Kobo announces two new e-readers, including $260 note-taking Sage

The Sage can function as a e-note device, with support for the Kobo Stylus ($40, sold separately). | Image: Kobo

Kobo has announced a pair of new e-readers: the $260 Kobo Sage, which is the company’s new top-end device, and the $180 Libra 2, an update to its mid-range Libra.

Both devices keep the asymmetrical design popularized by Amazon’s Oasis e-reader, offer E Ink Carta 1200 screens with Kobo’s ComfortLight Pro feature (which adapts the screen brightness and color based on the time of day), and add Bluetooth support for wireless headphones (though they can only play Kobo’s own audiobooks).

The Sage is the larger of the two and also functions as an e-note device. It’s compatible with the company’s Kobo Stylus (sold separately for $40), which lets users make handwritten notes on ebooks and PDFs that can be can converted to plain text. With an...

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Google will give you free Stadia hardware if you buy a game

Google is giving away a free Stadia Premiere Edition kit if you purchase a regular Stadia game. This hardware bundle includes a Chromecast Ultra and Stadia controller, and you’ll need to buy a full price game ($59.99 or above) to qualify for the offer. Google’s free offer will run until 11:59PM PT on October 10th, and codes will be distributed by October 20th.

The free Stadia Premier Edition offer will run in the US, UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Austria, and Switzerland. Google usually sells its Stadia Premiere Edition for $79.99.

Google has been giving away free Stadia hardware over the past year

This isn’t the first time that Google has given away free Stadia...

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Tesla ordered to pay $137 million to former worker over racism and hostile workplace

Photo by Mason Trinca for The Washington Post via Getty Images

A jury in California has ordered Tesla to pay $137 million in damages to a Black former elevator operator after he experienced a hostile work environment, including racial harassment and discrimination, at the company’s Fremont plant.

Owen Diaz worked at the plant between June 2015 and May 2016 as a contractor, reports CNBC and The Washington Post. Diaz told the court that “daily racist epithets” were used in the plant, including the n-word; that racist graffiti and cartoons appeared in his workspace and the toilets; and that he was told to “go back to Africa” by colleagues. Supervisors failed to consistently intervene in these issues, said Diaz, and the stress of the situation caused him to suffer weight loss and “sleepless nights.” As...

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Facebook has finally given a reason for the six-hour outage Monday

Facebook was down for six hours on Monday | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Facebook said in a blog post Monday night that the six-hour outage that took it offline along with Instagram, Messenger, Whatsapp, and OculusVR was the result of a configuration change to its routers — not of a hack or attempt to get at user data. The explanation doesn’t give much in the way of detail, but it seems like Facebook’s machines weren’t able to talk to one another — Facebook says that “this disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt.”

CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted an apology Monday evening, saying the platforms were coming back online. “Sorry for the disruption today — I know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you...

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Losing Facebook is bad, but losing WhatsApp is worse

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In the chaos of Monday’s Facebook outage, it’s easy to lose sight of the company’s reach. Not being able to post a new photo to Instagram is an annoyance, but it's not necessarily catastrophic. Yet for WhatsApp users, especially outside of the US, losing Facebook’s encrypted messaging service is a life-halting change, and one competing messaging services were eager to capitalize on today.

In February last year, WhatsApp announced it had 2 billion users worldwide. Compare that to original flavor Facebook’s 2.5 billion and it's easy to see how many lives WhatsApp touches. It’s become the default method to contact people in plenty of countries, including around 400 million unique monthly users in India _Bloomberg_writes. That goes beyond...

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Gloomhaven and other popular tabletop games are on Amazon’s Deal of the Day

Gloomhaven is like a ready-to-play Dungeons & Dragons campaign in a box. | Image: Cephalofair Games

Amazon has billed today’s Deal of the Day as its “Epic Daily Deal,” and the shoe certainly fits when it includes one of the most epic RPG-in-a-box titles of all time. Gloomhaven is currently on sale, tying its all-time low price of $85 just for today. This shaves 40 percent off its usual MSRP of $140. If you have ever considered playing Dungeons and Dragons but could never get one of your friends to buckle down and put in the work as gamemaster, Gloomhaven might be the perfect solution for you and up to three friends.

