Google Home app gets new Photo Frame settings and possible Weather Frog display option

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Google Home, the companion app for Google’s smart home products, is changing the way users interact with photos on the app and on Nest Hub devices. 9to5Google first noticed the changes, which include a revamped Photo Frame settings menu.

Now, when you use Google Home to change the displayed album while your Nest Hub is idle, you’ll see a carousel-style UI that gives you the option to choose from curated groups of photos, categorized as “Select family & friends,” “Recent highlights,” and “Favorites,” 9to5Google reports. Scroll past that, and you’ll be able to see all the albums that you’ve created.

A preview window appears at the bottom of the page, and you can swipe through the preview carousel to see how your pictures will look when...

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Go read this story about how online orders are burning out Chipotle workers

To go bags, to go bags everywhere.

Chipotle is a pioneer of the fast assembly-line restaurant format, where you get in line and guide a human worker through the process to build your meal while you watch. It’s a foolproof system, or so I thought before I checked out this investigative story by MarketWatch revealing how Chipotle is handling the growth of online orders in a pandemic world. Once I read the accounts of various Chipotle employees interviewed in the MarketWatch article, I was stunned by what they really go through.

One employee detailed the struggle with the onslaught of online orders:

“People would just stare at us, angry,” he said. “Orders were coming in faster than they could be made. We would frequently see orders of 75, 80, 90 items within a 15-minute...

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Apple quietly discontinues the 21.5-inch Intel-powered iMac

Photo by Olly Curtis/MacFormat Magazine/Future via Getty Images

Apple has apparently pulled its 21.5-inch Intel-based iMac from shelves (via MacRumors). Its discontinuation doesn’t come as much of a surprise, now that Apple is transitioning from using Intel processors to its in-house M1 chip.

The 21.5-inch iMac was still available after Apple’s October 18th Unleashed event — it didn’t appear to go missing until sometime this week, according to MacRumors. The $1,099 21.5-inch iMac, which came with a 2.3GHz dual-core 7th-Gen Intel Core i5 and an Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640, is no longer found on the list of available iMacs on Apple’s online store. A “Buy” button also doesn’t appear for the 21.5-inch iMac on Apple’s product comparison page.

We reached out to Apple to confirm the changes, but didn’t...

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Mac-shaped pillow makers are back so you can cover your couch in computers

Image: Throwboy

A company called Throwboy is back with another Kickstarter for a collection of pillows shaped like classic Macs, following its 2018 line of Apple-inspired plushes. It’s fittingly called The Iconic Pillow Collection 2, and features pillows shaped like soft versions of Apple’s Lisa, iBook, and both the cheese grater and cube flavors of Power Mac. For Apple history buffs who want to spruce up their living or bedrooms, it may be a campaign worth investigating.

In its original collection (which featured pillows shaped like the Finder icon, original Macintosh, and iPods), Throwboy tactfully didn’t mention specific computer names, and it refrained from doing so this time around as well. The Lisa-shaped pillow is called the 1983, the iMac...

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Listen to Device Orchestra cover the Ghostbusters theme using electric toothbrushes and a steam iron

An inspired musician can use pretty much anything as an instrument, but this just-in-time for Halloween cover of the Ghostbusters theme song goes in an unexpected direction. Device Orchestra is dedicated to posting music videos recorded solely with the sounds of common household devices. It’s the work of a Finnish YouTuber who’s been creating gadget-powered covers since 2014 (via Wikitubia). This time, Device Orchestra busted out 14 gadgets for its composition — including electric toothbrushes adorned with googly eyes.

One electric toothbrush with pipe cleaners for arms stands front and center, belting out the familiar chorus in a tone comparable to a musically-inclined bumblebee. It might be the star of the show, but it has plenty of...

