Dell’s Luna laptop concept is all about repairability

On Tuesday, Dell announced a new design concept for a laptop that’s long lived, easy to take apart and fix, and takes a smaller toll on the climate. It’s a collection of ideas that could go a long way toward making the tech giant’s products more sustainable — depending on whether, and how, Dell decides to implement them.

Called “Concept Luna,” the proof-of-concept laptop dreamed up by Dell’s design team has a number of unusual features that are intended to make repair and maintenance easy. No screwdrivers or glue solvents are needed to pry loose a broken keyboard or peel off a cracked screen; both components simply pop free after a pair of keystones holding them in place are removed. The entire system contains far fewer screws than a...

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Spider-Man: No Way Home swings big on two decades of fan payoff

Photo: Columbia Pictures

A big, satisfying, and occasionally messy conclusion

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iFixit expands repair partnerships by building official service tools for Microsoft

iFixit’s new “debonding” tool that helps cut the adhesive holding Surface screens. | Image: iFixit

iFixit announced that it has begun selling official Microsoft Surface repair tools — but only for certain service partners. Known for its extensive online tech parts store, the company now manufactures and distributes the Microsoft-designed tools in a partnership that will give businesses and schools more options to fix the popular Surface devices.

iFixit says Microsoft reached out to the company saying it wanted to improve repairability

This new partnership is not the first OEM deal for iFixit. Motorola hasused iFixit as an official source for its OEM smartphone parts, and so has HTC with its Vive — but for the Microsoft Surface, the tools are available only to members of iFixit Pro (the company’s free wholesale program available to...

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Peter Molyneux’s NFT game will make being nice cost real money

Photo by Ferdaus Shamim/WireImage

A business simulator that’s also a business

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The metaverse is already here — and it’s full of Pokemon, Niantic CEO John Hanke explains

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

You’ll Pokémon GO into the metaverse with AR not VR

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Quentin Tarantino is working on a podcast

Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images

Hello! It’s Tuesday. Have we all enjoyed And Just Like That…, I hope? Did we all relish its podcasting angle, which has Carrie Bradshaw moving on from being a sex columnist and becoming a sex podcaster? Appropriately 2021! I hate to admit it, but I teared up at the first episode’s twist ending we all know by now. Carrie was finally going to be happy! Anyway, today’s a lighter one, other than my apparent emotional tie to a show I only watched as reruns. We’re talking about Quentin Tarantino’s new podcast, the great promo code ‘pocalypse (sorta), and moderation of live audio spaces. Off we go.

SCOOP: Quentin Tarantino is recording a podcast

The headline says it all. Quentin Tarantino, famed director of Django Unchained and the Kill Bill...

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Honda wants to use connected cars to identify hazardous road conditions

Photo by Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images

Honda announced an experiment to use its cars to collect data about hazardous road conditions. Using GPS and cameras, the Japanese automaker is gathering real-time road information about poor lane markings or potholes, which it can then send to municipalities for future improvements.

The pilot project, which is being run out of the Honda Research Institute, is the first to use connected vehicle technology to capture accurate data on road conditions, the company said. To start out, Honda is collaborating with one state, the Ohio Department of Transportation, and plans to start providing road condition data in early 2022.

“Maintaining good road conditions helps keep everyone sharing the road safe,” said Paritosh Kelkar, scientist at Honda...

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Matter’s plan to save the smart home

Matter is a new standard that promises to fix smart home interoperability — but can it deliver?

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What matters about Matter, the new smart home standard

Products that are Matter-compatible will have the Matter logo on them. | Image: CSA

How Amazon, Google, Apple, and Samsung will work with Matter, and which products you should buy.

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LastPass is going to become an independent company

LogMeIn is making LastPass an independent company. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

LogMeIn plans to spin out password management tool LastPass as a standalone company, it announced Tuesday. With the change, LastPass is promising that customers will receive enhancements on an “accelerated timeline” next year. “With a team solely dedicated to its continued innovation and growth, [LastPass] will be able to deliver even more strongly for users,” a spokesperson said.

LastPass, which LogMeIn purchased for $125 million in 2015, is a popular password management tool; it’s used by “more than 30 million users and 85,000 businesses worldwide,” according to LogMeIn, and “the significant majority” of its business is corporate customers. LogMeIn’s emphasis on LastPass’ corporate use in its press release could suggest the standalone...

