Rising temperatures are causing an unprecedented transformation in the Arctic

Climate change continues to create “cascading disruptions” in the Arctic as the region experiences rapid warming, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) writes in its 16th annual Arctic Report Card released earlier today.

Pulling together the most recent data on temperature trends, sea ice cover, and more gathered in 2020 and 2021, this year’s Arctic Report Card includes 111 contributing writers from 12 countries, who detail the transformation taking place across the far north as a result of human-caused climate change. That includes dramatic sea ice losses, rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and exceptionally warm autumns. The Arctic experienced its warmest autumn on record between October and December 2020.

N...

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Instagram reportedly hit 2 billion active users but probably won’t admit it

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Instagram has reportedly climbed to 2 billion monthly active users, that is according to anonymous employees who broke the news to CNBC. The Meta-owned company hasn’t — and probably won’t — officially disclosed these numbers, as it has spent the last several months under scrutiny for potentially causing harm to kids and teens.

The last time Instagram publicly announced the size of its userbase was back in 2018

The last time Instagram publicly announced the size of its userbase was back in 2018 when the platform revealed that it had 1 billion users. It took three years for Instagram to hit the 2 billion mark. The employees who tipped off CNBC say that they found out about the number during internal conversations — one staff member...

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T-Mobile’s not-Chromecast Google TV dongle adds an ethernet jack

The TVision Hub offers 4K streaming and ships with a voice-control remote | Photo: T-Mobile

T-Mobile’s TVision streaming service was not long for this world, but its name lives on in the TVision Hub — a $50 dongle with Google TV. It appears to function a lot like Google’s own Chromecast, but along with some T-Mobile branding, 9to5Google points out that it offers a feature you won’t find on Google’s streaming dongle: an ethernet jack. That direct internet connection may be a real benefit if your home Wi-Fi signal isn’t quite up to the task of streaming 4K video.

The T-Mo Report spotted the device last week on T-Mobile’s website, which is a new version of the streaming dongle launched with the TVision service. It comes with a remote bearing Netflix, YouTube, and Google Assistant buttons and connects with accessories like game...

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IBM and Samsung say their new chip design could lead to week-long battery life on phones

IBM and Samsung have announced their latest advance in semiconductor design: a new way to stack transistors vertically on a chip (instead of lying flat on the surface of the semiconductor).

The new Vertical Transport Field Effect Transistors (VTFET) design is meant to succeed the current FinFET technology that’s used for some of today’s most advanced chips and could allow for chips that are even more densely packed with transistors than today. In essence, the new design would stack transistors vertically, allowing for current to flow up and down the stack of transistors instead of the side-to-side horizontal layout that’s currently used on most chips.

Vertical designs for semiconductors have been a trend for a while (FinFET already...

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Inscryption mod makes the game’s best part endlessly replayable

Inscryption, my game of the year, Polygon’s game of the year, and what should be your game of the year, is getting a free mini update that gives its fans exactly what they want — a way to endlessly play the game’s first act.

Kacyee’s Mod, available now as a playable beta, adds new cards, items, and a difficulty modifier that make Inscryption’s already challenging card game even spicier. Daniel Mullins, the creator of Inscryption, says he made this mod in response to fans’ overwhelming support of the game.

“This mini-expansion is in part an expression of my gratitude,” Mullins wrote on Steam. “I have received countless requests for an endlessly playable version of Part 1 that emphasizes Leshy’s deckbuilding roguelike as a standalone...

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Judge denies California’s attempt to intervene in Activision Blizzard settlement

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Today in federal court, a judge said she will deny the state of California’s attempt to intervene in the $18 million settlement between Activision Blizzard and the EEOC, according to a report from Bloomberg.

The denial prevents the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing from joining the EEOC’s lawsuit against Activision Blizzard in order to oppose the consent decree that accompanies the creation of an $18 million settlement fund. The DFEH filed the objection in October, stating that the consent decree would harm the state’s case against Activision Blizzard, asserting the decree could, among other adverse outcomes, potentially allow for the destruction of evidence necessary to the state’s case or release the company from...

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The Verge’s 2021 holiday gift guide for working from home

Illustration by Richard Parry

Great gifts to outfit the home office of a working professional

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Twitter is rolling out automatic captions for videos

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In a major boon for accessibility, Twitter is now rolling out automatic captions for videos, the company announced Tuesday. Auto captions will be available globally on iOS, Android, and the web in “most languages,” according to Twitter.

However, there’s one significant catch with the automatic captions: they’ll only appear on new videos uploaded to Twitter. Old videos that don’t have captions still won’t have them. There’s also no way to report inaccurate or bad captions, a Twitter spokesperson tells The Verge, though they say “we’re always looking at ways to improve our accessibility features.”