The cardboard gaming deals don’t end there, with plenty of lighter and easily approachable titles also on sale. If you’re partial to simple games that use cards and dice and can be learned and played in less than an hour,...

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What is BGP, and how might it have helped kick Facebook off the internet?

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

On Monday, Facebook was completely knocked offline, taking Instagram and WhatsApp (not to mention a few other websites) down with it. Many have been quick to say that the incident had to do with BGP, or Border Gateway Protocol, citing sources from inside Facebook, traffic analysis, and the gut instinct that “it’s always DNS or BGP.” Facebook is on its way back up, but this all begs the question:

What is BGP?

At a very basic level, BGP is one of the systems that the internet uses to get your traffic to where it needs to go as quickly as possible. Because there are tons of different internet service providers, backbone routers, and servers responsible for your data making it to, say, Facebook, there’s a ton of different routes your packets...

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Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin has a new demo, and it’s awesome

Square Enix

Square Enix released_Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin’s_second demo, showing off a little bit more of what we can expect from the action-oriented Final Fantasy spinoff. The demo gets... interesting. In one cutscene, Jack, the main character, peaced out after a boss fight in hilarious fashion. Players shared the cutscene all over social media with an air of alarmed confusion, but I am here to state for the record that if all of Stranger of Paradise is going to be like that moment, this game is going to kick so much ass.

When Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Originwas first announced, fans were a bit surprised since the game is being developed by Team Ninja of Dead or Alive fame. Team Ninja is also behind the Dynasty Warriors-...

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Facebook is coming back after a six-hour outage

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Facebook is back online after a six-hour outage due to DNS routing problems. The outage took down Instagram, Whatsapp, Messenger, and Oculus VR as well. For some, those services are back online now; however, after a DNS issue like this, it could take hours for everything to work properly on every network.

The outage started just before noon ET on Monday. It was the most significant outage for Facebook since a 2019 incident took its site offline for more than 24 hours. Journalist Brian Krebs cites a trusted source who told him the incident didn’t have any malicious origins. Instead, they said it started with a routine BGP update that went wrong, wiping out the DNS routing information that Facebook needs so that other networks can find its...

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The Epic Games Store is getting better achievements next week

The Epic Games Store is taking a bit step towards further competing with more established PC game stores like Steam next week with a proper achievement system (called, of course, “Epic Achievements”).

To start, Epic Achievements will only be available on a few games, including Rocket League, Hades, Pillars of Eternity, Kena, Zombie Army 4, and _Alan Wake Remastered._Achievements will be broken up into four levels: Bronze (which award 5-45 XP), Silver (50-95 XP), Gold (100-200 XP), and Platinum (which is awarded upon achieving 1000 XP in a game and awards players with an additional 250 XP on their profiles).

Games that are updated to support Epic Achievements will now show those achievements on the game’s page in the store,...

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T-Mobile’s Google partnership now includes an ‘exclusive’ cloud storage plan

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

T-Mobile and Google have announced they’re offering an “exclusive” plan with 500GB of Google One cloud storage for T-Mobile customers starting October 12th. The plan will cost $5 per month, the latest addition in an ongoing partnership between the search giant and the mobile carrier.

Google offers Google One plans in a variety of sizes but, up until this point, didn’t have a 500GB tier, jumping from 200GB for $2.99 per month straight to 2TB for $9.99 per month. Anyone with a Google account gets 15GB for free, but T-Mobile’s offer could work as a nice middle ground if you’ve started to store more of your files in Google Drive and Google Photos. T-Mobile also says the plan can be shared with up to five other people, whether or not they...

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Locked out and totally down: Facebook is scrambling to fix massive outage

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A prolonged, global outage of Facebook’s apps has the company’s engineers scrambling to fix the issue at one of its data centers in California, according to two people familiar with the situation.

