Consumer Reports isn’t impressed by Tesla’s reinvention of the (steering) wheel

Image: Tesla

For years, the recommendations and ratings Consumer Reports assigns to Tesla vehicles have yo-yoed between unacceptable and incredible, usually due to the electric car maker’s unorthodox design and packaging decisions. When Tesla revealed its redesign of the Model S and Model X interiors this spring, future unpleasantness loomed.

While Consumer Reports lauds consistency and stability, especially for safety and usability, Tesla’s designers ditched the steering wheel and gear selector that drivers are familiar with. Now, drivers steer with a yoke that resembles what you’d find in a race car, while the car itself can make decisions about going forward or backward when you press the gas pedal unless the driver specifically selects a gear on...

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How the Microsoft Surface Pro 8 stacks up to the Surface Laptop Studio, Go 3, and more

Image: Microsoft

At its recent hardware event, Microsoft refreshed almost its entire lineup of Surface products (sorry, Surface Book, but you’re sitting this one out). The company showed off the new Surface Pro 8, the Go 3, and it capped off the proceedings with details about its interesting and transforming Surface Laptop Studio. There was more at the event, like the Wi-Fi version of the Pro X, as well as the Surface Duo 2 folding phone. Here are all of the biggest announcements if you wanted to see them in one place.

If you’re trying to figure out which of these new Windows 11-equipped machines you should buy, knowing their specs might help you make a decision. But given that they’re different sizes and marketed to different kinds of people,...

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Tiger King is returning for a second season on Netflix later this year

Netflix has announced that its hit documentary Tiger King will be returning for a second season later in 2021, following the success of the first season — which hit streaming just as the COVID-19 pandemic began and is indelibly associated with the early days of COVID lockdown culture, a mix of heady escapism at a time when leaving home seemed impossible.

It’s March 2020. Everyone is stuck at home due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bored with nowhere to go, no one to see, and nothing to do, you — along with millions of others, boot up Netflix and find a new documentary series called Tiger King, a salacious, practically unbelievable story of the rise and fall of self-made tiger zoo magnate Joe Exotic (and his rivalry with fellow...

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iPadOS 15 ruined my iPad’s homescreen

Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

There’s a lot of promise and potential in iPadOS 15. Even with some features like SharePlay missing from the initial release, others like Quick Note and a dramatically simpler approach to multitasking already improve the day-to-day experience of using Apple’s tablets.

But Apple sure did manage to bungle the homescreen.

As my colleague Chaim mentioned in his review of iPadOS 15, the homescreen layout is no longer consistent between vertical and horizontal orientations. I’ve been using the 12.9-inch iPad Pro since 2018, and as of iPadOS 14, the homescreen grid was always 6 x 5 no matter how the iPad was being held. This allowed me to set up dedicated rows for things like photo editing (I edit many of my review photos on the iPad), audio...

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The EU’s USB-C proposal might give us a portless iPhone instead

The European Commission has announced plans to force smartphone and other electronics manufacturers to fit a common USB-C charging port on their devices. Given that most Android-powered smartphones now ship with a USB-C port, the proposals could see Apple finally be forced to move to USB-C on the iPhone. Or they might not, as they could instead force Apple to deliver a portless iPhone.

Today’s proposals from the EU only cover wired charging and don’t seek to enforce rules on wireless charging just yet. A spokesperson for the Commission has confirmed to The Verge that if a device charges only wirelessly, then there is no requirement to integrate a USB-C charging port.

If the European Parliament adopts the proposals, manufacturers will...

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Jake Gyllenhaal on the challenges of acting over Zoom in Netflix’s thriller The Guilty

Photo: Glen Wilson / Netflix

The Guilty was always going to be a challenging project. The movie, which is a remake of a Danish film from 2018, follows a 911 dispatcher in Los Angeles, who receives a troubling call that appears to be from a woman who has been abducted. The result is a tense thriller, but one you see almost none of — the entire movie is centered on LAPD officer Joe Baylor, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, as he fields phone calls in an office over the course of a single evening. Because of this, the movie hinges on Gyllenhaal’s performance, as he slowly unravels while the story twists and turns in disturbing ways.