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The Nikon Z9’s new sensor could be the start of a big shift in photography

Nikon’s Z9 pro mirrorless camera has no mechanical shutter, relying solely on an electronic shutter. | Image: Nikon

Nikon recently announced its new flagship camera, the Z9. This camera represents Nikon’s first mirrorless camera fully geared towards professional photographers and hybrid shooters, with a huge spec list designed for use in the demanding fields of photojournalism, sports, nature, birding, and any other use-cases that call for a camera that shoots incredibly fast at high resolution. The $5,500 Z9 is also Nikon’s first camera to omit a traditional mechanical shutter, allowing it to achieve new levels of speed and autofocus performance.

Faster speed is great, especially for sports photographers. But it’s interesting to think about where this technology could be used to take traditional-style cameras in the future. This might be the first...

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Roblox has been down for more than a day and it’s not because of Chipotle

Photo Illustration by Thiago Prudêncio/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Roblox has been down for more than a day, with the game and its related website offline for millions of players. The hugely popular game-creating platform first started having issues more than 30 hours ago, at 7PM ET on October 28th. Roblox said it was “working hard to get things back to normal,” and that it has identified “the root cause as [an] internal system issue.”

It’s not clear exactly why Roblox is still down, but some players have been speculating the outage could be related to a Chipotle promotion in the game. Chipotle is giving away $1 million worth of free burritos on Roblox as part of Halloween event in the game. The experience went live at 6:30PM ET on October 28th, just before the widespread Roblox outage.

Still making...

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Facebook puts tighter restrictions on vaccine misinformation targeted at children

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Just as the FDA officially approved Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for kids between the ages of five and 11, Meta, Facebook’s brand new identity, announced that it’s rolling out stricter policies for vaccine misinformation targeted at children (via Engadget). The platform previously put restrictions on COVID-19 vaccine misinformation in late 2020, but didn’t have policies specific to kids.

Meta says in a new blog post that it’s partnering with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to take down harmful content related to children and the COVID-19 vaccine. This includes any posts that imply the COVID-19 vaccine is unsafe, untested, or ineffective for children. Additionally, Meta will...

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Global climate talks in Glasgow aren’t very global

Climate activists “set fire” to George Square, Glasgow, with an art installation of faux flames, smoke, and banners, and giant fire extinguishers, creating a field of climate fire to welcome world leaders to Glasgow for the Cop26 conference. Picture date: Thursday October 28, 2021. | Photo by Andrew Milligan/PA Images via Getty Images

One of the most anticipated rounds of international climate negotiations this decade will go down at a United Nations summit in Glasgow over the next couple weeks. But many representatives from the frontlines of the climate crisis won’t be there: people from islands that may be lost under rising seas, representatives of indigenous tribes, and activists who typically turn high-level negotiations into boisterous events with their demonstrations.

The 26th annual United Nations Conference of Parties, or COP26, is the five-year anniversary of the Paris climate accords. Signatories, which included nearly every country on Earth, agreed to limit global warming to a level that might be manageable for humanity. Those nations are not close to...

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Minnesota man charged with illegally streaming MLB, NFL, NHL and NBA games for profit

Feds say a Minnesota man illegally streamed major league sports games | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Federal authorities have accused a Minnesota man with trying to extort $150,000 from Major League Baseball after hacking into its computer system. The US Attorney’s office for the southern district of New York and the FBI have charged Joshua Streit, 30, with illegally streaming content from MLB, as well as from the National Hockey League (NHL), the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the National Football League (NFL).

The law enforcement agencies said in a news release that between 2017 through August of 2021, Streit operated a website where he illegally streamed the sports leagues’ live games for profit. He gained unauthorized access to the leagues’ websites, and misappropriated login credentials from legitimate subscribers,...

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Save on spooky games to play during Halloween and more

Okay, Deathloop isn’t scary, but the deal on it is scary good.

It’s the spooky holiday this weekend, but you probably already knew that since Halloween decorations have likely been up in your town for the last month and a half. But what hasn’t been around as long (and will disappear faster than those decorations) are the deals below. To match the mood, we’re going to share special discounts on scary video games that you need to play if you’re trying to get in the holiday spirit this weekend. Just so you know, Steam’s Halloween sale ends Monday, November 1st, likely at 1PM ET / 10AM PT. Following that gaming-centric section, you’ll find deals on tech gadgets that we think you’ll enjoy.