Twitter has a somewhat rocky history with accessibility features, though it has taken steps to improve. The company was heavily criticized for...

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Gotta go fast: Sonic is coming to Tesla’s in-car system

A screenshot of the Sonic 1 title screen opened in the Tesla web browser (the game is not available yet) | Image: The Verge (By Umar Shakir)

Sega is bringing back the original 1991 Sonic the Hedgehog game — this time for Tesla Arcade. A PR representative for the company told The Verge that Sonic the Hedgehog 1 will be available on all Tesla models but did not share a timeline.

Elon Musk tweeted about the new Sonic game by once again pestering senator Bernie Sanders. The Tesla CEO replied to his own November tweet of a Bernie Sanders “once again asking” meme where the senator is poorly photoshopped with Dr. Robotnik’s mustache and glasses... asking for Chaos Emeralds (the in-game secret power-ups scattered in each zone).

Sonic, the Hedgehog, game coming to all Teslas!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2021

Sonic 1 is the crazy-fast side scroller where the titular blue...

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SiriusXM sued for failing to provide podcast transcripts for Deaf users

SiriusXM, along with its subsidiaries Stitcher and Pandora, are being sued by Deaf advocates | SiriusXM

SiriusXM is facing a lawsuit from the National Association for the Deaf (NAD) and the Disability Rights Advocates (DRA) for failing to provide captioning and transcripts for “the vast majority” of its podcasts. According to the complaint, SiriusXM and its subsidiaries Pandora and Stitcher are in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and New York state law for failing to make their podcast streams accessible for Deaf and hard-of-hearing users.

“Defendants’ failures to provide transcripts of their podcasts excludes deaf and hard-of-hearing persons from the critical sources of news, entertainment, educational programs, and popular culture that Defendants make available to their hearing customers, in violation of the...

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Opal’s C1 offers DSLR-rivaling video quality in a small form factor

Stellar design and performance, with more improvements to come

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Pony.ai’s permit to test driverless vehicles in California is suspended after crash

Photo by Visual China Group via Getty Images/Visual China Group via Getty Images

Pony.ai, an autonomous vehicle startup based in Silicon Valley and Guangzhou, China, is temporarily unable to test driverless vehicles in California after a vehicle crash led the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles to suspend the company’s testing permit.

Pony.ai was one of the few companies approved to test fully autonomous vehicles without safety drivers behind the steering wheel on public roads in California. The DMV has only issued permits to seven other companies, including major operators like Waymo and Cruise.

But the permit was suspended — and Pony’s name removed from the DMV’s list of permit holders — after a reported vehicle collision in Fremont, California on October 28th, the agency said in a statement. Pony has 10 Hyundai...

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The Verge Holiday Gift Guide 2021

Illustration by Richard Parry

Shop our curated guide for everyone in your life

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Adobe brings two more desktop tools to Photoshop on iPad

Adobe has updated Photoshop for the iPad with two crucial new tools — the smudge and sponge tools, which have been mainstays on the desktop version of the app but absent on mobile until now.

The smudge tool (as the name suggests) is used to help blur and blend lines or colors together and comes with the usual settings for adjusting size and strength of the effect, along with a variety of modes (including normal, darken, lighten, hue, saturation, color, and luminosity). The sponge tool, on the other hand, works to help retouch images by saturating or desaturating color, allowing users to fine-tune how vibrant their images and art look.

Additionally, Adobe also rolled out a new update for Premiere Pro on desktop, adding...

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Microsoft Teams now has end-to-end encryption support for one-to-one calls

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft is rolling out end-to-end encryption (E2EE) support for Microsoft Teams. After announcing the feature earlier this year and testing a public preview since October, Microsoft Teams is getting the added E2EE security support for all one-to-one calls. An update is rolling out to all Teams users today, giving IT admins the option to enable and control E2EE for one-to-one calls.

“Multiple enterprise customers in the US and Europe across industries such as aerospace, manufacturing, telecommunications, and professional services are in the process of rolling out E2EE for Teams calls,” explains John Gruszczyk, a technical product manager at Microsoft.

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft Teams shows that calls are fully...

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Five former SpaceX employees speak out about harassment at the company

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Workers claim HR did not take their complaints seriously

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Apple is requiring masks again at all US retail stores

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple is again requiring customers to wear masks in all its US retail stores after it had reportedly rolled back the mandate for around half of its locations. In an email to The Verge, the company said that “amid rising cases in many communities, we now require that all customers join our team members in wearing masks while visiting our stores.”

While employees have been required to wear masks throughout most of the pandemic, customers haven’t always had to, which has led to outbreaks at some Apple stores. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman also reports that some locations will have occupancy limits.

