Amazon’s AWS logs third outage this month, affecting Slack, Epic Games Store, Asana and more

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon’s crucial web services business AWS is experiencing problems today, with issues affecting services like Slack, Imgur, and the Epic Games store for some users. It’s not looking good if you’re working from home, with some Slack users unable to view or upload images, and work management tool Asana also hit by the outages.

In an incident update, Slack said its services are “experiencing issues with file uploads, message editing, and other services.” Asana says the problems constitute a “major outage,” with “many of our users unable to access Asana.” Epic Games Store said “Internet services outages” are “affecting logins, library, purchases, etc.”

It’s the third time in as many weeks that problems with AWS have had a significant...

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Elon Musk: metaverse isn’t ‘compelling’ and Web3 ‘more marketing than reality’

Photo by Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images

The metaverse and Web3 are two trends supposedly set to revolutionize the digital world. But the richest man IRL, Elon Musk, is not keen on either. In a recent interview, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO said he couldn’t see a compelling use-case for the VR-driven metaverse, and derided Web3 — a nebulous concept in which internet services are rebuilt around blockchain and cryptocurrency — as “more marketing than reality,” adding “I don’t get it.”

Musk admitted that he might just be “too old” to understand these new technologies. “Am I like one of those people who was dismissing the internet [in] ‘95 as some fad or something that’s never going to amount to anything?” he suggested, before noting that in 1995 he was very much one of the...

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Honor teases its first foldable, the Magic V

Former Huawei sub-brand Honor has teased the launch of its first foldable smartphone, the Honor V. An image shared on its Weibo and Twitter accounts teases the design of the device, showing a telltale hinge between the two halves of the device. The Weibo post says the “folding flagship is about to be released,” though no exact launch date has been announced and Honor declined to comment.

Honor has been open about its desire to release a foldable for some time. As early as 2019, the company’s CEO George Zhao told CNET that he was interested in producing a foldable under the Honor brand, but expressed concerns that the device would be too expensive for Honor’s younger target market. In June this year, reports emerged that development of...

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TCL resumes selling its Google TVs after rolling out software fixes

Image: TCL

After briefly halting sales of its 6-Series and 5-Series Google TVs due to sluggish, buggy software, TCL this evening announced that the TVs are back. “Recent software updates have allowed us to make significant improvements on the stability and speed of the TCL televisions featuring Google TV,” spokesperson Rachelle Parks said by email. “With these updates, this product now represents the powerful performance that TCL and Google believe is the future of TV.”

The Google TVs represent TCLs effort to take a platform agnostic approach with its TV hardware; the company is best known for its popular sets that come preloaded with Roku software, but it has also manufactured Android TV products. The 6-Series (R646) and 5-Series (R546) are the...

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LG’s new 16:18 monitor looks like a multitasking powerhouse

Image: LG

Are monitors with traditional aspect ratios just not getting the job done for you? LG might have the answer. Today the company has announced what it touts as “a completely new format in the monitor market” called the DualUp. With a unique 16:18 aspect ratio, LG claims the DualUp gives you “the same screen real estate as two 21.5-inch displays and has a vertical split view function that lets users see more in one glance.”

With a resolution of 2560x2880, the DualUp (model 28MQ780) tops out at 300 nits of brightness and covers 98 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut. It attaches to LG’s included Ergo stand, which can clamp to “most” desks and tables to save on space. Aside from the productivity and creative possibilities opened up by this...

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Here are the best Apple Watch deals right now

The Apple Watch Series 7 is one three models Apple continues to sell. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Thinking about picking up a new Apple Watch? It might be tempting to order one of the new Series 7 models, but new Apple hardware always comes at a premium. The latest version of the Apple wearable offers a slightly larger display and some improvements to durability but is largely the same Apple Watch we’re familiar with.

Thankfully, each Apple Watch model offers ample functionality and has seen its fair share of discounts over the last year. So which ones should you consider if you’re in the market for Apple’s popular smartwatch while trying to shop smarter?

There are currently four Apple Watch models to choose from, all of which support watchOS 8. The highest-end is the Apple Watch Series 7, which starts at $399. Last year's model,...

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CES 2022 starts to fall apart as T-Mobile and others bail on in-person conference

Amelia Holowaty Krales

Another year, another gigantic tech tradeshow that looks like it may be falling apart as the COVID-19 pandemic continues — now that T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert, one of the Consumer Electronics Show’s featured speakers, has publicly announced that his company won’t be attending the world’s largest electronics show next month.

I’m sorry we’ll miss seeing everyone at CES this year, but we are prioritizing the safety of our team and other attendees.

Our statement here: https://t.co/WAIkFYMzc7

— Mike Sievert (@MikeSievert) December 22, 2021

T-Mobile, Meta, Twitter, Pinterest, and iHeartRadio have all announced this week that they won’t attend this version of the annual Las Vegas expo in light of a new wave of COVID-19 cases in the US, as...