Gaming deals

Okay, so _Deathloop_is far from being a scary game at its core (though it can become _quite_tense when...

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Honor 50 review: lose a Huawei, gain a Google

Google’s software makes the Honor 50 a contender rather than competitive

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These might be the first leaked photos of Intel’s Arc Alchemist graphics card

Intel is building dedicated gaming graphics cards, due out in Q1 2022, and we may have just gotten our first look at the big one, the Arc Alchemist. Here are some leaked images from YouTuber Moore’s Law is Dead (via Videocardz):

Arc is Intel’s new GPU brand, designed to compete with Nvidia GeForce and AMD Radeon, and the Arc Alchemist is the first GPU in the company’s roadmap that’s actually scheduled to release. The company had previously built the Intel DG1 to test the GPU waters, but that was a comparatively weak card, based on the Xe LP (low-power) graphics architecture, and consumers couldn’t actually buy it. This new card is part of Intel’s Xe HPG roadmap (high-power / gaming) and is said to deliver...

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Nintendo is officially closing its Redwood City and Toronto offices

Illustrations by Alex Castro / The Verge

Nintendo is closing its Redwood City, California and Toronto, Canada offices, the company confirmed in a statement to The Verge. Kotaku reported on the closure of the Redwood City offices earlier on Friday.

Here is the company’s full statement on the decision:

Nintendo of America headquarters are in Redmond, WA, and Vancouver, BC. We are moving more of our employees and operations into those headquarters and will be closing small satellite offices in Toronto, ON, and Redwood City, CA, over time.

Devon Pritchard, Executive Vice President, Business Affairs and Publisher Relations for Nintendo of America (NOA), will assume interim leadership of Sales, Marketing and Communications following the departure of Nick Chavez. Ms. Pritchard will...

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Fitness app Supernatural is becoming part of Meta after Facebook touts VR fitness

Image: Supernatural

Meta has announced that the studio behind VR workout game Supernatural will be joining the company, adding to the roster of studios owned by what used to be known as Facebook’s Oculus division. The company says that Within, the company behind Supernatural, will continue to work on the popular fitness app and will also help Meta’s Reality Labs “enhance future hardware to support VR fitness apps.”

Meta scooping up Within isn’t necessarily a surprise move: it’s spent the last few years acquiring tons of popular VR studios, like Lone Echo devs Ready at Dawn, the team behind Beat Saber, and others working on projects that some have called the VR versions of Fortnite and Roblox.

Given Meta’s focus on its headsets as workout tools...

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All iOS users can now Super Follow on Twitter

Image: Twitter

Twitter is allowing all iOS users to Super Follow select creators. The feature, first released in September and only available in the US and Canada, allows users to monetize their Twitter account and create exclusive content through monthly subscriptions.

Twitter first announced Super Follows in February and rolled it out to select creators in September. Within the first two weeks, subscribers had contributed around $6,000, according to SensorTower.

It’s Super Following time –– everyone globally on iOS now has the option to Super Follow select creators.

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) October 28, 2021

Users interested in Super Follows have to meet the minimum requirements, according to the Super Follows policy. They have to be...

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Vergecast: Facebook goes meta and reviews of the Pixel 6 and MacBook Pro

Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.

This week on The Vergecast, managing editor Alex Cranz (that’s me), deputy editor Dan Seifert (that’s not me), and senior reporter Alex Heath (also not me) join Nilay and Dieter to talk about Facebook’s big rebranding, expensive polishing cloths, our reviews of the Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, and both flavors of the new MacBook Pro.

You can listen here or in your preferred podcast player for the full discussion.

• Mark Zuckerberg on why Facebook is rebranding to Meta
• Facebook’s new name is Meta
• What is the metaverse, and do I have to care?
• F...