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Say goodbye to your favorite podcast promo codes

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Promo codes helped build an industry, now big brands are moving in

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YouTube TV warns subscribers it could lose Disney’s channels later this week

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

Google has warned that YouTube TV could lose access to over a dozen Disney-owned channels later this week if it’s unable to renew its agreement with the company. In a blog post, YouTube TV says its current deal with Disney is due to expire this Friday, December 17th, after which the channels could disappear if it’s unable to reach a new agreement.

“Our ask of Disney, as with all of our partners, is to treat YouTube TV like any other TV provider – by offering us the same rates that services of a similar size pay, across Disney’s channels for as long as we carry them,” YouTube’s blog post reads.

Here’s the list of impacted channels. The Hollywood Reporter notes that eight ABC local stations could also disappear from YouTube TV.

• ABC News...

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Algorithms that detect cancer can be fooled by hacked images

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Artificial intelligence programs that check medical images for evidence of cancer can be duped by hacks and cyberattacks, according to a new study. Researchers demonstrated that a computer program could add or remove evidence of cancer from mammograms, and those changes fooled both an AI tool and human radiologists.

That could lead to an incorrect diagnosis. An AI program helping to screen mammograms might say a scan is healthy when there are actually signs of cancer or incorrectly say that a patient does have cancer when they’re actually cancer free. Such hacks are not known to have happened in the real world yet, but the new study adds to a growing body of research suggesting healthcare organizations need to be prepared for them.

H...

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Deplatforming Trump didn’t work

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

The ex-president is as powerful as ever, and democratic erosion is accelerating

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Google staffs up to build OS for unknown ‘innovative AR device’

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google is hiring an “Augmented Reality OS” team focused on building software for an “innovative AR device,” according to job listings spotted by 9to5Google. The team is led by Mark Lucovsky, who announced he’d joined the company this week. Lucovsky previously worked at Meta developing an in-house alternative to Android to power the company’s hardware, and also co-authored the Windows NT operating system.

According to Google’s job listings, the Augmented Reality OS team is building “the software components that control and manage the hardware on [its] Augmented Reality (AR) products.” This is far from Google’s first stab at developing AR software, and follows the company’s work on ARCore for Android and Tango. The company’s Google Glass,...

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Oppo announces Air Glass ‘assisted reality’ device

Oppo has announced the Air Glass, an AR device that’ll go on sale early next year. Oppo describes the Air Glass as an “assisted reality” product, as opposed to augmented reality, meaning it projects 2D information into your field of view rather than overlaying 3D objects onto the real world. (Yes, sort of like Google Glass.)

The Air Glass has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 4100 processor and weighs just 30g (about 1oz) in total. Oppo says it should last for 3 hours of active usage and 40 hours on standby. There are two frame designs, a silver half-frame and a black full-frame, and each is available in two sizes. The inside of the frame has a magnetic port that allows it to be attached to more conventional glasses.

The waveguide display uses a...

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Nike just bought a virtual shoe company that makes NFTs and sneakers ‘for the metaverse’

RTFKT made these A16Z sneakers to celebrate a round of venture capital funding | Image: RTFKT

One comparison I’ve heard repeatedly over the last year is that buying NFTs to “flex” on people in the metaverse is just like collecting sneakers, and now Nike is apparently trying to make sure it’s ready for the literal version of that possibility. The apparel giant just announced the acquisition of RTFKT Studios, which it calls “a leading brand that leverages cutting edge innovation to deliver next generation collectibles that merge culture and gaming.”

RTFKT claims that in February, a collaboration with teenage artist FEWOCiOUS to sell real sneakers paired with virtual ones managed to sell some 600 pairs/NFTs in just six minutes, netting over $3.1 million at the time. This was around the same early spring period when most of us were...

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Don’t buy a monitor or TV just for HDMI 2.1 — read the fine print or you might get fooled

HDMI cable shutterstock

Four years running, we’ve been jazzed by the potential of HDMI 2.1 — the relatively new video connector standard that can provide variable refresh rates (VRR), automatic low latency connections (ALLM), and of course, a giant pipe with 48Gbps of bandwidth (and fixed rate signaling) to deliver up to 10K resolution and up to a 120Hz refresh rate depending on your cable and compression.

