Facebook’s new $10 million fund for VR creators is hopefully just the beginning

A screenshot from Horizon Worlds. | Image: Facebook

Facebook has announced a $10 million Creator Fund to encourage people to build experiences on its Horizon VR platform, which it is now calling Horizon Worlds. Although Horizon Worlds is still in beta, the company clearly wants to get more people making content for the platform to offer more experiences that could be interesting to users.

The funds will be given out “over the next year” in three main buckets:

1. A series of community competitions to build “the very best worlds in Horizon.” Facebook will give up to $10,000 in cash for the top three entrants in the competitions.
2. A Creator Accelerator Program that’s “designed to give people from diverse backgrounds an advanced crash course in Horizon Worlds creation.” Facebook finished a p...

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Tinder and Lyft partner so you can send your match a ride for an IRL date

Lyft and Tinder have partnered to offer free rides | Tinder

Dating app Tinder and ride-hailing company Lyft are partnering on a new feature that lets Tinder members buy a Lyft ride for a potential date. Tinder first teased the new feature in March and is now rolling it out to its subscribers as a way to “get back to making IRL connections.”

Tinder members can access the Lyft integration from a new Explore section of Tinder’s app, where they can buy a Lyft ride credit for a person they’ve matched with. The person buying the credit doesn’t get any details about the recipient's address but can set the location, time, and value of the credit they want to purchase. Then, the recipient gets a link via either a phone number or email address.

Tinder calls the feature a “thoughtful gesture while...

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After Epic v. Apple, a small developer is challenging Apple’s in-app payment system

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The ambiguous finish to the Epic v. Apple trial opened a tiny crack in Apple’s control over in-app payments on the iPhone — and now, a small developer is trying to crawl through it.

A company called Paddle has announced its own in-app payment system that will take a smaller cut than Apple’s system — 5 to 10 percent, instead of the 15 to 30 percent cut claimed by Apple. It’s a way around the commission fees that started the fight with Epic in the first place and likely to be the beginning of a new fight for developers.

Paddle’s system is designed to take advantage of the Epic v. Apple verdict, which required Apple to allow external payment links. Prior to the verdict, an App Store rule had banned “external links, or other calls to action...

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Game developer Eidos-Montréal is switching to a four-day workweek

Image: Square Enix

Eidos-Montréal and its subsidiary Eidos-Sherbrooke are switching to a four-day workweek, the game developer announced on Thursday. The Square Enix-owned company is currently working on the next big Marvel video game adaptation, Guardians of the Galaxy.

“This initiative is another step towards the embodiment of the studio’s values, building a healthy, creative, and sustainable work environment for our employees,” studio head David Anfossi writes in the company’s blog. “The idea is not to condense the working hours into four days, but rather to review our ways of doing things and our quality time invested, with the aim of working better!”

A 32-hour workweek

Eidos-Montréal says that both studios will be closed on Fridays in the next few...

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The 2022 Geneva Motor Show is nixed thanks to COVID and the chip shortage

Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge

The 2022 Geneva International Motor Show, slated to happen in February, has been canceled as the COVID pandemic persists and the auto industry struggles with a global chip shortage.

Organizers said Thursday that there are still too many “uncertainties” related to the pandemic and the shortage for automakers to commit to the show, which usually serves as a showcase for wild supercars, concepts, and prototypes. The hope is to have “a more impactful show in 2023” with more virtual presentations.

“We have pushed very hard and tried everything to reactivate the Geneva International Motor Show in 2022,” Maurice Turrettini, who runs the committee in charge of the show, said in a statement. “Despite all our efforts, we have to face the facts and...

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Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City trailer goes back to the beginning

Image: Sony Pictures Entertainment

Sony Pictures Entertainment has released a new trailer for Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, the next live-action film based on the popular horror video game franchise, ahead of the movie’s November 24th release in theaters.