Apple reportedly started dropping mask mandates for some stores in November

Apple’s current mask policy was reportedly enacted in early November when...

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It’s easier for hackers to jailbreak the PS4 than it is to buy a PS5

Hackers have jailbroken the PS4 with a new kernel exploit, according to Wololo.net, a website that covers jailbreaking news, seemingly opening the door for people to run things like homebrew apps on Sony’s last-gen consoles. The jailbreak is called “pOOBs4.”

It’s a major development, but it comes with a big catch: the jailbreak only works on PS4 firmware 9.00 or lower, according to one of the people involved with the jailbreak, SpecterDev, which isn’t the newest PS4 software available. If you’ve already updated to the latest firmware, 9.03, the jailbreak apparently won’t work.

Seeing a bit of confusion on 9.03 - this will *not* work on 9.03, it's patched. Only 9.00 and below.

— Specter (@SpecterDev) December 13, 2021

Here’s a video...

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Oversight Board raises alarm over Facebook’s role in Ethiopian conflict

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Oversight Board set up by Facebook issued a decision today calling on the platform to begin an independent assessment of the platform’s role in heightening the risk of violence in Ethiopia, as part of a more specific ruling on a post that made unfounded claims about Tigrayan civilians.

The ruling comes a year into an ongoing civil war between Ethiopian government and rebels in the northern Tigray region of the country, which has created a humanitarian crisis that has left hundreds of thousands of people facing famine-like conditions and driven millions from their homes.

Facebook has come under fire for its role in the Ethiopian conflict, with observers drawing parallels with the company’s role in the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in...

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Android Go reaches 200 million daily users just in time for Android 12 update

Image by Google

Android Go, the lightweight version of the full-featured OS, has officially reached over 200 million daily users. Google first launched Android Go in 2017, offering a smoother Android experience for users on entry-level devices with 2GB of RAM or less.

Image by Google

Apps on Android 12 (Go edition) open 30 percent faster.

Now, Google has also announced that some of these affordable devices will receive an update to Android 12 (Go edition), bringing a host of features from the standard, newly released Android 12 to more devices. Most notably, phones with Android 12 (Go edition) will open apps up to 30 percent faster and with smoother animation. Google says that apps will open without delay, eliminating the...

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Snap launches Story Studio, a standalone video editing app for mobile

Promo images of Snap’s Story Studio. | Images: Snap

Snap has launched a standalone video editing app called Story Studio, which is meant to give creators more precise editing control over vertical videos and allow them to add elements like text, trending audio, and AR lenses. First announced in May, the app is now available as an “early version” to iOS users in the US, UK, and Canada.

Story Studio, which Snap says is being “built alongside creators,” is meant to be a more advanced video editing tool, like for creators using Spotlight. Launched a year ago, Spotlight is Snap’s response to TikTok — videos edited in Story Studio can be exported directly to Spotlight or a user’s Snapchat story. Videos can be downloaded and shared on other platforms, and they aren’t watermarked, unlike TikToks....

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The Army is in hot water over TikTok recruiting activity

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The US Army is facing pressure from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) after recruiters were caught using TikTok to find leads on young Americans to enlist, despite orders banning the app’s use on government devices.

Issued on Monday to Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, Rubio’s letter comes in response to a recent report from Nextgovdescribing how recruiters struggle to reach young adults online. The report detailed how many Army recruiters are ignoring the military’s TikTok ban, often using their own personal devices to create videos and reach out to young users to find enlistment leads. Some recruiters, like @njrecruiter, tout nearly 500,000 followers on the platform.

In his letter, Rubio pressures Wormuth to take additional enforcement...

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The Apple Watch Series 7 is $50 off and Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 3 hits a new low price

The Apple Watch Series 7 has a larger screen and new green color option. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

It can be a little anxiety-inducing to shop for holiday tech gifts in the middle of December. Black Friday and its deals feel like a long-forgotten tale of folklore, and there is only so much time remaining to make the purchase, get it, wrap it, and place it under the tree. But we’re always finding you the best deals each and every day, and today we have some great ones for you.

Starting off, the Apple Watch Series 7 has hit a new all-time low price this week. Target and Walmart have a selection of Series 7 smartwatches for $50 off, including the base 41mm and 45mm aluminum models with GPS, their cellular-equipped counterparts, and even the stainless steel model. Each one is $50 off, and that brings the base model 41mm Series 7 down to a...

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Nicolas Cage takes on his most challenging role yet: Nicolas Cage

Do you ever watch a Nicolas Cage movie and think, “He just wasn’t Nick Cage enough for me”? Well, that shouldn’t be a problem in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, an upcoming movie in which Cage plays himself.

