Bose’s noise-canceling QC35 II are back down to their lowest price

A set of noise-canceling headphones should definitely come in handy if you’re planning to travel soon. They’re essential if you want to silence the hum of the jet engines or to hush distracting sounds that are keeping you from concentrating. If you’re interested in a good set that won’t cost you too much, the Bose QuietComfort 35 II headphones are $169 off their original price at Target and Amazon. These retailers are selling the QC35 II for just $179.99 instead of $349, although note your order will most likely not arrive by Christmas.

Like their predecessor (as well as newer Bose models), these are comfortable, lightweight headphones that also come with other praiseworthy features, including good sound quality and the ability to...

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11 great shows from 2021 to stream on Netflix

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

A handy guide for finding the best stuff released this year

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GeoGuessr made figuring out where on Earth you are the hottest new esport

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The years-old browser game became a competitive thrill this year

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This security researcher fooled an at-home COVID-19 test using a Bluetooth hack

Researchers were able to exploit Ellume’s at-home test. | Image: Ellume

A security researcher was able to change the results of an at-home COVID test and get those results certified by intercepting and modifying Bluetooth traffic from the device before it reached the app. The researcher, Ken Gannon, found the flaw in Ellume’s nasal swab test, which is designed to analyze and transmit data to a companion app which displays and saves the results. According to a press release from F-Secure, the security company Gannon consults for, Ellume has now fixed the issue.

The process of falsifying results wasn’t a simple one — according to F-Secure’s writeup, the researcher used a rooted Android device to tap into and analyze the data the tester was sending to the app. From there, Gannon was able to determine how the...

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Tesla’s big holiday update adds TikTok and playable Sonic the Hedgehog

A screenshot of the Sonic 1 title screen opened in the Tesla web browser taken prior to its release. | Photo by Umar Shakir / The Verge

Tesla’s annual holiday software update for its cars is here, Electrek reports. It includes useful driving features like automatic access to a car’s blind spot cameras, as well as fun additions like new games built into Tesla Arcade, TikTok support, and a feature that lets the electric cars “dance to a choreographed light show.” The update’s version number is 2021.44.25, and should be rolling out over the coming days.

The most useful inclusion in the update could be its blind spot camera feature which automatically shows a live camera view of the car’s blind spot whenever a driver activates a turn signal. Tesla CEO Elon Musk indicated the feature was in development in July 2020, but now it’s here to (hopefully) make maneuvers like...

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Xiaomi’s next flagship phone will launch on December 28

A teaser poster for the event. | Image: Xiaomi

Exactly one year from the launch of the Mi 11, Xiaomi is set to launch the successor on December 28th, the company has announced via its official Weibo account. The new lineup will be called the Xiaomi 12 series, following the company’s decision to phase out its Mi branding earlier this year. A teaser poster features Chinese sprinter Su Bingtian, which sets the expectation that the event is likely to be focused on the Chinese market before the Xiaomi flagships makes their way to global markets in 2022.

Xiaomi’s 12 series lineup could include as many as four different devices, according to Gadgets 360. These include the Xiaomi 12, the 12 Pro, the 12X, and the 12 Ultra, although it’s possible that not all of them will be announced during...

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Today I learned double-pressing Ctrl can become a powerful Windows 11 shortcut for finding your mouse

Ever lose your mouse cursor? It’s not hard to do when you’ve sitting in front of multiple monitors or perhaps a super-ultrawide or maybe even a monstrous TV — but Microsoft has an amazing keyboard shortcut that can instantly surface your cursor, and I recently found it purely by accident.

I was tapping away on my keyboard when all of a sudden my screens dimmed — except for one tiny disc of light. It turns out I’d accidentally double-pressed Ctrl, which triggers the Find My Mouse feature in Microsoft’s excellent optional PowerToys.

Here’s what that looks like up close:

GIF by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Find My Mouse in action.

And here’s a rough idea of what it looks like with my triple-monitor rig:

...