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Intel will put unvaccinated employees on unpaid leave

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Intel has reportedly notified employees that anyone who remains unvaccinated will need to get the COVID-19 vaccine or submit an exemption by January 4th. Otherwise, they face being put on unpaid leave, according to The Associated Press and The Oregonian.

In the December 7th memo obtained by both publications, Intel HR boss Christy Pambianchi said unvaccinated employees will need to seek an exemption or get weekly tests, even if they’re working from home. She also reportedly told employees that the company will review medical and religious exemptions up until March 15th of next year. The company initially put the January 4th vaccine deadline in place last month, but didn’t specify what would happen to unvaccinated employees if they didn’t...

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White House says it will set up a website to distribute 500 million free COVID tests

President Biden details plans to make coronavirus tests easier to find amid the surge of the omicron variant. | Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

President Biden said today that Americans will soon be able to order free COVID tests from a government-run website, which is not yet available. “We’ll have websites where you can get them delivered to your home,” he said of the 500 million at-home tests the government is purchasing to combat the Omicron surge.

Details on this website are murky, however. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said today that “We will have more information as it is available including what the website looks like,” she said, adding, “We will make the website available as soon as these tests are available.“

President Biden also said that his administration is working with Google to make it easier for Americans to find COVID-19 testing locations. “We’ve...

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Ad board tells Mint Mobile it should stop abusing the word ‘unlimited’

Mint Mobile says it will comply with the board’s decision. | Image: Mint Mobile

The National Advertising Review Board has denied Mint Mobile’s appeal defending its use of the word “unlimited” in its advertising since its unlimited prepaid plan includes a high-speed data cap of 35GB per month. That’s not unusual — most unlimited plans include a cap on high-speed or “premium” data — but Mint actually slows customers down to unreasonably slow 2G speeds after 35GB. That _is_unusual, even in an industry that has rendered the term “unlimited” virtually meaningless, and the ad board sides with AT&T’s argument that it’s slower than a customer would reasonably expect.

Carriers and MVNOs have throttled heavy data users more or less since unlimited plans made a comeback. And to be sure, the vast majority of wireless customers...

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Scammers steal $150K worth of crypto from NFT project with Discord hack

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Buyers hoping to get a limited-edition NFT from Fractal, a new marketplace for game item NFTs, were given an unpleasant and costly surprise on Tuesday morning when it was revealed that a link sent through the project’s official Discord channel was a scam set up to steal crypto.

Users who followed the link and connected their crypto wallets, expecting to receive an NFT, instead found that their holdings of Solana (SOL) cryptocurrency were emptied and transferred to the scammer’s account. An analysis posted on Medium by Tim Cotten, founder of another NFT gaming project, estimated the value of SOL stolen to be around $150,000.

Fractal is a startup project from Twitch co-founder Justin Kan specializing in the buying and selling of NFTs...

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TSA checkpoints will start supporting Apple Wallet IDs in February

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

When Apple introduced its updated Apple Wallet in June, the company said it was working to ensure you could use it to get through airport security — and now, we have our first word from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on exactly when that will happen.

According to an event recap from the Secure Technology Alliance, the TSA is planning to support Apple Wallet IDs in two airports in February. If successful, the test will expand to airports in two more states the following month. The Apple Wallet is the first digital ID the TSA will accept (not counting privately run pre-check programs like Clear), but the program is expected to expand to other platforms in the future.

“Instead of TSA staff examining a physical ID card,...

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Tesla rewarding timely holiday travelers with free supercharging

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales

Tesla announced an early Christmas present for all those pre-dawn road trippers: free vehicle charging at certain Supercharger locations if you get there before 10AM (or after 7PM if you’re more of a night rider).

The announcement comes right before peak holiday travel season, when an estimated 100 million Americans will be on the road to visit family or friends. For those using electric cars, this can also mean delays at any of the almost 7,000 DC fast charging stations in the US as the country continues building out its charging infrastructure.

Avoid the rush this holiday season and charge for free during off‑peak hours at Superchargers along select travel routes in the United States.

See locations and hours: https://t.co/1hlTTGGsNnp...

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Google Voice now lets you set custom rules for phone calls

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Google Voice now lets you create rules that dictate how the service responds to incoming calls from specific contacts. And yes, this includes having Google Voice automatically ignore certain contacts for you.

Even though Google Voice already has a call forwarding feature, the new rules let you customize it even further — you can set up a rule that forwards calls from a contact (or a group of contacts) to any of your linked numbers.

Image by Google

How to create a rule in Google Voice.