But it became even more challenging thanks to pandemic-related restrictions on filming. While the actors were on set, director Antoine Fuqua, who...

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I wish Microsoft made an Xbox or Surface gaming laptop

I’ve been waiting years for Microsoft to make a gaming laptop, and the new Surface Laptop Studio still misses the mark. Whether it would be an Xbox laptop or a Surface one, Microsoft has never really come close to building something truly designed for gaming on the go. The Surface Book, Surface Pro, and Surface Laptop all serve different creator types, but none really cater to gamers.

It feels like a missed opportunity, particularly when Microsoft calls Windows 11 “the best Windows ever for gaming,” and the market for gaming laptops has become increasingly lucrative in recent years. Barely a month goes by without a thin and cool gaming laptop being announced, and the line separating laptops from gaming laptops is increasingly blurring...

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Netflix is betting big on a world’s worth of children’s stories

Image: Netflix

Streaming’s reigning king announced one of its biggest title acquisitions to date this week with its purchase of the rights to Roald Dahl’s catalog of work. The deal, following regulatory approval, will give Netflix access to a universe of beloved children’s stories to mine and position the company to better compete with kid-friendly competitors like Disney Plus.

The acquisition of the trove of intellectual property follows a previous partnership between Netflix and the Roald Dahl Story Company announced in 2018 to adapt some of the late author’s iconic titles. With access to the full library of Dahl stories — which include children’s classics like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, The BFG, and Matilda, among...

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Hyundai and Motional expand their footprint in Las Vegas ahead of robotaxi launch

Motional, the autonomous vehicle company that is a joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv, is growing its presence in Las Vegas as it gears up to launch a commercial robotaxi service in 2023.

The company is tripling the size of its closed-course testing facility, doubling its operations center, and hiring over 100 new employees. The larger testing facility will allow for “four times” the volume of testing, including new “high-stress situations,” such as high speeds, complex urban maneuvers, different lighting conditions, and light to heavy rain — all of which have been known to flummox autonomous vehicles.

The vehicle that will be put through this new, rigorous battery of tests will be the Hyundai Ioniq 5

The vehicle that will be put...

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How to get Teams to go away in Windows 11

When you first install Windows 11, you will probably see a new icon on your Taskbar — or, at least, it will be new if you haven’t been using Microsoft’s Teams collaboration app lately. If you float your cursor across the icon, which looks like a camera inside of a cartoon speech balloon, it will say “Chat.” Click on it, and you’ll be invited to “Meet and chat with friends and family” using Microsoft Teams.

If you’re already using Teams, or you’re okay with switching to it, you’re fine. After that, when you click on the Chat icon, you’ll be able to chat with friends, family, and colleagues using a pop-up box.

So what if you’re not interested in using Microsoft Teams?

There are several things you can do if you find the push to Teams...

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Japanese Breakfast on composing Sable’s sprawling ambient soundtrack

Photo by Stephen J. Cohen/Getty Images

This week marks the release of Sable, a beautiful indie title that looks like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild mixed with a comic from Jean “Moebius” Giraud. It’s not just the game’s art that’s striking, though; the whole experience is accompanied by an excellent original soundtrack composed by Michelle Zauner, the frontwoman for the indie rock band Japanese Breakfast.

Ahead of Sable’s launch on Thursday and the release of the official soundtrack on Friday, I got the opportunity to talk to Zauner about composing the music for the game. It has a completely different sound than what you might be used to from her other work, so I wanted to know what it was like to make the music and where she got her inspiration. There was a lot to...