The movie, which is a reboot for the film side of the franchise, looks to be filled with Resident Evil hallmarks. It takes place in Raccoon City, series mainstays Claire Redfield, Leon Kennedy, Jill Valentine, and Chris Redfield are all featured, something about the Umbrella Corporation is apparently at the heart of the conflict, and the main characters look like they will spend some time fleeing zombies in a spooky mansion. (There’s even a part in the trailer where a zombie dog shatters a window.)

Here’s the...

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What’s the best student laptop? We asked students

The Dell XPS 13 is one of the best laptops for high school and college students. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Shopping for a laptop can be stressful — doubly stressful if you or your children will be learning online for the first time. Kids of different ages have a range of different laptop use cases and different needs. And as the choices for best laptop and best Chromebook evolve, so do students’ needs. So I spoke to some experts on the subject: students themselves.

My recommendations here are meant to accommodate a variety of preferences and price ranges. But they’re a jumping-off point rather than an exhaustive list: every student is different. Before making a decision, you’ll want to make sure you read reviews and try out devices yourself if you can. I’ll do my best to keep this article up to date with items that are in stock.

Best laptop...

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Kathryn Hahn’s WandaVision villain could be getting her own Disney Plus show

Image: Marvel Studios / Disney Plus

A WandaVision spinoff series starring Kathryn Hahn is reportedly in the works for Disney Plus, Variety reports.

In the show, Hahn would reprise her role as the meddling witch Agatha Harkness, with WandaVision head writer Jac Schaeffer serving as both writer and executive producer on the project. Variety’s report does note that the project is still in development, meaning that there’s a chance that Disney and Marvel may not actually go through with the project.

Spoilers forWandaVisionahead

Hahn was arguably the breakout star of WandaVision. She starts the show as just Wanda and Vision’s overly inquisitive neighbor, before being fully revealed in the viral and Emmy-award winning hit song “Agatha All Along” as the witch Agatha Harkness,...

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YouTube cancels Rewind for good after years of everyone hating it

YouTube

YouTube Rewind — the company’s annual year-end round-up of trends, creators, memes, and the most popular videos on the site — has been canceled for good, the company confirmed to TubeFilter today.

Thank you to all the creators involved in Rewind - we’ll be for your Rewinds as we refocus our energies on celebrating you and the trends that make YouTube with a different and updated kind of experience - stay tuned! → https://t.co/kI69C24eL0

— YouTube Creators (@YouTubeCreators) October 7, 2021

Instead, YouTube will “refocus our energies on celebrating you and the trends that make YouTube [fire emoji] with a different and updated kind of experience,” although the company didn’t elaborate further on what it’ll be replacing Rewind...

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Rivian’s IPO filing reveals Amazon’s prime influence

Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images

Plus more details about Ford’s relationship with the buzzy EV startup

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Microsoft is releasing a translucent controller for Xbox’s 20th birthday

Microsoft

Microsoft is celebrating the 20th birthday of Xbox with a couple of new, translucent accessories, including a wireless controller and a wired gaming headset. They’ll launch on November 15th, 2021 — marking 20 years to the day — and preorders are available now.

Starting with the controller, Microsoft says its translucent look is a callback to the see-through controllers that shipped with the original Xbox debug kits. There are splashes of the brand’s signature green on the Xbox home button, as well as around the D-pad and rear grips. Microsoft colored the components silver so they’d be easier to see through its casing. Internally, though, it’s the same model as the one that ships with the Series S and Series X consoles, with Bluetooth...

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US Department of Justice creates cryptocurrency enforcement unit

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The US Department of Justice has created a team to investigate cryptocurrency-related crime. The National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) will handle investigations of “crimes committed by virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, and money laundering infrastructure actors,” the agency said in a news release. Mixing and tumbling services can obscure the source of a cryptocurrency transaction, by mixing it with other funds.

Cryptocurrency is “used in a wide variety of criminal activity,” including ransomware demand payments, money laundering, and for the illegal sales of drugs, weapons, and malware, the agency noted. Several high-profile ransomware cases have involved demands in cryptocurrency, including the...

