offer streamers flexibility on what kinds of subscriptions they offer, and they will integrate directly into Streamlabs’ OBS software suite for streaming to Twitch, YouTube, or Facebook.

Using Streamlabs Creator Subscription seems about as simple as the company’s earlier donation tools or the tipping feature that already existed on the platform. Creators can enable or disable monthly tips in settings, along with setting specific subscription prices. There’s also the option to let a viewer tip whatever amount they want...

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You can stream Cruella for free on Disney Plus starting tomorrow

Disney

Disney Plus subscribers will finally be able to watch the Queen of Mean on the service at no additional cost beginning Friday.

The live-action origin story of Disney’s notorious Cruella de Vil will hit the service tomorrow after debuting simultaneously in theaters and on Disney’s Premier Access platform on May 28th. Premier Access releases typically run viewers an additional $30 on top of their monthly or yearly subscription costs to be able to access the film early. But Cruella will officially join the Disney Plus library beginning this week.

Emma Stone stars alongside a pack of sometimes real, sometimes CGI dogs in a spin on Disney’s animated One Hundred and One Dalmatians. This one, though, is set in 1970s London and sees Stone take...

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ULA stops selling its centerpiece Atlas V, setting path for the rocket’s retirement

Photo by Paul Hennessy / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images

United Launch Alliance won’t be selling any more of its workhorse Atlas V rockets, and it has stopped buying the launch vehicle’s Russian-made rocket engines for good, the company’s chief executive told _The Verge._ULA’s decision sets up the retirement of one of the US government’s most trusted launch vehicles and is expected to mark the end for Russia’s iconic — but controversial — RD-180 engine, an engineering marvel and a core source of revenue for Russia’s space program.

“We’re done. They’re all sold,” CEO Tory Bruno said of ULA’s Atlas V rockets in an interview. ULA, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, has 29 Atlas V missions left before it retires sometime in the mid-2020s and transitions to its upcoming Vulcan...

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Blizzard to change name of Overwatch’s McCree following sexual harassment lawsuit

The gunslinger character in_Overwatch._ | Image: Activision Blizzard

Blizzard says it plans to change the name of Overwatch’s gunslinger character following the explosive sexual harassment lawsuit brought against Activision Blizzard by the state of California. The character was originally named “McCree” after Jesse McCree, a former longtime Blizzard staffer who appears to be pictured in the so-called “Cosby Suite” reported on by Kotaku.

Blizzard hasn’t shared a new name for the character yet, and the studio will delay an in-game narrative arc where he played a “key part” due to the change. The company also committed to no longer naming in-game characters after real employees.

A message from the Overwatch team. pic.twitter.com/2W3AV7Pv6X

— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) August 26, 2021

Recently, some O...

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Overwatch League cancels its in-person playoff events

Photo courtesy Stewart Volland for Blizzard Entertainment.

The 2021 Overwatch League playoffs have hit a slight snag. Yesterday, the League announced it will no longer host live playoff matches in Dallas and Los Angeles.

“Due to significant changes in the environment affecting travel for some teams, we’ve decided to pivot away from originally scheduled live events in Dallas and Los Angeles,” the League wrote in a statement on Twitter. “Instead, postseason competition will return to Hawai’i for playoffs.”

The move is likely in response to the COVID-19 delta variant surge that’s spreading across the globe and the diminishing ability for travelers to obtain visas to and from the United States.

Last season, the League split into two regions: North America and Asia Pacific, or APAC. Regular season...

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Go read the harrowing story of the world’s first CO2 pipeline explosion

Location sign for the ‘CO2 to pipeline’ apparatus at the Hawiyah Natural Gas Liquids Recovery Plant, operated by Saudi Aramco, in Hawiyah, Saudi Arabia, on Monday, June 28, 2021. The Hawiyah Natural Gas Liquids Recovery Plant is designed to process 4.0 billion standard cubic feet per day of sweet gas as pilot project for Carbon Capture Technology (CCUS) to prove the possibility of capturing C02 and lowering emissions from such facilities. | Maya Siddiqui/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Last year, a pipeline carrying compressed carbon dioxide mixed with hydrogen sulfide ruptured, engulfing the small town of Satartia, Mississippi, in a green haze, leaving many residents convulsing, confused, or unconscious. That explosion serves as a vividwarning about the risks posed by what could be the next generation of pipelines to crisscross the US, in a new investigation by HuffPost and the Climate Investigations Center.

