MotorTrend shows off Rivian’s electric adventure truck in detail

Image: Rivian

Rivian’s R1T electric pickup truck is finally set to ship next month after a series of delays — roughly three years after it debuted at the 2018 Los Angeles Auto Show. Ahead of the launch, though, _MotorTrend_got to spend a handful of days with the all-electric adventure truck, and the team there came away impressed by its performance. What’s more, they offer one of the best looks at the R1T’s interior, which borrows as much from Tesla as it does from other high-end off-road-focused vehicles.

None of this is exactly surprising — Rivian has actually been quite open about the development of the R1T since its debut, regularly posting its own articles, photos, and videos along the way — but the truck features two large, crisp displays on the...

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The best wireless gaming headset is slowly driving me up the wall

The SteelSeries Arctis Pro Wireless. | Image by Steelseries

If you’re going to make the best product on the market, please go all the way.

Case in point: the SteelSeries Arctis Pro Wireless is one of the best wireless gaming headsets ever made. In 2018, I tested it against every single competitor on the market (seriously, all of them), and none could beat its combination of excellent audio quality, a clear microphone, incredible wireless range, oodles of connectivity, and twin swappable batteries.

It’s a nearly perfect gadget — but a couple of times a week, that “nearly” part makes me want to scream.

Here’s how I described living with the Arctis Pro Wireless earlier this year:

If I’m gaming with buddies and want a snack, I don’t need to stop chatting — I just walk several rooms away to the...

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LinkedIn gives up on Stories

Photo by Lorenzo Di Cola/NurPhoto via Getty Images

LinkedIn is shutting down its ephemeral Stories product, the company announced Tuesday. The company plans to “remove the current Stories experience by the end of September,” according to Liz Li, senior director of product. The Snapchat-style video Stories were first launched in February 2020 in internal testing.

Part of the reason for the shutdown is that LinkedIn learned users just didn’t want disappearing video. “In developing Stories, we assumed people wouldn’t want informal videos attached to their profile, and that ephemerality would reduce barriers that people feel about posting,” Li said. “Turns out, you want to create lasting videos that tell your professional story in a more personal way and that showcase both your personality...

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Apple just banned a pay equity Slack channel but lets fun dogs channel lie

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple has barred employees from creating a Slack channel to discuss pay equity. A member of the employee relations team, Apple’s version of HR, said that while the topic was “aligned with Apple’s commitment to pay equity,” it did not meet the company’s Slack Terms of Use.

“Slack channels are provided to conduct Apple business and must advance the work, deliverables, or mission of Apple departments and teams,” the employee relations representative told employees.

The company’s rules for the in-office chat app say that “Slack channels for activities and hobbies not recognized as Apple Employee clubs or Diversity Network Associations (DNAs) aren’t permitted and shouldn’t be created.”

But that rule has not been evenly enforced. Currently,...

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After weeks of hate raids, Twitch streamers are taking a day off in protest

Illustraion by Alex Castro / The Verge

As streamers prepare to walk off Twitch, hate raids and abuse are escalating to dangerous levels

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Google pushes its mandatory return to office date into 2022

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In an email to employees today, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that even though “we are welcoming back tens of thousands of Googlers on a voluntary basis,” the company will extend its voluntary return to work policy until at least January 10th, 2022. After that date, the current plan is to have countries and locations make mandatory return to work decisions depending on local conditions.

The most recent plan shared publicly would’ve pushed Google employees back to the office at some point in September, but that won’t happen. Whenever its offices expect to have employees there in-person, Pichai reiterated that there would be a 30-day heads up first.

The letter didn’t directly cite the Delta variant, but waves of infection have again...

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The next Apple Watch may be delayed due to manufacturing issues

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

The next Apple Watch is experiencing manufacturing issues that could lead to the product being released later than expected, according to separate reports from Nikkei and Bloomberg. The potential delay is reportedly due to complexities in the smartwatch’s new design, which is rumored to include flat sides and bigger screens.