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Google is turning off the controls for OnHub routers at the end of 2022

Google OnHub router

Google’s insistence on cloud-based controls for its networking products has occasionally caused issues, even though it was supposed to make life with OnHub routers simple. Now it will be a reason pushing anyone still using the OnHub to find a replacement by the end of next year when Google’s apps stop allowing owners to change the settings on their devices. An email went out to users, and a support page revealed the changeover is scheduled for December 19th, 2022 (via Droid-Life).

When it still seemed unusual for Google and Amazon to make their own hardware, Google teamed up with TP-Link and, eventually, Asus to build OnHub routers that made a point of blending in seamlessly with the rest of your house. They had slick mobile apps to...

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TikTok’s new Live Studio app allegedly violates OBS’ licensing policy

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Live Studio, TikTok’s new livestreaming app for Windows, supposedly uses code from the free livestreaming program Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) (via Protocol). This would typically not pose an issue when done properly because OBS is open source — however, TikTok purportedly fails to adhere to OBS’ licensing requirements.

Remember yesterday’s news about TikTok releasing a go live platform? Turns out it’s a fork of @OBSProject

Shoutout to @HunterAP23 for pointing this out

STOP STEALING FROM OBS JESUS pic.twitter.com/kx8ckK3MXS

— Naaackers (@Naaackers) December 16, 2021

The situation unraveled on Twitter after a user posted screenshots of what appears to be Live Studio’s code. The programmer who originally took the screenshots alleges...

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The Matrix Resurrections won’t hit HBO Max until 3AM ET on December 22nd

Bad news, Matrix fans: Warner Bros. isn’t going to be releasing The Matrix Resurrections early on HBO Max like it did for Dune. Instead, the highly anticipated fourth film in _The Matrix_franchise will make its streaming debut on December 22nd at 3:01AM ET / 12:01AM PT — meaning you’ll either have to stay up pretty late to catch the movie when it first comes out or (more sensibly) wait until Wednesday night.

The news isn’t entirely surprising given that HBO Max usually releases new episodes and movies at 3:01AM ET (or the equivalent time in other time zones) the date that they come out. Still, the company has broken its pattern a few times when it comes to major HBO Max releases: Dune, as noted earlier, hit the service a few hours ahead...

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Meta cracks down on phishing scams that use its trademarks

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Meta is taking legal action against the bad actors who allegedly impersonated Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram to conduct a phishing scam. The company claims that since 2019, the defendants created over 39,000 websites in an attempt to replicate Meta’s services, subsequently deceiving users and collecting their login information.

In the post on its blog, Meta explains that the defendants used a relay service, Ngrok, to send internet traffic to the phony login pages they created, all while concealing their identity and location. Those who clicked the phishing link were brought to a login page that resembled Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or WhatsApp. When the user attempted to log in, defendants would collect their victims’...

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Cortana would be named Bingo if Steve Ballmer had his way

Steve Ballmer wanted Microsoft’s Cortana AI to be called “Bingo” so it would be more Microsoft-branded, according to the _Big Bets_newsletter_._That’s according to former Microsoft product manager Sandeep Paruchuri, who recounted the story of how Microsoft’s AI assistant got its name to writerAlice Newton Rex as part of a deep dive into Cortana’s origins.

While we’ve gotten a pretty good idea of Microsoft’s ambitious vision for the AI assistant in the years since it leaked then launched, Paruchuri and Rex gave the inside story of how Cortana was named, pitched to management, and the clash that happened between dreams and reality. Also included are interesting details about how the assistant became one of the main advertising points for...

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The EV revolution’s next big roadblock: access to chargers

Electric vehicles are displayed before a news conference with White House Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg about the American Jobs Plan and to highlight electric vehicles at Union Station near Capitol Hill on April 22nd, 2021 in Washington, DC. | Photo by Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Electric vehicles are set to play a critical role in our clean energy future, but in order for everyone to reap the benefits of EVs, they’ll need access to chargers. While the Build Back Better bill suffered a major setback over the weekend that could mean significantly less funding for the transition to electric vehicles, there’s still hope that the bipartisan infrastructure law passed in November could bring EV charging infrastructure to places that have been left out until now.