But today, I’m learning that not only are all of those features technically optional, but that the HDMI standards body owner actually encourages TV and monitor manufacturers that have none of those things — zip, zilch, zero — to effectively lie and call them “HDMI 2.1” anyhow.

That’s the word from TFTCentral, which confronted the HDMI Licensing Administrator...

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LG made a battery-powered TV that you can wheel around on a stand

Image: LG

CES 2022 is only a few short weeks away, and you can bet we’ll see a ton of news surrounding the latest, flashiest TVs with OLED, Mini LED, MicroLED, and more. But before we get there, LG is making an early announcement to put a spotlight on two unconventional TVs that are coming next year in addition to whatever the company has in store for CES.

To me, the standout is the LG StanbyME, a 27-inch TV that can operate wirelessly on battery power and be wheeled around on its height-adjustable stand. (You can also detach the screen from the stand if you want to plop that sucker onto your lap.) When attached to the stand, the display can swivel, tilt, or be rotated to portrait orientation.

Image: LG

The stand has...

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It seems even Apple’s Eddy Cue can’t find an Xbox without Twitter

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

More than a year after their release, the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles are still very difficult to find — and it seems that even Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, is looking for some tips on Twitter on how to snag one of the elusive consoles. According to the Big Tech Alert Twitter account, he followed @XboxStockAlerts, an account that posts about Xbox console restocks, on Monday evening.

@cue (SVP Internet Services @Apple) is now following @XboxStockAlerts

— Big Tech Alert (@BigTechAlert) December 14, 2021

There could be any number of reasons why he decided to follow the account. The simplest is that he wants to get a new Xbox; maybe he’s looking to give one as a holiday gift, or perhaps he wants to jump...

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Here are the best iPad deals right now

Select iPad models go on sale quite regularly. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

We saw some of the best iPad deals of the year during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but if you missed out, there are still a couple of decent discounts available. Whether you’re after the high-end iPad Pro or the most affordable Apple tablet, the entry-level iPad, there’s a sale going on somewhere you may be interested in. Of course, it’s difficult to know exactly where you can find those deals unless you’re looking around at all of the major retailers on a daily basis. But that’s often what our deal hunters at _The Verge_are doing each and every day, so let us help you out. Below, we’ve listed each iPad model that is currently available, some of which are outgoing models with freshly introduced replacements.

The best iPad (2021) deals

...

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Hyundai Ioniq 5 pricing starts at $39,700

The Ioniq 5 is Hyundai’s first electric car built on the company’s new E-GMP platform, and its price tag has finally been confirmed. A press release from Hyundai reveals that the Ioniq 5 could set you back anywhere from $39,700 to $54,500, depending on which model you choose (via EV Pulse).

And although Hyundai recently announced the Ioniq 5 has an EPA-rated range of 300 miles, that range is only available with select models (which we’ll go over here). It’s also important to note that the prices listed here don’t include the vehicle’s $1,225 destination charge.

The base SE Standard Range is the cheapest of the bunch, but won’t be available until next year

In total, there are seven different variations of the Ioniq 5, and three trim...

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SharePlay is now available on Macs as part of the latest macOS Monterey update

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple has brought SharePlay to the Mac as part of macOS Monterey 12.1, which was released Monday. With SharePlay, you can now enjoy entertainment like movies, music, and games synchronized with your friends over FaceTime while on your Mac. (You can see a list of some supported apps here.) And if you want to share your screen with your group, SharePlay supports that as well. My colleague Monica Chin ran into some issues with SharePlay on Mac while the feature was in beta, however, so hopefully it works more smoothly now that it’s available widely.

macOS Monterey 12.1 adds some features also found in iOS 15.2. There’s the new Apple Music Voice Plan, a more affordable tier of the music streaming service that lets you access music with just...

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WhatsApp will hide your ‘last seen’ status from strangers by default

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

WhatsApp is rolling out a new privacy measure that hides your “last seen” status from people you don’t know or haven’t chatted with in the app (via WABetaInfo). Previously, WhatsApp set the feature on “Everyone” by default, allowing anyone on WhatsApp to see your status. WhatsApp’s new update limits the visibility of your status to the people you’ve added on the platform, and sets the feature to “My Contacts” by default instead.