Sources told Nikkei that small-scale production for the next Apple Watch had begun but that it encountered “critical challenges in reaching satisfactory production performance.” Bloomberg reported similar details. Production has now been “temporarily halted” while Apple and its suppliers work to solve the manufacturing issues ahead of eventual mass production, Nikkei says.

The next Apple Watch is expected to be...

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Samsung adds new foldable features to its older Z Fold and Z Flip phones with One UI 3.1.1

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Samsung’s new Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 phones add a bunch of clever new features designed for foldable phones as part of its One UI 3.1.1 update, but if you already own a Fold 2, Z Flip, or even the original Galaxy Fold, you’ll still be able to get some of the new additions without shelling out for a new phone.

Available on all five foldable models is the new Drag and Split feature, which — as the name implies — allows you to tap and drag on a link to open it side by side with the original webpage or message.

Samsung’s larger Fold models will also be getting the adjustable app windows for its multitasking mode, allowing you to adjust the height and width of the individual apps when you have multiple apps open at once. The...

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Facebook is expanding its plans to put less politics in the News Feed

Illustration by Alex Castro / Th

Facebook is expanding an experiment in reducing political content in the News Feed. In an update to a February blog post, the company says it’s seen “positive results” in reducing this content for some users in a handful of countries. Now, it’s expanding a test of the strategy to Costa Rica, Sweden, Spain, and Ireland.

Axios reported on Facebook’s plans before the announcement. As it notes, Facebook’s new test also involves changing the signals it favors when promoting content. “Some engagement signals can better indicate what posts people find more valuable than others,” product management director Aastha Gupta writes. “Based on that feedback, we’re gradually expanding some tests to put less emphasis on signals such as how likely...

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Best Buy is now selling electric bikes, scooters, and mopeds — in store and online

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Best Buy is cruising into the electric mobility space with the announcement that it intends to sell e-bikes, scooters, and mopeds, both in stores and online. The retailer is collecting some of the best known names in lightweight electric vehicles, including Unagi, Bird, Segway-Ninebot, Super73, and Swft.

Customers interested in buying something right now can visit BestBuy.com to browse the company’s selection. And starting in October, 10 Best Buy stores in nine locations — Austin, Texas; Los Angeles; Miami; New York; Orlando, Florida; Puerto Rico; San Francisco; Seattle; and Tampa, Florida — will start carrying e-bikes and scooters in stock.

Image: Best Buy

E-bikes from Super73 (left) and mopeds from Swft...

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Chrome beta makes it easy to jump between search results

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google is announcing some new experiments available in the latest Chrome beta intended to make it easier to find things on the web and share interesting text. If you want to jump onto the Chrome beta to give these features a shot, download it here for your computer or here for your Android device. (Though as with all betas, exercise caution, as things may not work perfectly.) And I’m going to mention enabling flags throughout — to do so, enter chrome://flags into your address bar, which is where you can turn on Chrome’s many available experiments.

One cool new experiment in Chrome on Android lets you see some search results under the address bar after you’ve already navigated to a page. This one is best understood by watching this GIF:

...

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Moment’s new video-coloring app Grain will let you take handcrafted presets to other apps

Image: Moment

Moment is launching another video-focused app for iPhone and iPad Tuesday that lets you edit and color footage as well as create video presets or “looks” for use on social media or Moment’s other video app, Rtro.

The app is called Grain, and based on my experience with it in beta form, it seems to offer a lot of video settings to get lost in. Grain breaks its editing options into three categories: color, effects, and overlays. Color has a variety of preset filters to start with, like LoFi, 35mm, or Blockbuster, which you can then further customize with adjustments to color temperature, brightness, or saturation.

Effects and overlay presets work similarly. You can add film grain, light bleeds, blurs, VHS effects, faux film stocks and...