The outage, which began around 11:40AM ET on Monday, has brought down all of Facebook’s apps — including Instagram and WhatsApp — globally, affecting billions of users and millions of advertisers. Inside Facebook, the outage has also broken nearly all of the internal systems employees use to communicate and work.

Several employees told The Verge they’ve resorted to talking through their work-provided Outlook email accounts since Facebook mainly runs on an internal version of the social network that is currently not accessible. While employees...

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How to upgrade to Windows 11 without waiting in line

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

Windows 11 is now available and will be rolling out to millions of PCs worldwide. But, as with any new OS rollout, it’s not going to happen overnight, and many Windows users will be waiting for a while until that magic upgrade notice appears. Don’t want to wait? You don’t have to — you can, with just a little effort, download and install the new version of Windows right now.

Keep in mind, though, that unlike previous versions of Windows, you may not be invited to install Windows 11 if your machine isn’t considered up to its standard. That doesn’t mean that you can’t install the new OS — Microsoft has said if you have an older machine, you will be able to access Windows 11, but you’ll have to download an ISO file of Windows 11 and install...

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Acer’s new 17.3-inch Nitro 5 seems like a lot of bang for your buck

Acer

Acer has refreshed its Nitro 5 lineup of entry-level gaming laptops for the second half of 2021, and its new 17.3-inch model launching in mid-October seems particularly impressive given its $1,199.99 price. Its 1080p display has a 144Hz refresh rate, and it comes equipped with an 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processor and Nvidia’s RTX 3050 Ti graphics chip. (Acer hasn’t specified the CPU model or what the maximum graphics power of the GPU will be.) Other specs include 16GB of DDR4 RAM and a 1TB SSD. That sounds like a solid gaming laptop to me, so long as you’re not expecting too much out of it.

If you want something smaller, Acer also has a 15.6-inch version coming in mid-October for $769.99. It also has a 144Hz refresh rate screen, but as...

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Planning to upgrade to Windows 11? A checklist before you do

I don’t know what else to call it: the Windows 11 upgrade situation is a confusing mess. Depending on when your PC was built, which components you chose, and how it was configured, there’s a decent chance Microsoft will try to scare you away from installing the free upgrade, which is available a day early today. Millions of people will likely be told their systems are incompatible, and Microsoft is reserving the right to withhold security updates if you install on older systems.

But as far as we can tell, Windows 11 is largely Windows 10 with a fresh coat of paint, and there’s a strong chance your Windows 10 computer will run Windows 11 just fine. Do we recommend it? Not necessarily, but this article might help you figure out whether...

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Windows 11 review: a familiar home that’s still being renovated

Microsoft’s new OS is a work in progress

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How to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 for free

Microsoft’s free Windows 11 upgrade from Windows 10 is now rolling out. Microsoft is starting to offer the free upgrade to new devices that are still shipping with Windows 10, before making the OS available to other eligible existing hardware.

Not every existing PC running Windows 10 will be able to upgrade to Windows 11, though. Windows 11 will require Intel 8th Gen Coffee Lake or Zen 2 CPUs and up, TPM 2.0 (Trusted Platform Module) support, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. That leaves millions of PCs unable to officially upgrade to Windows 11, although there will be unsupported workarounds if you really want Windows 11.

Microsoft is also gradually rolling out Windows 11, so the free upgrade won’t be offered to all existing PCs that...

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Microsoft releases Windows 11 a day early

Windows 11 is now officially available to download. While Microsoft is launching Windows 11-powered hardware worldwide on October 5th, the company has made the OS update available early for eligible devices in New Zealand and beyond. If you’ve purchased a Windows 10 machine recently, that means you should be able to upgrade to Windows 11 right now.

For everyone else, the rollout of Windows 11 will be gradual. Microsoft says existing Windows 10 devices that are eligible for the Windows 11 upgrade will start to be able to upgrade today, but it will be mostly new hardware that will receive the upgrade immediately. Microsoft says, “We expect all eligible Windows 10 devices to be offered the upgrade to Windows 11 by mid-2022.”