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EU proposes mandatory USB-C on all devices, including iPhones

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, has announced plans to force smartphone and other electronics manufacturers to fit a common USB-C charging port on their devices. The proposal is likely to have the biggest impact on Apple, which continues to use its proprietary Lightning connector rather than the USB-C connector adopted by most of its competitors. The rules are intended to cut down on electronic waste by allowing people to re-use existing chargers and cables when they buy new electronics.

In addition to phones, the rules will apply to other devices like tablets, headphones, portable speakers, videogame consoles, and cameras. Manufacturers will also be forced to make their fast-charging standards...

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Why these Facebook research scandals are different

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

How the company found itself in its biggest crisis since Cambridge Analytica

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Facebook is starting to share more about what it demotes in News Feed

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The way that Facebook controls its News Feed is often controversial and largely opaque to the outside world.

Now the social network is attempting to shine more light on the content it surpresses but doesn't remove entirely. On Thursday, Facebook published its “Content Distribution Guidelines” detailing the roughly three-dozen types of posts it demotes for various reasons in the News Feed, like clickbait and posts by repeat policy offenders. That process, which relies heavily on machine learning technology to automatically detect problematic content, effectively throttles the reach of offending posts and comments without the author knowing.

There’s still plenty that the guidelines, which Facebook has mostly confirmed in various reports...

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Elizabeth Holmes ‘was in charge’ of Theranos, says Gen. Mattis

Getty

She pricked his finger, and he fell under her spell

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Amazon’s department stores sound like a very Amazon way to sell clothes

Amazon’s Go convenience stores are cashier-less. | Image: Amazon

Amazon’s rumored department store experiment could take a similarly high-tech approach to selling clothes as the company took with groceries, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. Amazon was previously reported to be considering opening department stores in California and Ohio, a natural expansion of the company’s push into physical retail, and those department stores will reportedly feature its own clothing brands too.

Like Amazon’s cashier-less Go stores, The Journal seems to suggest Amazon-branded department stores will focus on customer convenience, using several possible tech solutions. In one idea, customers “scan QR codes of items they want to try on by using a smartphone app,” before sales associates gather and...

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FDA clears Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine boosters for vulnerable groups

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

The Food and Drug Administration cleared a third dose of the Pfizer / BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for people some vulnerable groups — the first booster in the United States’ vaccination efforts.

The agency signed off on boosters for people 65 years of age and older, those who are at high risk of severe disease, health care workers, and other people at high risk of exposure to COVID-19 at work.

The decision comes a month after the Biden administration announced that booster shots would be available to people in the US starting in September. At the time, scientists and public health experts criticized the administration for pushing boosters before there was clear evidence that they were necessary and before either the FDA or CDC signed off...

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Here’s how much buying into Microsoft’s pro Surface vision actually costs

None of these tablets come with keyboards or stylii. | Image: Microsoft

Microsoft is listening. The Surface Duo 2 ditches its predecessor’s last-gen specs, the Surface Laptop Studio does away with the Surface Book’s gimmicky detachable screen, and the Surface Pro 8 might be the one we’ve been waiting for, with an enhanced keyboard, stylus, high-refresh rate screen and Thunderbolt ports (finally!). But there’s one place where Microsoft is stubbornly carrying on: making you pay substantially more than the quoted sticker price to use these computers as advertised — because none of them include a stylus or keyboard.

While Microsoft touted the $1,099-and-up Surface Pro 8 as “a powerful laptop with the flexibility of a tablet,” it’s not a laptop at all when you take it out of the box. It’s a touchscreen tablet,...

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Twitter says it will fix disappearing tweets issue

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Twitter is planning to make some changes that could prevent tweets from disappearing while you are reading them, the company said on its support account Wednesday.

Here’s what you might have run into. If you were looking at a tweet on your timeline, and at the same time someone else you follow replied to it, or the original tweeter threaded it, the app would suddenly refresh, while the tweet disappeared from view. That’s obviously not ideal, so Twitter plans to make changes over the next two months to fix the problem.

The background: a Tweet would move up the timeline as replies were added to the ongoing convo. Since some convos can evolve quickly, this made it so you didn't see the same Tweet repeated in the TL.