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Strava’s live location tracking service is now free

Athletes can now share their live location using the free version of the Strava app. | Image: Strava

Today Strava is making Beacon, its live location-sharing service for athletes, available to everyone, whether you pay for the popular cycle and run-tracking app or not. Beacon sharing from the Strava app was previously only available via subscription, which currently costs $59.99 annually or $5.00 per month. The change follows a massive privacy push by Strava introduced earlier this month.

Beacon sharing can be used for safety and fun. The feature lets you share your live location with up to three people who can track your progress until you finish. They receive a text message with a unique URL that opens in a mobile browser to show your activity in real time (updated every 15 seconds). This can be a life-saving feature for bikers or...

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Late nights, high scores, and blanket forts: the challenges of testing music and fitness games

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

For games like Just Dance and EA Sports Active, QA is a tricky process

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The makers of the GorillaPod made a MagSafe tripod mount

Image: Joby

Joby has released a MagSafe mount for tripods that should simplify the process of attaching an iPhone 12 and any future iPhone models that support MagSafe. The new GripTight mount allows for quick attachment, letting the mount hold on to your phone either by just its MagSafe magnet or with a more secure option that tightly grips the edges of your phone like Joby’s previous smartphone mounts. With the latter use case, people may not know that you’re partially connected to the GripTight mount with MagSafe, but at least you’ll know it in your heart.

This new mount is available now for $23.97 from Joby’s site, and it works on the company’s line of flexible GorillaPod tripods as well as any other tripods that support the industry standard...

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EA’s return to college football starts with a special event in Madden

Jarvis Landry in an LSU uniform in_Madden NFL 22._ | Image: EA

While we still don’t know exactly when EA’s upcoming college football video game will be released, fans will be able to play college ball soon for a limited time thanks to a special “Campus Legends” event coming to Madden NFL 22’s arcade-y Superstar KO mode.

The event, which begins Tuesday and runs until September 27th, will let you play as one of 10 schools: Clemson University, Louisiana State University, Michigan State University, University of Florida, University of Miami, University of Nebraska, University of Oklahoma, University of Oregon (UO), University of Southern California, and University of Texas. The teams will also feature alumni as players — for example, UO graduate Justin Herbert, who is currently the quarterback of the...

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DC FanDome returns in October

Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures / DC Comics

Last year DC had an impressive showing at its virtual FanDome event, and today the company revealed it’s doing it again very soon. FanDome will return on October 16th, and will feature updates, trailers, and reveals covering what looks to be a big range of projects across film, television, comics, and video games.

That includes: “an exclusive new trailer” for the Robert Pattinson-led The Batman; looks at movies Black Adam, The Flash, and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom; more details on upcoming seasons of Harley Quinn, Batwoman, The Flash, Superman & Lois, and Sweet Tooth; reveals for games _Gotham Knights_and _Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League;_and a whole bunch of comic news, including the next chapter of the_Fortnite / Batman_c...

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Android 101: how to download or share a Google Photos album

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

One thing Google really wants you to do is, well, stay in Google — because the more you do things the Google way, the more data the company can monetize. The result is that while it is possible to pull your emails, photos, and other material outside of the Googleverse, it’s just a little bit more difficult.

For example, let’s say you want to show an album of family photos that are stored on Google Photos to your favorite grandparent. If they’re reasonably Google-savvy, it’s not a problem at all — you just share the album with them.

Share a Photos album on the web

• Click on “Albums” in the left menu.
• Hover the cursor over the album you want to share, and click on the three dots.
• Click on “Share album.”

All you have to...

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Bose announces QuietComfort 45 noise-canceling headphones with 24-hour battery life

Image: Bose

After they first surfaced in July in an FCC filing and again earlier this month, Bose is today introducing the QuietComfort 45 headphones. Priced at $329.95 and going on sale September 23rd, the QC45 headphones will offer improved active noise cancellation, a transparency / ambient sound feature that Bose calls “Aware Mode,” upgraded voice call performance, and longer battery life that can now hit 24 hours on a charge. Bose is making a big deal about this product release, claiming that it’s “updating the headphone that redefined headphones.” Preorders begin today.