You can check...

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Exposure to extreme heat grew drastically in the world’s cities

People resting in a lawn on a hot summer day, at Rajpath near Vijay Chowk, on June 30, 2021 in New Delhi, India. As the monsoon continued to play truant, heatwave in Delhi NCR turned severe recording the highest maximum temperature of the season at 43.5 degree Celsius. | Photo by Sanjeev Verma/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

Exposure to dangerous levels of heat and humidity in cities across the world has exploded over the past three decades, according to new research. In a study of more than13,000 cities, the number of people exposed to extremely hot and humid days in a given year (measured in “person-days”) tripled between 1983 and 2016.

Extreme heat is already a leading weather-related killer

It’s a symptom of two trends colliding: urban population growth and rising global average temperatures. Cities often reach higher temperatures than surrounding rural areas because they’re typically designed in a way that traps heat. So when people flock to urban centers, they’re also flocking to places where they could be at greater risk of heat-related illness and...

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OnePlus 9s get new look and features in OxygenOS 12

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Now that OnePlus is a sub-brand of the Oppo family, the two companies not only merged their R&D departments in early 2021, but they are also consolidating code for their two Android-based operating systems. While OxygenOS 12 will be used on global OnePlus phones, ColorOS 12 will only be on China-only Oppo and OnePlus phones.

Alongside the release of Android 12 to AOSP today, OnePlus is releasing the first open beta of OxygenOS 12 to the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro now, while those with older models will have to wait for a later update. Once this version is deemed stable, it is likely a full version will be released within a month, according to XDA Developers.

New Look

The new and improved OxygenOS 12 is colorful and minimalist like “J...

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How to preorder the Apple Watch Series 7

The Apple Watch Series 7 features larger screens. | Image: Apple

Like clockwork, Apple announced a new Apple Watch model at its September “California Streaming” event alongside the iPhone 13, iPad, and iPad Mini. The Apple Watch Series 7 is the latest flagship and sits atop Apple’s current lineup of smartwatches, which still includes the SE and Series 3 rounding out the line. Featuring a slightly revamped design and larger display, the Series 7 comes in either a 41mm (up from 40mm) configuration starting at $399 or a 45mm (up from 44mm) configuration — each with optional cellular radios. After Apple’s initial announcement billed them for release “later this fall,” we now know the new models are set to release on October 15th, and you can preorder them on Apple’s site beginning Friday, October 8th at...

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Twitter is up, Facebook is down, and Jack Dorsey is laughing

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey appears to be getting just as much schadenfreude out of today’s global Facebook outage as anyone. The microblogging chief is tweeting through Facebook’s DNS issues by dunking on the company amid its latest round of scrutiny from The Wall Street Journal, 60 Minutes, and lawmakers.

WhatsApp trying to be cute on Twitter? Dorsey is there to remind you of the drama over WhatsApp’s privacy policy.

Twitter users suggesting Facebook’s domain name is somehow for sale? Dorsey wants a piece of the action — and to push Kanye West’s new album for some reason (to be clear, it does not appear that Facebook’s domain name is actually for sale, and Dorsey almost certainly knows this as well).

And...

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Ring’s Halloween doorbell Chimes return and new spooky quick replies arrive

Ring brings spooky ringtones to its video doorbells in time for Halloween. | Image: Ring

Following in the now annual tradition of the spooky smart home, Ring has released its seasonal ding dongs. In honor of the festive season, you can turn your Ring Video Doorbell’s interior Chime’s tone to a screeching cat, a creaky door, or my personal favorite, the creepy laugh, for the month of October. There are a handful of other scary tones also, nine in total, which is eight more than Google is offering on its Nest doorbell.

To up the spooky ante this year, Ring has a new trick as an extra treat: a selection of Halloween-themed Quick Replies, a free feature that lets your doorbell answer for you. Now, when a visitor presses the Ring buzzer, it can talk back to them with these additions to the standard preset responses:

“Tell us...