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Roku launches new personal-use developer kit

Image: Roku

Roku is launching a new independent developer kit that will allow developers to “experiment with and customize their devices” in personal-use capacities. Roku says it hopes the IDK will lead to innovation around internet-of-things applications, such as connecting a Roku device to a thermostat or game development.

Roku unveiled its plans for the new IDK at its online developer summit this week. The company made it clear in an announcement about the IDK that its Roku SDK will remain the primary channel development kit for commercial applications but said that the new developer kit “enables developers to explore the platform’s capabilities and personalize their Roku experience.”

The company isn’t quite clear on how developers will use the...

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iFixit actually tore down Apple’s backordered $19 screen cloth

Image: iFixit

I can’t say I expected there to be more news about Apple’s $19 Screen Polishing cloth, but here we are. Not only has iFixit given it the teardown treatment and a (perhaps slightly tongue-in-cheek) repair score, but it’s apparently become one of Apple’s hardest-to-get products. And yes, to reiterate, we are still talking about a cloth made to clean your devices’ screens.

As noted by The New York Times, the 6.3-inch-sided square of fabric is now backordered, with Apple’s website saying that you won’t get it for 10-12 weeks,meaning it’ll get delivered sometime between January 7th and January 21st, 2022. If you order pretty much any configuration of the redesigned MacBook Pro that the cloth launched with, you’ll get your custom-built laptop...

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Netflix employees at the heart of the Dave Chappelle controversy file charges against the company

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Two Netflix employees at the heart of the Dave Chappelle controversy have filed labor charges against the company, alleging the streaming giant retaliated against them for engaging in protected activity.

B. Pagels-Minor, a Black trans program manager, was fired while organizing a walkout related to Netflix’s support of Chappelle’s comedy special_The Closer_, which has been widely condemned as transphobic. Terra Field, a trans software engineer, was suspended after posting a viral tweet thread about the issue.

Netflix said it fired Pagels-Minor for allegedly leaking confidential information — a charge they have categorically denied. The company said Field was suspended for attending a director-level meeting she wasn’t supposed to, though...

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iFixit teardown of the 2021 MacBook Pro reveals easier battery swaps

The trackpad has to be removed to reveal two of the pull tabs | Image: iFixit

Online tech repair guide and parts retailer iFixit has published its latest teardown for the new 2021 MacBook Pro and reveals at least one small win for reparability: the ability to replace the battery pack modules.

The battery modules in the new MacBook Pros, much like many mobile devices, are now attached via adhesive strips with pull tabs. This makes it easier to remove them, as long as none of the tabs rip while pulling. The trackpad needs to also be carefully removed to reach the remaining pull tabs.

Image: iFixit

Batteries in MacBook Pros used to have their own frame or shell, which made them easier to install or remove via screws or locking tabs (although that takes more interior space). Starting in 2012,...

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Microsoft overtakes Apple to become the world’s most valuable company

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft surpassed Apple’s market cap on Friday to become the world’s most valuable public company. The change follows Apple’s Thursday earnings, where the company posted strong results but revealed that it lost $6 billion to supply chain constraints. On Tuesday, Microsoft also shared positive earnings boosted by Office, Windows, and its cloud products.

At Friday’s market close, Microsoft’s market cap was almost $2.49 trillion while Apple’s was about $2.46 trillion, according to CNBC. This isn’t the first time Microsoft has passed Apple; the Windows-maker surpassed Apple’s market cap in 2018 for the first time since 2010 and once again in July 2020. (Alphabet has also taken the crown from Apple, surpassing Apple’s market cap in 2016.)

B...

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Nilay Patel on Facebook’s reckoning with reality—and the metaverse-size problems yet to come

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

‘It might well be unsolvable’

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Mastodon puts Trump’s social network on notice for improperly using its code

Mastodon has sent former President Donald Trump’s company a formal notification that it’s breaking the rules by using Mastodon’s open-source code to build its social network, named Truth. This news comes from a blog post by Mastodon’s founder Eugen Rochko, but others have previously pointed out that the organization behind Truth, the Trump Media and Technology Group (or TMTG), was violating Mastodon’s software license by not providing the source code for the site built on top of it. Trump’s group has 30 days from when the letter was sent to comply with the license or stop using the software, or it could lose the right to do so.