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Apple CarPlay could control more parts of your vehicle in the future

Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Ever since it was introduced in 2015, Apple CarPlay has represented a notable upgrade over the user interfaces most cars have by default, but many of our concerns about it, and Android Auto, come up due to their limitations. Newer features like dual-screen support and third-party apps like Google Maps could help, but there are still huge parts of the driving experience that exist outside of Apple’s control panel. Now, Mark Gurman reports for Bloomberg that Apple’s “IronHeart” push envisions tying settings like climate controls, seat positioning, and even specific surround sound tweaks to your iPhone.

This is a gap that Google has closed by cutting deals with automakers like Polestar, Ford, Honda, and GM to use Android Automotive as the...

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Announcing Springboard: The Verge’s documentary on the forgotten history of the Treo

A decade before Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, a tiny team of renegades imagined and tried to build the modern smartphone. Nearly forgotten by history, a little startup called Handspring tried to make the future before it was ready. In Springboard: the secret history of the first real smartphone, The Verge’s Dieter Bohn talks to the visionaries at Handspring and dives into their early successes and eventual failures.

It’s a half-hour-long documentary featuring the key players at Palm and Handspring: Donna Dubinsky, Jeff Hawkins, Ed Colligan, and more. It’s one of our most ambitious video projects to date, and we can’t wait to show it to you.

Handspring may no longer be a household name, but it was briefly one of the fastest growing...

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The Verge is now on your smart TV

Stream Verge videos in 4K on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and Android TV

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Twitch’s security problems started long before this week’s hack

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A massive security breach at Twitch has exposed a wealth of information pertaining to the website’s source code, unreleased projects, and even how much the top streamers make. As data analysts and journalists work to decipher what exactly is contained in the hundreds of gigabytes of information, others are still wondering how this happened.

Such a breach seemed like it was increasingly likely to some. The Verge has spoken to multiple sources who claim that during their time at Twitch, the company valued speed and profit over the safety of its users and security of its data.

This data breach, which Twitch blames on an error to a server configuration, is the latest in a series of security and moderation problems that have plagued the...

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How Alan Wake Remastered strikes a balance between new and old

“Remaster” can be a nebulous term in video games, covering anything from direct ports on modern platforms to wholesale graphical overhauls. Alan Wake Remastered, which was released this week, lands somewhere in the middle and feels like an appropriate use of the term. The Xbox 360 action thriller from 2010 hasn’t been changed all that much, but Remedy and co-developer D3T have done enough to make it feel more at home on current hardware.

Alan Wake isn’t exactly a lost classic. The Xbox 360 version is downloadable on Xbox One and Series consoles, and the PC version on Steam holds up pretty well at higher resolutions and frame rates. That said, it never came out for PlayStation platforms, and Remedy felt there was an opportunity to bring...

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It’s harder to resist Apple’s AirPods when they’re just $109

Apple

Apple’s AirPods are no stranger to a decent deal, but they’re selling for close to their lowest price yet at Amazon and Walmart. You can pick up the set that includes a wired charging case for $109 (originally $159). These don’t have the same great sound quality or active noise cancellation found in the more costly AirPods Pro. Still, the standard AirPods might surprise you. I picked up a set a few months ago after being a holdout, and they sound good enough for casual listening, but the best feature to me is their fast and strong wireless connection.

The set of AirPods that includes a wireless charging case for Qi chargers, but is otherwise the same as the set above, is down to $129 at Amazon (originally $199).

Alternatively, if you...

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The new Moto G Pure is a $159.99 4G phone with a MediaTek chip

The Moto G Pure (2021) is a 4G phone that shares many of the same specs as the Moto G Play, but is $10 cheaper. | Motorola

Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Motorola is squeezing in one more budget-friendly phone into its 2021 Moto G lineup — the Moto G Pure.