And if you don’t want to receive a forwarded call at all, you can create a rule that sends certain callers straight to voicemail. In line with this option, you can also assign contacts different voicemail greetings and screen...

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After Build Back Better, here’s how the US can still clean up its power grid

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is followed by reporters as he leaves a caucus meeting with Senate Democrats at the US Capitol Building on December 17th, 2021 in Washington, DC.  | Photo by Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images

The future of America’s electricity grid hangs in the balance as Democrats try to salvage their giant environmental and social spending bill. After West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin imperiled Democrats’ Build Back Better bill — which would have transformed the grid and helped stave off catastrophic climate change — environmental advocates are figuring out a plan B.

The most recent version of Democrats’ environment and social spending bill included $555 billion to tackle climate change, which would have been the biggest US investment ever on the crisis. At the heart of the bill was a plan to wean the power grid off fossil fuels. But over the weekend, Manchin (who has earned millions off investments in coal) seemingly killed those plans by s...

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Meta releases newsletter platform numbers, and it’s good news for Substack

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A new blog post from Meta marks the six-month anniversary of its newsletter publishing platform, Bulletin. Amid its plugs for the writers who publish work on the service, the company lets us know just how many publishers it has on board to help compete with companies like Substack and Twitter: 115.

Unlike Substack, the buzziest newsletter platform of the moment, you can’t just start writing with Bulletin — Meta has continued to add writers to the platform in batches instead of having a public sign-up process. While the number implies that the company isn’t doing a huge push to get people on the platform as fast as possible, that does appear to be on purpose, at least to some extent (there’s always the possibility it hasn’t been as...

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Jack Dorsey says VCs really own Web3 (and Web3 boosters are pretty mad about it)

“Habenero” Jack Dorsey did some spicy tweets last night.

The Twitter founder and Block CEO tweeted out some thoughts on crypto and “Web3” that managed to exasperate some of the idea’s biggest boosters. This wasn’t the kind of Web3 criticism we’ve seen time and again — Dorsey didn’t come at them with a “right-clicker mentality” or anything so trivial. Instead, Dorsey went for the metaphorical jugular: he said users don’t actually own Web3, which is a movement that prides itself on decentralization and community.

In reality, Dorsey said, it’s big venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz, which has dedicated more than $3 billion to investments in the space (and has made investments in several dozen crypto companies, including OpenSea...

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New analysis further links Pegasus spyware to Jamal Khashoggi murder

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

New forensic analysis indicates that representatives of the United Arab Emirates government installed Pegasus spyware on the phone of Hanan Elatr, wife of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, just months before her husband was killed. The analysis was conducted by Toronto-based privacy and security research laboratory Citizen Lab on behalf of The Washington Post, which reported the findings on Tuesday.

According to the Post’s report, a forensic investigation of two Android phones owned by Elatr revealed that an unknown person used one of the phones to visit a website that uploaded Pegasus spyware onto the phone. This took place after security agents at the Dubai airport had confiscated the phone from Elatr. Further analysis from Citizen...

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Adidas and Xbox teamed up on one more console-themed sneaker, which is on sale now for $140

Adidas Forum Tech Boost Series X | Image: Microsoft

Adidas and Microsoft have collaborated on three different pairs of shoes this year to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Xbox, and now the final shoe from that partnership has been officially revealed. Unlike the previous releases, these Forum Tech Boost Series X shoes are available for purchase globally, going on sale from Adidas and other retailers, and are currently in stock on Microsoft.com for $140.

The overall design and coloring are in place to mimic Microsoft’s latest flagship console, with black netting and a green liner inside that’s similar to the Xbox Series X’s fan vent, and a sphere Xbox logo on the side is drawn from the Elite controller.

Image: Microsoft

Adidas Forum Tech Boost Series X

Like...

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DuckDuckGo is working on a privacy-focused desktop browser

Image by DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo, the company best known for its privacy-focused search engine of the same name, is working on a desktop browser that should bring the same focus on avoiding being tracked to your entire web experience. In a post on its blog, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg offers a glimpse at what the upcoming browser will look like and notes that we can expect it to perform the same way its browsing app does on mobile.

Weinberg explains that the desktop browser will offer “robust privacy protection” by default, without you having to toggle on any hidden security settings. Like the mobile app, the desktop equivalent will come with the same “Fire” button that instantly erases all of your browsing history, stored data, and tabs in one click.

I...

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The Matrix Resurrections is more interested in being self-aware than being good

Warner Bros.

A fantastic setup to a tepid sequel

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Merry Christmas: The Boston Dynamics dog has learned how to be Solid Snake

It’s been spotted. | Original image: Boston Dynamics

Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics has released a holiday video featuring its dog-like Spot robot, and it’s turned out as creepy as ever. The video, posted to Twitter, starts innocuously enough — there’s a large present of the type anyone would be happy to see under their tree, sitting in a courtyard. Then, the gift stands up and walks off-screen, kind of like Metal Gear’s Solid Snake moving through a jungle disguised as a cardboard box to stalk a private military contractor.