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Is Facebook down right now? This global outage is tough on everyone

When something like Facebook drops off the internet, there are massive knock-on effects. For example, a website that’s meant to tell you if services are down, called Is It Down Right Now, is struggling mightily under the load of people trying to see Instagram’s status. Cloudflare, a company that runs a DNS service (DNS acts like a map for your web browser when it’s trying to find a website and is also the likely culprit when it comes to major outages), reports that it’s had to mobilize extra resources to keep up with the traffic of people trying to load Facebook (or Instagram or WhatsApp) over and over.

If you need to check if other sites are down, you do still have options. There’s the venerable DownDetector, as well as Down for...

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Blue Origin’s ideas to mimic SpaceX sound pretty brutal for employees

Image: Blue Origin

In an attempt to recreate SpaceX’s success, executives at spaceflight venture Blue Origin once praised the rival company’s “burnout” culture as a working labor strategy, with some managers arguing that Blue Origin needs to “get more” out of employees and encourage them to come in on the weekends. The grueling working strategies were summed up in a 2018 memo compiled by Blue Origin executives, a copy of which was viewed by The Verge.

Parts of the memo were quoted in an alarming Lioness essay published on Thursday, which alleged a sexist and unsafe work culture at Blue Origin, founded by former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. The essay was written by Alexandra Abrams, the former head of employee communications at Blue Origin, along with 20 present...

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Android 12 review: it’s mostly about the looks

There are a just a few noteworthy features in this design-focused update

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Android 12 will be coming to Pixel phones in the ‘next few weeks’

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge

Google’s latest major Android update, Android 12, isn’t available to the general public just yet, but it’s getting closer. The company wrote on its Android Developers site that it pushed the source to Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and is “officially” releasing the update. Despite Android 12 being technically available, you won’t find it appearing as an update on your Pixel phone for the “next few weeks,” according to the post.

When it does launch, it’ll come to the Pixel 3, Pixel 3A, Pixel 4, Pixel 4A, Pixel 4A 5G, Pixel 5, and Pixel 5A phones (wow, Google sure makes a lot of these now). It’s the software that you’ll see on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro when those launch later this year.

According to Google, it’ll also come to...

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Facebook is down, along with Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Oculus VR

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Just as Facebook’s Antigone Davis was live on CNBCdefending the company’s policies and its handling of research data suggesting Instagram is harmful to teens, its network of services suddenly went offline. On Twitter, Facebook communications exec Andy Stone says “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

A peek at Down Detector (or your Twitter feed) reveals the problems are widespread. While it’s unclear exactly why they are unreachable for so many people, but a peek at their DNS records shows that, like last week’s Slack outage, the problem is apparently DNS (it’s always DNS). Cloudflare...

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Netflix launches ‘Play Something’ for Android users

Image: Netflix

Netflix is officially bringing its shuffle feature to its Android mobile users.

The company originally began testing the Play Something feature back in April, but it’s officially launching the feature globally on Android today. The tool — which lets Netflix choose something for you to watch — is now available on TV and Android mobile devices, but it’s not supported on iOS just yet. Netflix said that it will begin testing the shuffle function on iOS in the coming months, though.

Separately, Netflix is also launching its Fast Laughs feature — which rolled out on iOS earlier this year — on Android mobile devices today in select markets, including the US, Australia, Canada, Ireland, India, Malaysia, Philippines, and the UK. The tool works...

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How to use Google’s budget feature on Android so you don’t overspend

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

Google has provided a budgeting feature in its Play Store that allows Android users to establish a monthly maximum they want to spend on digital content. This applies to apps, games, movies, TV shows, music, ebooks, and so on. As you get close to reaching your budget limit, you’ll see an alert that you’re nearing it — or have gone over the amount you specified.

You access it like this:

• Open the Play Store on your Android device, tap on your personal icon on the upper right side, and select “Payments & subscriptions.”
• From there, select “Budget & history.”
• You’ll see the amount you spent during the current month. Choose the “Set budget” option and enter the amount you’re comfortable spending on your apps, music, movies, TV shows, and...

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