It’s described as an “action-adventure,” and the premise is something else:

Creatively unfulfilled and facing financial ruin, the fictionalized version of Cage must accept a $1 million offer to attend the birthday of a dangerous superfan (Pedro Pascal). Things take a wildly unexpected turn when Cage is recruited by a CIA operative (Tiffany Haddish) and forced to live up to his own legend, channeling his most iconic and beloved on-screen characters in order to save himself and his loved ones.

The first teaser looks...

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WhatsApp can now preview voice messages before sending them

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

WhatsApp has recently released a preview feature for voice messages, letting you check whether your ramblings vaguely make sense before inflicting them on others. The Meta-owned messaging service said that the feature has been slowly rolling out in recent weeks, and that it’s now available across all platforms including iOS, Android, web, and desktop.

According to a help page for the feature, the option to preview a voice message appears after you press the stop button to finish a recording. You can then preview it with the triangular play icon, delete it with the trash can icon, or send it with the send button.

They’re not mistakes, they’re rehearsals. Now you can preview your voice messages before you hit send. p...

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Nomad adds magnets to its Base Station wireless charger

Nomad Base Station Hub with magnetic alignment | Image: Nomad

Nomad is updating its line of wireless chargers with the latest version of the Base Station Hub. A multi-device charger that can wirelessly charge up to two devices at the same time, plus charge two more devices through its USB ports, the new Base Station Hub now has embedded magnets to help align devices in the right spot on the pad. The new Hub costs $119.95 and is available for purchase starting today.

Aside from the magnets, the new Hub is very similar to Nomad’s prior version. It has three charging coils under a leather pad that are each capable of up to 10W charging (iPhones will be limited to 7.5W). On the back of the charger is an 18W USB-C port and a 7.5W USB-A port for other devices. Nomad also sells an attachment that affixes...

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Former FCC officials are worried about air safety fears delaying 5G rollout

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

US mobile carriers are delaying their 5G rollout thanks to an ongoing spat between two government agencies, and it doesn’t look like the situation will be resolving soon. As reported by Bloomberg News, a group of six former FCC chiefs have sent a letter dated this Monday saying they were “concerned about the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) recent efforts to revisit the FCC’s 2020 decision” to open up the C-band to 5G applications.

At heart, the argument is between the federal agencies tasked with regulating airplanes and airwaves: the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The agencies disagree about whether it’s safe to allow 5G equipment to operate within a portion of the...

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How to use the iPhone’s new App Privacy Report

Information is power, and if you’re an iPhone user, you can now get more information about how often your apps access your data (for example, your location or your microphone). The App Privacy Report, which became available with iOS 15.2, also lets you know each app’s web activity and what domains they attach to.

The feature is off by default, but if your phone has updated to iOS 15.2, it’s very simple to turn on:

• Go to Settings > Privacy > App Privacy Report (which will be at the bottom of the screen)
• Select “Turn On App Privacy Report”

Select App Privacy Report at the bottom of the Privacy screen.

Just turn on the App Privacy Report — and wait.

After that, you can follow the same series...

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Toyota’s electric vehicle plans are getting bigger and more expensive

Toyota is ramping up its electric vehicle production schedule, vowing to release 30 electric vehicles by 2030 rather than just 15 EVs by 2025, as was previously promised. The Japanese automaker also vowed to sell 3.5 million battery EVs globally by 2030 and to transform Lexus into an EV-only brand by 2035.

The company said it would invest 2 trillion yen ($17.6 billion) in battery vehicle technology, an increase over its previous commitment of 1.5 trillion yen ($13.6 billion).

Toyota was an early pioneer in electrification, helping pave the way for companies like Tesla and others by proving that vehicles with alternative powertrains could be immensely popular. But the company has since fallen far behind its competitors.

Toyota was an...

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The first trailer for Everything Everywhere All At Once reveals what we all want: a Michelle Yeoh multiverse

Michelle Yeoh in Everywhere All At Once | Screenshot by Emma Roth / The Verge

The title Everything Everywhere All At Once rings true — Michelle Yeoh is, in fact, everywhere all at once in this new film, directed by the Daniels duo, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the same team behind the absurd Swiss Army Man featuring yet another Daniel: Daniel Radcliffe.

Yeoh stars as “an exhausted Chinese American woman who can’t seem to finish her taxes”

In Everything Everywhere All At Once, Yeoh stars as “an exhausted Chinese American woman who can’t seem to finish her taxes,” but there’s obviously a lot more to the film than just that. The trailer opens with Yeoh, aka Evelyn Wang, discussing her finances with an almost unrecognizable Jamie Lee Curtis. Suddenly, she’s flung into another universe — via a rolling office chair...

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