While the video ends with a “Happy Holidays” greeting, it’s perhaps not as heartwarming as it was meant to be. It’s hard to come away from it without the feeling that Spot’s going off on a mission to terrify a child or pull a prank on someone who thought they were about...

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GeForce Now upgraded to support 120fps gaming on Pixel 6 Pro

The recently released Pixel 6 Pro. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales

Pixel 6 Pro owners just got another reason to give Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud game streaming service a shot. The service can now stream games at 120fps on Google’s latest flagship smartphone, according to a recently updated support page spotted by XDA Developers. It’s unclear when the update rolled out exactly, but it means games should feel smoother and more responsive to play compared to when they were capped at 60fps.

That makes Google’s phone the first non-Samsung smartphone to support 120fps. According to Nvidia’s help page, the feature has previously been available for Samsung’s S21 lineup, as well as its S20 FE and Note 20 phones. You’ll need to pay for GeForce Now’s top-of-the-line RTX 3080 tier to stream games at this higher...

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Nikola agrees to pay $125 million to settle allegations it defrauded investors

Image: Nikola

Hydrogen trucking startup Nikola Corp. agreed to pay $125 million to settle charges that it defrauded investors by misleading them about its products and technical achievements, the US Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday.

The SEC accused Nikola of violating US securities law with numerous misleading statements made in 2020 about the company’s products and its future financial prospects. The company’s founder and former CEO, Trevor Milton, was arrested earlier this year on charges that he falsely portrayed Nikola as close to releasing a functional product.

“As the order finds, Nikola Corporation is responsible both for Milton’s allegedly misleading statements and for other alleged deceptions, all of which falsely...

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Biden plan will send out 500 million coronavirus tests to try to tackle the omicron surge

President Biden will announce a plan to send 500 million free coronavirus test kits to Americans | Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The White House says President Biden will deliver a speech Tuesday to announce a plan to distribute 500 million free at-home rapid COVID-19 tests beginning next month, as the administration ramps up attempts to deal with the spread of the omicron variant. The administration says it will set up a website for Americans who want to request a test to be delivered to their homes for free. This would be the second public-facing pandemic-specific website from the Biden administration, which previously built a site to direct people to vaccine providers.

The president’s so-called “winter plan” will also send 1,000 medical military members — including doctors, nurses, and other personnel — to hospitals overwhelmed with COVID patients and will set...

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How Logitech bet big on work from home

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon

Bracken Darrell talks about the mouse and keyboard renaissance

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It’s time for car companies to shut up about electric vehicles and just ship them

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge

For years, car companies have been promising a major shift to electric — and now they finally have to deliver

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This year, podcasts showed up with a vengeance on TV

HBO Max

In the new Chucky series on SyFy, one of the show’s main characters investigates a series of brutal murders by hosting a DIY true-crime podcast — a fact I found out while listening to a podcast myself.

If you listen to podcasts, you may already feel like they’re everywhere, but this year, they really were: podcasts popped up in non-podcast spaces like television time and again in 2021. True-crime podcasts drive both Chucky and the new Hulu show Only Murders in the Building, and Carrie Bradshaw co-hosts a podcast in the revival of Sex and the City. In non-fictional spaces, a certain controversial Spotify host got plenty of broadcast news coverage throughout the year, and Hot Pod even made an appearance on Today. Podcasting abounded within...

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The year in audio

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

We’re nearly there. 2022. These are times of deep uncertainty, so I’m glad I can offer you something you can depend on: a _Hot Pod_issue. I do what I can. Today, we have a light news roundup and some bullet points on trends to remember about the year. Both Aria and I published columns about a specific throughline from the year. Mine is about how all the investment in audio over the past 12 months was in service of capturing our ears’ unaccounted for attention, and Aria wrote about the year in which podcasters were highly represented on TV. You can read Aria’s here and mine here. Now, let’s get to the rest.

First, the news, which we’re going to get through quickly, so you can savor that sweet, sweet end-of-year content.

iHeart shares...

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2021 was the year platforms came for our ears

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In 2017, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings infamously told investors his streaming platform not only competes with its counterparts for attention but also with sleep. Now almost five years later, and as the pandemic continues on, our visual attention is maxed out. If you’re not streaming a show, maybe you’re playing a video game, or working, or on a Zoom call. The tech and content platforms of the world realize this, so instead, in 2021, they focused on something other than capturing whatever’s in front of our eyeballs: they came for our ears.

Look at who got into audio and podcasting this year. Meta, formerly known as Facebook, a company known for copying any service that takes time away from its own, started supporting podcasts on its main...

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