At $159.99, the Moto G Pure is the least expensive member of Motorola’s lineup, with the already-released Moto G Play only costing about $10 more at $169 (before discounts). Both the Moto G Power and the G Stylus, on the other hand, cost significantly more at $199 and $299, respectively.

The biggest difference between the Moto G Pure and the G Play is in their processors. The G Pure uses the MediaTek Helio G25, while the G Play uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 460 chip from 2020. Based on processor comparison data from Nanoreview.net, the Snapdragon 460 is the faster and more energy-efficient...

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Microsoft Surface Go 3 review: left behind

The tradeoffs aren’t worth it anymore

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Pixel 6’s rumored 23W wireless charging stand and more details leak early

A Pixel 6 handset on its rumored wireless charging stand. | Image: EVLeaks

Leaked images of Google’s upcoming Pixel 6 have given us our best look yet at new features coming to the search giant’s next flagship smartphone. The images, which were leaked by Evan Blass, reveal shots of a second generation Pixel Stand wireless charger, user interface details, and camera specs, and include a mention of face unlock biometric security. They’ve arrived a little under two weeks before the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are due to be officially announced on October 19th.

There’s not much in these pictures that hasn’t already leaked, but what they offer is a better look at the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro’s rumored features. The beefy new Pixel Stand, for example, is believed to support 23W fast charging according to an August leak,...

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Microsoft Kinect is back, thanks to Sky’s new all-in-one TVs

The Sky Glass camera looks like a Kinect. | Image: Sky

Sky is resurrecting the original dream of Microsoft’s Kinect accessory next year. The British satellite broadcaster announced its new Sky Glass TVs this morning, and the company has built a separate 4K camera that includes motion controls and gestures support. It even works across games, and has a social TV sharing feature built in partnership with Microsoft.

“Working with Microsoft we’re also building a fantastic feature that lets us watch TV together even if we’re miles apart,” explains Fraser Stirling, Sky’s chief product officer. “It syncs your TV with other households, with integrated video and chat on-screen, and you can choose content from the biggest channels — including Premier League matches, movies, and all your favorite...

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Anker’s new Soundcore Liberty 3 Pro earbuds support high-quality LDAC audio

Image: Anker

Anker’s Soundcore brand is today refreshing its flagship true wireless earbuds with the new $169.99 Liberty 3 Pros. Both the earbuds and their slider-style charging case look very similar to the Liberty 2 Pros, though the buds are 30 percent smaller and have an “air pressure relief structure” in their wingtips for added comfort. Anker has made more significant improvements to the features they offer: the new earbuds have active noise cancellation — you’d hope for as much at this price — and the “HearID ANC” system is optimized for efficiency and comfort. Anker says it monitors outside ambient noise while also taking in-ear pressure into account, so the level of ANC automatically adapts to the environment.

The dual-driver acoustic...

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Snap is taking action to address fentanyl dealing on Snapchat

Users will be directed to an educational portal if they search for certain keywords. | Image: Snapchat

Snapchat has announced a series of measures it’s taking to counter drug dealing on its platform, and to educate users about the dangers of fentanyl and other drugs. When users search for drug-related keywords like “fentanyl,” Snap says it will direct them to a new educational portal called Heads Up. It’s also ramping up actions against drug dealers on its platform, including improved in-app reporting tools and proactive detection.

The announcements follow a recent investigation by NBC News into a spate of deaths involving teens and young adults who were suspected of having bought fentanyl-laced drugs through the social network. The report alleged that drug dealers are able to use Snapchat to find buyers, and that the platform isn’t...

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Sky’s new Glass TVs ditch satellite dishes for Wi-Fi

Sky Glass TVs stream channels over Wi-Fi instead of satellite dishes. | Image: Sky

British Satellite broadcaster Sky is moving away from the satellite dishes that have defined its TV service for decades. Sky Glass is launching today, an ambitious effort to sell television sets that stream Sky TV content over Wi-Fi directly to consumers. There’s no external box, no satellite dish, and no need for a soundbar. Sky calls the all-in-one TV “no fuss.”