“It was almost like something you’d see in a zombie movie.”

“It was almost like something you’d see in a zombie movie,” Sheriff’s Officer Terry Gann tells journalist Dan Zegart about what happened that night. Zegart pieces together the events of February 2020through harrowing 911 calls and the voices of family...

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Nuro is building a factory and test track in Nevada for its autonomous delivery robots

Image: Nuro

Nuro, the autonomous delivery startup founded by two ex-Google engineers, announced a dramatic expansion of its physical footprint. The company said it will spend $40 million on the construction of a manufacturing facility and test track for its fleet of self-driving robot vehicles. Both facilities will be located in Southern Nevada, which in recent years has become a hotbed for manufacturing and testing for the future of transportation.

Nuro, which is valued at $5 billion, was founded in 2016 by Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu, two veterans of the Google self-driving car project that would go on to become Waymo. It is one of the few companies to be operating fully driverless vehicles — that is, vehicles without safety drivers behind the...

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Google Sheets’ formula suggestions are like autofill for math

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Google has announced that Google Sheets is getting the ability to intelligently suggest formulas and functions for your spreadsheet, based on the data you're trying to analyze. For example, typing “=” into a cell below a list of numbers will pop up a box that lets you automatically add the numbers together, find their average, and more.

From my admittedly simple tests, it seems to be a pretty smart system. For example, with one column of data, it suggested that I could be looking for either the sum or average of the numbers. After I chose the sum and moved down to the next cell, it only suggested finding the average for the same range of numbers, not including the sum I’d just calculated. It’s a simple thing, keeping track of what’s data...

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Panasonic photoshopped a white man’s head onto a Black man’s body

We recently wrote how Panasonic maybe went _a little_overboard with wacky promotional images for its new SoundSlayer wearable gaming speaker. Fun, right? Here’s something less amusing: it appears that Panasonic couldn’t be bothered to take actual photos of its product on actual human beings, so it digitally inserted them into royalty-free pictures from Shutterstock and Getty Images. And then, it appears to have done something worse: stick a white man’s head on a Black man’s body, altering his skin tone to match.

Let’s start with the less egregious example. Here’s Panasonic’s image of its headset blowing a gamer’s mind:

Image: Panasonic

If you type “nerdy gamer” into Shutterstock, it’s the very first result.

...

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Apple will take a smaller cut of publishers’ sales if they join Apple News

Image: Apple

Apple has a new offer for publishers: join Apple News, and it’ll only take 15 percent out of your in-app purchases and subscriptions instead of 30. Publishers can apply to Apple’s News Partner Program to take that bargain, but they have to agree to Apple’s requirements, which naturally benefit Apple and go beyond just maintaining a channel in Apple News.

The list of specific eligibility requirements to apply is short but worth sharing in full:

You must maintain a robust Apple News channel in Australia, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and publish all content to that channel in Apple News Format. If you’re based outside of these regions and do not publish in Apple News Format, you must share content via an RSS feed.

The...

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Netflix starts testing in-app games for users in Poland

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Netflix is taking its next step into gaming by allowing subscribers in Poland on Android to play two Stranger Things games inside the Netflix app, the company announced Thursday.

“Starting today, members in Poland can try Netflix mobile gaming on Android with two games — Stranger Things 1984 and Stranger Things 3 — all as part of their membership,” a Netflix spokesperson said in a statement. “It’s still very, very early days and we will be working hard to deliver the best possible experience in the months ahead with our no ads, no in-app purchases approach to gaming.”

You can see how it works in a tweet from Netflix’s Polish team. Available games will show up in your home feed. If you tap on a game’s icon, you can learn more about the...