That could make it easier for drivers from marginalized communities to switch to electric vehicles, while also cleaning up the air in their neighborhoods.

The way charging stations are spread out now is neither equitable nor convenient

The way charging...

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Former head of Sonic Team releases new self-made mobile game

Yuji Naka showing off his solo-developer skills | Image: @nakayuji via Twitter

Yuji Naka — former head of Sonic Team — released a new game under his one-man studio Prope called Shot2048. Naka was the lead programmer for the original Sonic the Hedgehog (which seems to be playable everywhere nowadays) and most recently left his short stay at Square Enix to spend his time working on this hyper-casual title for mobile.

The goal in Shot2048(App Store, Google Play) is to roll dice to the end of an alley and combine (multiply) enough like-numbers to create at least one die valued at 2048. It did take me about five attempts to win my first game... and about four tries to understand the game. There aren’t much in terms of instructions other than this iOS App Store description (though admittedly, after reading it again...

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How to add a background to Safari in iOS 15

iOS 15 has brought with it a number of features that don’t affect your privacy, your efficiency, or your fitness. They’re — well, just nice. One of them is the new ability to change the background of the mobile version of Safari so that when you open a new page, you’re looking at something beautiful or wildly colorful. Or just nice.

The process is almost ridiculously simple. Here’s how to do it:

• Once you’re in the Safari app, you’re going to open a new page. Not sure how to do that? Look for the double square in the bottom-right corner and tap on that.
• You’ll see thumbnails of all the pages currently open in Safari. (If there are loads of them, you may want to take this opportunity to get rid of a few.) Tap on the plus sign in the...

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EV startup Canoo loses chief technology officer and two co-founders

Image: Canoo

EV startup Canoo is losing three top executives, including its chief technology officer Peter Savagian, as part of an apparent shakeup of its leadership team. Savagian, the former chief engineer of General Motors EV1 electric car, will leave Canoo by the end of the year, according to the last line of a press release published Monday.

The two others are some of Canoo’s remaining co-founders, two current employees who spoke to _The Verge_on the condition of anonymity, though they weren’t named in the press release: Bill Strickland, the head of Canoo’s vehicle programs and a longtime Ford executive, and Alexi Charbonneau, who worked at both SpaceX and Tesla and oversaw Canoo’s powertrain division. Strickland and Charbonneau did not...

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The QuietOn 3 earbuds use ANC to help you sleep

I’ve always been a light sleeper, and that has not improved over the last few years. So I thought I was the perfect person to try out the latest version of the QuietOn active noise-canceling earbuds.

The QuietOn 3 earbuds, which cost $239, are the third iteration of these devices. They are smaller than the previous version, the QuietOn 2, but the basic functionality is the same. Unlike other “help to sleep” earbuds such as the Bose Sleepbuds II, they don’t generate white noise, or play quiet music, or let you hear rain or other soothing sounds. The idea is simply to eliminate low-frequency noises, such as the hum of a nearby appliance, that may keep you from sleeping while allowing you to still hear an alarm clock going off. According to...

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Brian Eno is not a fan of NFTs

If you were saving up Ethereum for a set of Discreet Music NFTs, we’ve got bad news. In an interview with Crypto Syllabus (conducted by longtime tech critic Evgeny Morozov, of all people), Eno outed himself as a skeptic of cryptocurrency — and NFTs in particular.

“NFTs seem to me just a way for artists to get a little piece of the action from global capitalism, our own cute little version of financialization,” Eno told Morozov. “How sweet — now artists can become little capitalist assholes as well.”

Best known for his pioneering ambient work and prolific producer credits, Eno seems like the perfect artist for the NFT era. He’s spent decades making art with an eye towards technology and its social implications, often made available as s...