Available in black or “smoke white,” they look quite similar to their QC35 II predecessors, with a design that’s much more plasticky than Bose’s other premium headphones, the...

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Why the global chip shortage is making it so hard to buy a PS5

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

Harvard professor Willy Shih explains the existential problem affecting cars, phones, computers, and more

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Philips Hue bulbs are discounted in the lead up to Labor Day

Buy three Philips Hue bulbs for the price of two

The upcoming Labor Day holiday signals the end of summer and the ramp-up of everything from the school year to new gadget season. While you can expect to get plenty of Labor Day-related deals from us coming very shortly, Philips has gotten a bit of a head start with their “Summer of Hue” savings promo, so you’re not stuck with having a single shade of lighting after Labor Day.

Right now, Philips is offering three white and color smart bulbs for the price of two, shaving $35 off the cost of some of the most popular smart home lights through September 12th. The vibrant E26 Hue bulbs allow for funky lighting while offering a full spectrum of 16 million colors, as well the flexibility to stretch from a warm white to daylight-balanced cool...

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SimpliSafe finally adds an outdoor camera to its ‘whole home’ security system

The SimpliSafe Wireless Outdoor Security Camera features an integrated LED light for color night vision. | Image: SimpliSafe

SimpliSafe has finally added an outdoor camera to one of our favorite build-it-yourself home security systems. The new Wireless Outdoor Security Camera, first leaked by Dave Zatz, features a magnetic mount and a rechargeable battery that powers its LED spotlight and 2.4GHz Wi-Fi radio for a period of three to six months, depending upon settings. SimpliSafe will sell an optional solar panel to keep the battery topped-up later this fall.

The IP65 ruggedized camera offers a 1080p resolution with HDR, 140-degree field of view, and color “night vision” at a distance up to 10 feet thanks to that LED spotlight. Otherwise, there’s infrared night vision at a distance up to 30 feet. The camera is designed to integrate back into a SimpliSafe...

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Jabra overhauls true wireless earbuds lineup with three new models

Image: Jabra

Jabra is today announcing a comprehensive makeover of its true wireless earbuds lineup. The company is introducing three new models and phasing out both the Elite 65t and 75t by the end of the year; the Elite 85t will remain part of the product family. Jabra says its latest devices — the Elite 7 Pro, Elite 7 Active, and Elite 3 — build upon “six generations worth of learnings” in the true wireless market.

Each is made for specific scenarios: the $199 Elite 7 Pro buds promise “ultimate call clarity” thanks to a new “MultiSensor Voice” system that combines a bone conduction sensor, four mics, and algorithms for optimizing call quality. Active noise cancellation is included, and the redesigned earbuds are 16 percent smaller than the Elite...

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Windows 11 won’t include Android app support at launch

TikTik is one of many Android apps coming to Windows 11. | Image: Microsoft

Microsoft won’t ship support for Android apps on Windows 11 in time for the operating system’s launch on October 5th. While Android apps running on Windows 11 is one of the big new features of the OS, Microsoft will only start previewing this feature in the coming months.

“We look forward to continuing our journey to bring Android apps to Windows 11 and the Microsoft Store through our collaboration with Amazon and Intel; this will start with a preview for Windows Insiders over the coming months,” says Aaron Woodman, general manager of Windows marketing at Microsoft.

Image: Microsoft

Android apps will appear in Windows 11 thanks to an Amazon partnership.

This likely means Android apps won’t arrive on Windows 11...

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Microsoft will release Windows 11 on October 5th

Microsoft is announcing that Windows 11 will be released on October 5th. The new operating system will be available as a free upgrade for eligible Windows 10 PCs, or on new hardware that ships with Windows 11 pre-loaded.