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Snapchat’s new AR features can identify the world around you

Video still by Weston Reel for The Verge

The next generation of a feature called Scan can identify similar clothes, dog breeds, plants, cars, and more

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I Expect You To Die 2 is the most fun I’ve had solving puzzles this year

Schell Games

You’re not really a secret agent until you put on a funny hat and fake mustache while you’re trying to stop an evil conglomerate from filling a theater with poison gas. At least, that’s what I Expect You To Die 2 posits, and I think it’s about right.

I Expect You To Die 2: The Spy and The Liar is a sequel to one of the first hit virtual reality titles, which was released by Schell Games in 2016 for first-gen VR headsets. The series riffs on James Bond and other classic super spy franchises. Using motion controls and a headset, you play a field agent whose missions invariably turn into convoluted deathtraps, and you have to escape using whatever objects happen to be nearby. Behind its tongue-in-cheek tone and colorful retro stylings, it’s...

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Deathloop hands-on: a mystery wrapped in a shooter

Arkane’s next game is part immersive sim, part captivating mystery

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TSMC is raising chip prices as supply shortages continue

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

TSMC is the biggest chipmaker in the world and the company responsible for the processors used by Apple, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and even some Intel products. And its products are about to get a lot more expensive: the company plans to raise prices of its advanced chips by around 10 percent and less advanced products by about 20 percent, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.

Semiconductor supply has become an increasingly important factor for major tech and automotive companies, as chips continue to be hard to come by. There are a lot of factors that go into the prices of phones, laptops, and game consoles beyond the actual bill of materials, so a 10 to 20 percent increase in processor and SOC costs may not necessarily...

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Acer’s stellar 2-in-1 Chromebook Spin 713 is $200 off at Best Buy

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge

If you’re looking for a Chromebook that rises above many other models in terms of build quality, features, and performance, you should check out Best Buy’s deal on the Acer Chromebook Spin 713. It normally costs $629 to get the model that has a respectable Intel Core i5-10210U processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD, but it’s $200 off that price today. It’s yours for $429. At this price, the Spin 713 is kind of in a league of its own, with a convenient 2-in-1 design, a 2K resolution display with the ideal 3:2 aspect ratio, and long-lasting battery life. Read our review.

Acer recently launched a 2021 version of the Spin 713 and it features an improved 11th Gen Intel processor and Thunderbolt 4 support, but my colleague Monica Chin found...

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On TikTok, LGBTQ creators push back against sponsors who just want their identity

Illustration by Claudia Chinyere Akole

It’s a lucrative opportunity many don’t want to take

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Are you ready to eat your delicious nutrient square? Yum, yum, yum

It’s normal food, blitzed into a pulp, and compressed into 50 gram squares. | Image: SquarEat

Slap bang in the middle of a Venn diagram with two circles labelled “sincere tech startups” and “dystopian satires that are a little on the nose” you will find SquarEat: a company that you would swear is a joke if you weren’t already familiar with how the simulation we’re all living in likes to collide fact and fiction.

SquarEat was apparently born of a simple idea: what if you could eat squares? But boy oh boy does it deliver on that premise.

SquarEat says it’s “created a new concept of food” (squares)

The company claims to have “created a new concept of food” (squares) which it makes by blitzing ingredients and compressing them into “ready-to-eat” 50 gram packages (squares). You can buy your squares in packs of four or six and have...

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Who’ll make the next million-dollar NFT?

Illustration by Claudia Chinyere Akole

Generative profile picture NFTs are all the rage, but creators say it’s not just about the money

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Celebrate Jeff Bezos’ big day out to space with a $69 miniature dick rocket

Capitalism is all about fairly distributing wealth based on hard work and personal merit, which is why Jeff Bezos earns in 20 seconds what the median US worker makes in a year. He’s just that much better than you!

Thankfully, Jeff’s also a super sweet guy who’s totally grounded and knows how to use his wealth to help people. For example, he spent billions taking a tourist trip into space on a dick-shaped rocket which I personally found to be very chill. Sure, some people say the trip was a huge vanity project; a colossal pissing-contest between egotistical, morally blind billionaires whose pocket change could save countless human lives with just as much intrinsic value as their own, but to that I say: stop being such a bummer, dude!!

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