While Truth hasn’t officially launched yet, internet users discovered that a test version basically had the...

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FDA clears Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for kids ages five to 11

Photo by Dinendra Haria/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

The Food and Drug Administration authorized the Pfizer / BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for five- to 11-year-olds, opening up the shots to a new age group and ending an anxious wait for families of children in that bracket.

Children are less likely to have severe symptoms if they contract COVID-19, but they can still catch and spread the disease. Cases and deaths in children peaked in September, which was the worst month for that age group — there were over a million new cases in that group.

The authorization makes vaccination available to 28 million new people in the US. Polling in September showed that around a third of parents say that they wanted to vaccinate their five- to 11-year-old children “right away” after authorization.

The...

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AOC calls Facebook a ‘cancer to democracy’ after Meta rebrand

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) called Facebook a “cancer to democracy” in a tweet on Thursday shortly after the company announced that it was changing its corporate name to Meta to better represent its focus on building the metaverse.

“Meta as in “we are a cancer to democracy metastasizing into a global surveillance and propaganda machine for boosting authoritarian regimes and destroying civil society… for profit!” said Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday.

Meta as in “we are a cancer to democracy metastasizing into a global surveillance and propaganda machine for boosting authoritarian regimes and destroying civil society… for profit!” https://t.co/jzOcCFaWkJ

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 28, 2021

Ocasio-Cortez is one of...

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Developers can now try on Google’s Jacquard smart fabric tech

Swiping into new ideas | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Google’s Project Jacquard touch-sensitive fabric technology, first revealed at Google I/O in 2015, now has a way for interested third-party developers to integrate the tech with their own software via the new Jacquard SDK.

Previously only a handful of companies signed up for Jacquard, including Levi’s, Samsonite, and Yves Saint Laurent. Now developers can use the SDK to integrate the Jacquard tag, connecting its sensors with their apps to communicate touch and motion data.

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge

Samsonite’s Konnect-i backpack is one of very few products to integrate the touch-sensitive fibers.

Google’s ATAP (Advanced Technology and Projects) team announced its first partnership with Levi’s in...

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VESA’s new eDP 1.5 might give your next laptop slightly better battery life

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge

Don’t you love standards? I do, for the most part, particularly when they’re fixing things, and the new VESA Embedded DisplayPort 1.5 (or eDP 1.5 for short) looks likely to do that in future fancy-screened laptops. It’s promising more power savings with adaptive-sync screens, OLED panels, and displays that come with their own embedded memory for the battery saving Panel Self-Refresh (PSR) feature.

eDP is the standard for cables and ribbons that connect your high-res screen to the rest of your laptop or tablet, and technically it’s supported all those things before — but they haven’t necessarily played nicely together. For example, I had to turn off PSR when I reviewed the OLED-equipped Dell XPS 15 in 2019 because the screen was...

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Uncharted creative director Amy Hennig is making a Marvel game

Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for BAFTA LA

Amy Hennig, a former creative director at Naughty Dog who currently leads Skydance New Media, will be working on a new Marvel video game. Skydance describes the game, which is its first, as a “narrative-driven, blockbuster action-adventure game, featuring a completely original story and take on the Marvel Universe” but hasn’t said which superheroes will be featured in the game. The studio also hasn’t shared a release date (or even a release timeframe) and hasn’t said which platforms the game will be available on.

Despite how little we actually know about the game, Hennig’s involvement in a story-driven Marvel project is an intriguing proposition. Hennig served as a writer and creative director for the first three Uncharted games, so...

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A new wave of lo-fi games is reshaping horror

If on a Winter’s Night Four Travelers.

Indie developers are turning pixels into scares

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