Our changes will keep...

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Nokia’s new G50 is a $300 5G phone with a big battery and two years of OS upgrades

The Nokia G50 has a triple rear camera system. | Image: Nokia

Nokia has a new midrange phone coming to the US and a number of global markets. The new G50 costs $299 and has all the ingredients to be competitive as a midrange phone, with a 6.82-inch HD+ display, big battery, audio jack and 18W fast charger.

This G-series phone is similar to the Nokia X20 that was announced back in April 2021, but the G50 has a bigger screen and battery and comes in a version specifically designed for the North American market (AT&T and T-Mobile). Unsurprisingly, it supports the slower 5G Sub 6, which means this phone will work on T-Mobile’s 5G network, but not on Verizon’s mmWave network, and will only get 4G reception on AT&T.

Like other 5G phones in the $300 range, the Nokia G50 is powered by the modest Snapdragon...

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Amazon collaborates with Billie Eilish on an Echo Studio

Amazon has revealed its new collaboration with singer Billie Eilish: a limited-edition Echo Studio speaker. | Image: Amazon

If you were in a tizzy about what to get the devoted Billie Eilish fan in your family for the holidays, Amazon might have just solved your problem — assuming you’re prepared to drop $230 on them.

Announced today, the Billie Eilish Limited Edition Echo Studio is available for pre-order and features the melancholy-voiced singer pasted on the side of Amazon’s highest-end Echo speaker, the Studio. Basically, the album cover art from Eilish’s new album “Happier Than Ever” has been printed onto a new beige-hued fabric and wrapped around the Echo Studio. It creates a slightly eerie-looking product that supposedly someone, somewhere, will want to put in their home.

This is Amazon’s first foray into celebrity skins; previous attempts to dress up...

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Facebook names a new CTO with a major focus on hardware

CTO Andrew Bosworth wearing Facebook’s new smart glasses with Ray-Ban. | Photo: Facebook / Andrew Bosworth

Facebook is serious about being a long-term player in hardware. On Wednesday, the company promoted Andrew Bosworth, the current head of its hardware division that makes Oculus and other consumer devices, to the role of chief technology officer, replacing outgoing CTO Mike Schroepfer when he becomes a senior fellow next year.

In his new role, Bosworth, who goes by Boz, will continue to lead the hardware group, called Facebook Reality Labs, while also assuming responsibility for Facebook’s broader engineering organization and artificial intelligence efforts. He’ll report directly to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has taken a keen interest in developing AR glasses and the metaverse.

“As our next CTO, Boz will continue leading Facebook Reality...

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iOS 15 builds in better customer support for in-app purchases

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

As part of this week’s launch of iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and watchOS 8, Apple also introduced StoreKit 2, a set of APIs for in-app purchases and subscriptions. The new Swift-based tools could help developers better track and support the purchases their users make instead of relying on third-party solutions like RevenueCat.

The kit introduces new APIs to “determine product entitlements and eligibility for offers, quickly get a user’s history of in-app purchases, find out the latest status of a subscription with one simple check,” and most importantly, offer a way for users to manage subscriptions and request refunds in-app. Apple is also updating the App Store server API and App Store server notifications so developers can know when a user’s...

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FTC resurrects a decade-old rule as a guardrail on the health app explosion

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Health apps have to tell their users about any data breaches or risk a hefty fine, the Federal Trade Commission clarified in a policy statement last week. The rule that requires that transparency is a decade old, but it hasn’t been enforced before. The new guidance serves as a warning to the many companies elbowing into the health app space: the FTC is taking issues around health data privacy seriously — even if it won’t be able to tackle all the privacy gaps on its own.

The FTC’s Health Breach Notification Rule covers all organizations that aren’t subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which covers things like doctors and insurance companies. HIPAA requires those groups to disclose any time they have...