The free upgrade to Windows 11 will start rolling out on October 5th, but like many Windows upgrades in the past, it will be available in phases. New eligible devices will be offered the upgrade first, and then Windows 11 will become available for more in-market devices in the weeks and months following October 5th.

“Following the tremendous learnings from Windows 10, we want to make sure we’re providing you with the best possible experience,” explains Aaron Woodman, general manager of Windows marketing at Microsoft. “We...

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Google Calendar will break down how much of your work is spent in meetings

The Time insights panel appears on the right of the interface. | Image: Google

Google is adding a new “Time insights” panel to Calendar on the web, showing users how much of their working week is spent in meetings. According to Google’s blog post, the feature is rolling out gradually over the next month on select plans. It was first announced back in March as part of a raft of new features coming to Google Workspace.

Time Insights arrives a couple of years after both Google and Apple added similar breakdowns into Android and iOS respectively to show the amount of time spent using different apps. But while these OS features included the ability to set per-app time limits, Google Calendar won’t let you set similar boundaries on meetings. Instead, it provides you with the information you need to hopefully curb any...

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Apple and Google must allow developers to use other payment systems, new Korean law declares

South Korea has passed a bill written to prevent major platform owners like Google and Apple from restricting app developers to built-in payment systems, The Wall Street Journal reports. The bill is now expected to be signed into law by President Moon Jae-in, whose party championed the legislation.

The law comes as a blow to Google and Apple who both require in-app purchases to flow only through their systems, instead of outside payment processors, allowing the tech giants to collect a 30 percent cut. If tech companies fail to comply with the new law, they could face fines of up to 3 percent of their South Korea revenue.

The law is an amendment to South Korea’s Telecommunications Business Act, and it could have a large impact on how...

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Here’s the robotaxi that will be available on the Lyft app in 2023

Motional, the autonomous vehicle company that is a joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv, revealed more details about its forthcoming robotaxi as well as some of the first images of the vehicle. The company is also working with Lyft and says that by 2023, customers in certain cities will be able to hail rides in this vehicle using the Lyft app.

Motional first announced earlier this year that it would be using the Hyundai Ioniq 5, an all-electric crossover, as its inaugural vehicle. The company hasn’t said how many vehicles it would acquire, nor where it will eventually deploy them for its robotaxi service. It’s currently operating a fleet of Chrysler Pacifica minivans in Las Vegas in collaboration with Lyft.

The Motional robotaxi will...

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Samsung’s new Galaxy Watch gets a walkie talkie feature of its own

The Galaxy Watch 4. | Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge

Samsung has released a new walkie talkie app for the Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic, which allows watch owners to have push-to-talk conversations with one another using the wearable. The app’s release was reported by XDA Developers, but its development was rumored in May by SamMobile prior to the watch’s official announcement_._It’s available to download now via the Google Play Store.

The app’s release comes after Apple added a similar feature to its Apple Watch back in 2018 with WatchOS 5. But while Apple’s push-to-talk walkie talkie feature only lets two people communicate at once, Samsung’s supports “two or more users” by setting up a Walkie-Talkie channel to chat in. That is, so long as you can find enough people using the Wear...

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VanMoof adds manual gear shifting to S3 and X3 e-bikes

Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge

VanMoof has released a firmware update for its S3 and X3 e-bikes that allows for manual gear shifting. If you’re thinking that sounds like a pretty basic feature for a bicycle, you’d be right. But Vanmoof’s latest bikes have fully automatic four-gear shifters, and until now, there was no way to change gears yourself.

The automatic shifter is convenient and generally works well, but as with automatic gearboxes in cars, you do occasionally find yourself riding in a suboptimal gear. While this can normally be fixed by easing off the pedals or using the turbo boost button, it’s not always practical given factors such as terrain. VanMoof does offer settings for hilly and flat land, as well as the ability to customize at what speeds the gears...

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