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OnlyFans management firm accused of having employees talk to fans as influencers

Image: Alex Castro / The Verge

A prominent agency that manages accounts for OnlyFans creators has been accused of having its employees catfish fans by reading and replying to messages meant for creators. According to a report by Insider, fans who thought they were talking to models managed by Unruly Agency would confess fetishes, fantasies, and other private matters, but the person on the other end may have actually been an employee of the agency, not the intended recipient — one person who worked as an account manager said they were “basically a professional scammer.”

According to the report, Unruly Agency handles accounts for several popular OnlyFans’ influencers. But, according to employees, in addition to helping them schedule photo shoots and manage posts, they...

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Watch the first trailer for The Witcher: Blood Origin on Netflix

There’s more to The Witcher universe than just Geralt, and Netflix gave the first glimpse at that with an early look at Blood Origin. The trailer was initially revealed as a post-credits scene in The Witcher season 2, which debuted on December 17th.

The upcoming live-action prequel stars Michelle Yeoh as a sword elf, and it takes place well before the main series, covering the events that led to the creation of witchers in the first place. Netflix describes the series as an “epic prequel series depicting the creation of the prototype witcher and the events leading to the pivotal ‘Conjunction of the Spheres.’” (For more on the conjunction, check out this interview on the scientific possibilities of the multiverse.) The show is slated to...

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Here’s why streaming services are always duking it out over channels

photo by Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images

There’s something extraordinarily frustrating about subscribing to a TV service only for that service to lose the programming you signed up for. But that threat of lost channels — or worse, the actual loss of major networks — is a recurring problem for internet TV services, and it comes up a lot.

The latest incident hit just this weekend: late Friday night, more than a dozen Disney-owned channels, including ESPN and FX, disappeared from YouTube TV when the two companies failed to reach a deal to keep them on the streaming service. The dispute didn’t last long. Just 36-or-so hours later, the companies came to an agreement — soon enough to avoid anyone missing ESPN’s Monday Night Football.

It was an outcome Disney could pretty much bank...

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New World is getting exclusive Wheel of Time gear through Twitch drops

Image: Amazon

Amazon has announced that it’ll be adding exclusive items to Amazon Games’ popular MMORPG New World from Amazon Prime Video’s The _Wheel of Time_TV series, which fans can obtain by watching special streams on Amazon’s Twitch streaming service, in a breathtaking example of cross-company synergy for Amazon’s various properties and titles.

The eligible “drops enabled” streams will kick off on December 24th at 12AM ET and will include watch-along parties for The Wheel of Times’s first season finale hosted on Twitch. The Wheel of Time promotion is set to run through January 12th at 3AM ET and will require that fans watch a total of seven cumulative hours of eligible streams (or nearly as long as it would take to actually watch the...

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EPA issues new rule to curb tailpipe pollution, fight climate change

Photo by David Paul Morris/Getty Images

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a new rule today aimed at reducing tailpipe pollution from cars and light-duty trucks — an effort by President Joe Biden to return to the fuel economy standards put in place by Barack Obama nearly a decade ago.

Under the rule, passenger vehicles would be required to achieve an average of 55 miles of travel per gallon of gasoline (mpg) by 2026 — slightly over Obama’s goal of 54 mpg, but a major increase over the 38-mpg rule put in place by President Donald Trump. The EPA estimates the new standard would prevent the release of 3.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide through 2050 and will save car owners $420 billion in fuel costs.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan called it “the most ambitious vehicle...

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Airbnb tightens ‘anti-party’ rules for rentals as New Year’s Eve approaches

Airbnb is cracking down on New Year’s Eve parties | Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Airbnb said Monday it’s tightening its policy restrictions on New Year’s Eve parties, adding “anti-party” restrictions to some three-night rentals for guests without a history of positive reviews on the platform.

In the US, Canada, Brazil, the UK, France, Spain, Australia, and New Zealand, guests without a history of positive reviews on Airbnb’s platform can’t make one-night, two-night, and now three-night reservations for an entire house that “may pose heightened risks for unauthorized parties.” Airbnb said it would be focusing on local reservations.