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The PS5 and Xbox Series X will be available in store at Best Buy tomorrow

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

For the most part, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X have been sold exclusively online since their launch in late 2020, but that’s changing, at least a little bit, starting tomorrow. Best Buy will stock the next-gen consoles — specifically, the disc-based PS5, PS5 Digital Edition, and Xbox Series X — in several of its US stores, and getting one will be similar to the process the retailer uses for selling graphics cards in person. You’ll need to show up early and form a queue, then, at 7:30AM local time, Best Buy employees will hand out one ticket per customer for as many consoles as each store has in stock.

Check Best Buy’s list of participating retailers to see if you should consider lining up early. Once you’re in the queue, you’ll...

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Texas sued over terrible social media law

Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images

NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) have sued to stop Texas from enforcing HB 20, a new law barring large social media companies from banning users or removing content based on the “viewpoint” of the user. The tech industry groups’ suit comes two weeks after Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed the bill, and it follows a lawsuit that successfully blocked a similar rule in Florida.

HB 20 is one of multiple state-level efforts to make companies like Facebook and Twitter leery of moderating the accounts of conservative users. Texas lawmakers have positioned the bill as an anti-censorship provision, but NetChoice and the CCIA argue that it — like the Florida law before it — violates companies’ First Amendment...

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Discord starts testing YouTube integration weeks after Google shuts down music bots

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Discord is starting to test YouTube integration, just weeks after Google-owned YouTube forced two popular Discord music bots offline. YouTube integration has started appearing in a small number of Discord servers today as part of what appears to be a new test of a collaboration between Discord and YouTube.

The feature is called Watch Together, and as the name implies, it allows Discord members to watch YouTube videos together. A test of a similar Discord feature started 10 months ago before disappearing and resurfacing as Watch Together today, and we understand the company has re-prioritized this particular feature due to the recent music bot shutdowns.

Discord’s new Watch Together feature in action.

Watch Together...

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YouTube tests video downloads for your desktop browser

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube is testing an official way to download videos on your desktop web browser (via Android Police). If you want to see if you’re eligible for the test, which runs through October 19th, check out YouTube’s experimental features page, which lists tests available for Premium subscribers. I was able to opt in to the test, but a colleague of mine wasn’t, which seems to indicate that not everyone is able to try the feature just yet.

If you’re opted-in and on a supported browser (“the latest versions of Chrome, Edge, or Opera,” according to Google), when you’re watching a video, you should see an option to download the video under the player. When you click it, YouTube will download the video, which you can then watch from the Downloads...

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Steve Ballmer: ‘Toilets, toilets, toilets’

Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images

Since leaving Microsoft, ex-CEO Steve Ballmer has devoted his life to the Los Angeles Clippers, transferring his enthusiastic, often scary keynote energy into pure, sport-oriented hype. But what about his passions? What’s replaced Windows “developers, developers, developers” in the heart of the man who’s spending around $1.8 billion to build the new Intuit Dome arena in Inglewood? One word: toilets (via ZDNet).

“I’ve become a real obsessive about toilets,” Ballmer shared at the groundbreaking for the new arena. “Toilets, toilets, toilets.” To be fair to the enterprise software evangelist turned NBA chairman, it does seem like the Intuit Dome will have a lot of them — one toilet for every 27 seats in the arena’s upper deck, The Washington...

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Workhorse suspends delivery, recalls dozens of its flagship electric vans

Ohio-based electric vehicle startup Workhorse is suspending deliveries of its C-1000 electric delivery vans and recalling 41 vehicles that have already been sent to customers, telling regulators the vans need “additional testing and modifications” in order to comply with federal safety standards.

It was the latest setback for the company, which recently abandoned its effort to overturn the US Postal Service’s decision to let a different company build the next-generation mail truck. That contract was awarded to defense manufacturer Oshkosh earlier this year.

It was the latest setback for the company

The C-1000 is meant to be Workhorse’s flagship vehicle, with 1,000 cubic feet of cargo space. The company said it was continuing to tinker...

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