Sky Glass TVs will be available in three sizes: 43-inch, 55-inch, and 65-inch. Each 4K TV will stream Sky’s TV channels, and integrates in voice control (Hello Sky) and 21 apps to access additional content like Netflix, Spotify, or Disney Plus. Sky hasn’t named the TV manufacturer it partnered with yet, but the full specifications include a UHD Quantum Dot display, support for...

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Xbox Cloud Gaming is now fully powered by faster Xbox Series X hardware

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming service (xCloud) is now fully powered by custom Xbox Series X hardware. Microsoft tells The Verge it recently completed the upgrade, which improves both framerates and game load times for players streaming Xbox games over the web.

While Microsoft has moved Xbox Cloud Gaming to 1080p and 60fps streams in recent months, the company has yet to unlock the full potential of custom Xbox Series X hardware to deliver 4K streams. It’s not clear when this will be available, but Microsoft has been moving towards delivering Xbox Cloud Gaming beyond just mobile devices and browsers.

Microsoft is currently working on a dedicated Xbox app for TVs that will allow Xbox players to stream games without a console. Standalone...

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A text message routing company suffered a five-year-long breach

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Syniverse, a telecom company that helps carriers like Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T route messages between each other and other carriers abroad, disclosed last week that it was the subject of a possible five year long hack. If the name Syniverse sounds familiar, the company was also responsible for the disappearance of a swath of Valentine’s Day text messages in 2019.

The hack in question was brought to light in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Syniverse published last week. In it, Syniverse shares that in May 2021 it “became aware of unauthorized access to its operational and information technology systems by an unknown individual or organization.” The company did its due diligence notifying law enforcement and conducting an...

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Netflix will edit phone numbers out of Squid Game following prank calls

Image: Netflix

Netflix’s immensely popular Squid Game is getting an edit after phone numbers shown in the series dialed real numbers, leading to what the company described as “unfortunate” prank dials.

The Korean drama about a sadistic “game,” in which players find themselves with no option but to participate in a series of twisted challenges, contains visible phone numbers in multiple scenes (a phone number is also clearly visible in the Squid Game trailer).

Reuters, which earlier reported the news, cited Netflix and production company Siren Pictures as saying they purposefully did not include a complete number and weren’t aware the number shown would reach a real line.

Netflix confirmed to The Verge that the numbers that appear in Squid Game will be...

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Sony didn’t close the PS3 and Vita stores, but it’s making it hard to shop at them

The PlayStation 3. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Sony is making it a little bit harder to buy games digitally on the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Vita. Beginning October 27th, you won’t be able to use a credit card, debit card, or PayPal to purchase games or add money to your wallet on those systems, according to a support document. Instead, you’ll have to use a PlayStation Store gift card or load up the wallet tied to your account on the PlayStation Store on the web, your phone, or on a PS4 or PS5.

This disappointing change is the latest in something of an ongoing story of Sony’s support for its older consoles. In March, Sony announced it would be closing the PlayStation Store for the PS3 and Vita, but it reversed that plan a few weeks later, saying it “made the wrong decision.”...

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Windows 11 is causing performance issues for some AMD Ryzen processors

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge

Windows 11 is officially out, but if you’ve got an AMD Ryzen processor, you might want to hold off on updating for a bit: the company is reporting that its chips might have issues with the new OS that could cause performance drops of up to 15 percent in some cases.

AMD and Microsoft have found two main issues with Windows 11 on Ryzen. The first is that Windows 11 may cause L3 cache latency to triple. AMD says that the issue could cause 3–5 percent worse performance in most affected applications, while some games (AMD specifically calls out those “commonly used for eSports”) could see performance dips of 10–15 percent.

Windows 11 is also having issues with AMD’s “preferred core” technology, which usually aims to shift threads over to the...

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