It’s a new security feature. Got this reply from support today. If the person has not got your number in their contacts, or you haven’t sent one message between you, last seen/online is no longer visible. pic.twitter.com/qLPtC6rPOA

— PsyColette (@NiHaolain) December 7, 2021

In a post on Twitter, a user...

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Google starts rolling out major Pixel 6 update with camera and fingerprint sensor improvements

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

The Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are today receiving their most significant software update since Google released the phones in October. Last week, the company detailed a very lengthy list of bug fixes and improvements that are included in the December update, which has now started rolling out to both devices according to Redditors.

Older Pixel devices already started receiving this update last week. But Google needed a bit more time to deliver the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro version since there are a ton of improvements directed at the company’s latest flagship phones. Google is also continuing to further polish and optimize Android 12 with this release.

Headlining the list of changes are tweaks to the fingerprint sensor; Google promises “general...

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OSHA opens investigation into fatal Amazon warehouse collapse in Illinois

The Amazon distribution center in Edwardsville, Illinois was struck by a tornado on December 10th. | Photo by Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has opened an investigation into the collapse of an Amazon warehouse in Illinois that left six people dead. The damage was caused by a tornado that swept through the area Friday evening, leaving a path of destruction across three states.

In addition to the six people killed at the Amazon warehouse, 45 were rescued, according to The New York Times, which reported that local authorities had some difficulty determining how many people were in the facility at the time since many who work out of the warehouse are contractors for other companies.

“OSHA investigates all workplace fatalities and we are supporting them,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in an email to The Verge.

As...

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Instagram’s new Reels Visual Replies are just another feature copied from TikTok

It looks familiar... | Image: Instagram

Instagram has added another strikingly familiar feature to Reels: the ability to add a user comment to a video (via TechCrunch). Now, if a user comments on a reel you’ve posted, tapping the “reply” button will let you add a sticker of the comment into a new reel, which you can then move around or change its color.

As Twitter users pointed out in the comments of Instagram’s announcement post, the feature is very similar to how TikTok lets you do video replies. As of now, it seems limited to just comments on your reels — I wasn’t able to make stickers out of comments on photo posts or comments on other peoples’ reels.

Tapping reply on a comment, then tapping the camera button adds that comment as a sticker in a new reel.

...

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A tornado expert explains why last week’s twisters were so devastating

MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY - DECEMBER 12: An aerial photo shows a damage as cleanup efforts continue after tornado hit Mayfield, Kentucky, United States on December 12, 2021.   | Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Meteorologists wereshocked by the tornadoes that devastated the Midwest and Southern US over the weekend. The twisters, which struck during the evening of December 10th, plowed across multiple states with incredible ferocity much later in the year than most tornadoes usually hit. Entire communities were devastated, and at least 90people lost their lives. Residents across Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, Illinois are still recovering and searching for missing loved ones.

Tornadoes are still somewhat of an enigma to scientists. We know the basic meteorological ingredients needed to cause a tornado to form, as well as where and when they tend to appear. But what’s normal for the US — which sees more tornadoes than...

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The MacBook Air with M1 processor is back down to $800 for today only

The MacBook Air with M1 processor first debuted just over one year ago. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

The MacBook Air with M1 processor, our top pick for the best laptop of 2021, is currently $200 off at Best Buy. This brings the popular laptop from Apple down to its historical low price of $799.99. We have often seen this MacBook Air discounted by $50, $100, and even occasionally $150, but this level of sale is much less frequent, and as good as it gets. Best Buy’s deal on the MacBook Air is only running for today — scheduled to expire when it strikes midnight on December 14th — or while supplies last.

The configuration of MacBook Air on offer today is the late 2020 model with the Apple-made M1 CPU, outfitted with the base-level 256GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. You have your choice of colors from its three options of space gray, gold, and...

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The PS5 Darkplates made me want to grab Sony’s upcoming black faceplates

My PS5 Digital Edition with the Darkplates 2.0. | Photo by Jay Peters / The Verge

I now stan the PS5’s original design

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