Guests on the platform who have a history of positive reviews from Airbnb hosts won’t be subject to the restrictions, the company said.

Airbnb banned “party houses” in 2019 following a...

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Waze now shows EV charging stations on its driving map

Image by Waze

Waze can finally help you locate and drive to nearby electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across the US, letting you find EV pit stops just as easily as you would a gas station. You can also search for charging stations along your route, which should make it a bit less stressful to find a place to juice up your EV if Waze is your preferred navigation app.

Photo by Waze

Waze is partnering with Volkswagen for the initiative. As part of the campaign, you can switch your car icon within the app to Volkswagen’s all-electric ID 4 SUV (in case you’re tired of polluting the virtual air in your cartoon smiley face on wheels).

This may give the Google-owned navigation app the boost it needs to catch up with its more...

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Ford Mustang Mach-E joins New York City’s yellow taxi fleet

The Ford Mustang Mach-E is hitting the streets of New York City as the latest electric vehicle to join the ranks of the city’s iconic yellow taxi fleet.

The Mustang Mach-E, with its fresh coat of Rally Yellow paint and classic taxi iconography, is being operated by Gravity Technologies, a startup focused on EV fleets and charging infrastructure. This is the first time that Ford’s new, mass-market EV is being deployed as a taxi. But it won’t be the last — Gravity says it hopes to eventually operate a fleet of 50 electric vehicles comprised of both Mustang Mach-Es and Tesla Model Ys.

“I think the Mustang and the Model Y are kind of like the ideal taxi vehicles that are available today,” Moshe Cohen, founder and CEO of Gravity, told The...

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Disabled passengers were promised autonomous vehicles — they’re still waiting

It turns out that designing autonomous vehicles for disabled passengers is an immense challenge

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Apple’s HomePod Mini is $20 off today at Best Buy

Photo by Jennifer Tuohy / The Verge

Apple’s short, stout HomePod Mini usually costs $99.99, but Best Buy is offering a $20 discount today on the smart speaker. You can snag one for $79.99, which is the retailer’s lowest price yet, in addition to one of the best deals we’ve seen for it. If you’re in Apple’s ecosystem of products, there aren’t many other choices for buying a smart speaker that’s fully compatible with the Siri voice assistant, or HomeKit, for commanding certain smart home tech via the speaker. Still, it’s a great speaker that offers good sound quality for its size, and unlike the discontinued HomePod, this one’s compact enough to fit almost anywhere near a wall outlet.

This deal is available on most of Apple’s vibrant colorways for the HomePod Mini, including...

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Taco Bell had beef with Beyond Meat’s fake carne asada

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Taco Bell, the restaurant known for having ground beef that's utterly indescribable, reportedly told Beyond Meat that its version of carne asada wasn’t good enough to serve. According to Bloomberg, the chain canceled a test product that featured Beyond’s plant-based steak after samples failed to live up to its standards.

Beyond Meat denies the report — Shira Zackai, head of communications at the company told The Verge in an email that “the test between Beyond Meat and Taco Bell was not canceled. Our partnership is strong, and we are actively working together to create a plant-based protein that’s completely new to the national QSR (quick serve restaurant) space. We look forward to sharing more details on what Beyond Meat and Taco Bell...

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Sen. Warren and AOC demand answers from Amazon after warehouse deaths

Six people were killed when an Amazon warehouse in Illinois was struck by a tornado

A group of progressive Democratic lawmakers, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Reps. Cori Bush and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is demanding answers from Amazon after six people were killed in a tornado strike at one of its warehouses in Illinois.

A letter sent Monday to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and founder Jeff Bezos says the events that happened on December 10th at the Edwardsville facility “fit a larger pattern: Amazon puts worker safety at risk in everyday situations and emergencies alike.

“As we work to ensure that tragedies such as this one are not repeated, we seek answers about what happened at your Edwardsville warehouse,” the letter continues, “and whether your policies may have contributed to this tragedy.”

The tornado was...

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