Google faces nearly $100 million fine in Russia over failure to delete banned content

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A Russian court has fined Google $98 million over its failure to remove content deemed illegal in the country. The 7.2 billion rouble fine is around eight percent of Google’s revenue in Russia, Reuters reports, and comes amid a broader push within the country to exert more control over big tech companies and the content people publish on their platforms.

Google tells The Verge it will “study the court documents when they are available and then decide on next steps.” However, a Russian official cited by Bloomberg threatened “very unpleasant measures” if Google doesn’t comply with the country’s mandate to delete banned content, which includes promotion of drugs and posts by organizations the government says are extremist or terroristic,...

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PSA: You’ll miss 25 minutes of The Expanse’s final season if you don’t pause it

If you’re a fan of The Expanse, like me, you’re probably wondering whether its final six episodes — currently airing each Friday through January 14th — are enough to wrap up its epic story. What you’re probably_not_ wondering: whether Amazon has buried nearly one-tenth of the show’s final season in a place you might not think to look, and can’t even find on your TV.

But it’s true. The Expanse’s production company filmed an additional 25 minutes of story across five vignettes, which you can only access through Amazon’s X-Ray service by pausing the show and scrolling through otherwise hidden menus. (They’re under Bonus Content.) But I couldn’t find them on Apple TV or Google TV, and the showrunners have confirmed that’s because Amazon...

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Sex ed info on TikTok shows gaps in traditional education

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Teens and adolescents might be turning to TikTok to learn about sex when their typical sex education isn’t sufficient. But the videos on the platform aren’t screened for misinformation and don’t give teens ways to ask additional questions, notes a new analysis.

Sex education offered in schools in the United States is usually inadequate — most states don’t require kids to be taught about topics like contraception, consent, and gender diversity. Information about sex, though, is spreading on TikTok, which has millions of adolescent and teen users.

To evaluate the sex education information on TikTok, one author of a new study created an account as a 15-year-old, downloaded 100 videos under the #sexeducation and #healthclass hashtags, and...

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8 great TikTok accounts from 2021 to follow

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

Put these great creators into your algorithm

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The gadgets we broke

The Verge has smashed a bunch of phones... and other things

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TikTok sued by former content moderator for allegedly failing to protect her mental health

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A former content moderator for TikTok has filed a lawsuit against the platform, alleging that parent company ByteDance provides inadequate safeguards to protect moderators’ mental health against a near-constant onslaught of traumatic footage.

In a proposed class-action lawsuit filed in the California Central District Court, Candie Frazier says she spent 12 hours a day moderating videos uploaded to TikTok for a third-party contracting firm named Telus International. In that time, Frazier says she witnessed “thousands of acts of extreme and graphic violence,” including mass shootings, child rape, animal mutilation, cannibalism, gang murder, and genocide.

Frazier says that in order to deal with the huge volume of content uploaded to...

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Tesla update lets drivers turn their cars into megaphones

Photo by Chukrut Budrul/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

As part of its annual holiday software update, Tesla has released a new feature that lets drivers turn their cars into megaphones.

The update was spotted by Electrek, which reports that it’s only available in newer Tesla models (2019 or later). This is because the feature uses external speakers that were installed in recent Tesla vehicles to meet US regulations. These regulations stipulate that otherwise silent electric cars should be able to alert pedestrians to their presence at low speeds.

A video of the feature (below) captures these external speakers repeating everything the driver says with a slight delay and an echo-y, bass-heavy distortion. It’s not clear if this distortion can be changed or removed.

NEW Tesla Megaphone...

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Intel apologizes to China for following US sanctions targeting Xinjiang ‘genocide’

China accounts for a quarter of Intel’s global revenue. | Credit: Xing Yun / Costfoto/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Intel has issued an apology to partners and customers in China after it told local suppliers it would not be using labor or goods sourced from the country’s Xinjiang region. The company has deleted the statement that resulted in the original backlash.

International trade with Xinjiang is restricted by numerous governments including the US over Chinese treatment of the region’s minority Muslim Uyghur population. Earlier this month, the US passed a ban on imports from Xinjiang unless companies can prove that goods have been created without the use of forced labor. The US government has described the repression of the minority Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang as a “genocide.”

In its annual letter to suppliers, Intel said it was “required” to...

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CES 2022 organizers insist in-person events will go on even as more exhibitors pull back

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The pace of companies announcing they will forego the in-person parts of CES 2022 has only increased in the last 24 hours, with major companies like Intel and Google announcing their decisions on Thursday afternoon. Despite a growing list of cancellations that includes exhibitors, advertisers, and most tech media organizations we can name (including The Verge), the Consumer Technology Association that puts on the event says it will push forward with in-person events.

CES 2022 will provide an opportunity for companies from around the world, both large and small, to launch products, build brands and form partnerships.

— CES (@CES) December 24, 2021

In a thread of tweets posted Thursday night, the @CES account said, “Our focus remains...

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Samsung is launching its first HDR10+ gaming displays

Redout 2 playing on an unnamed HDR10+ gaming display | Image: Samsung

Samsung has announced its first displays that will support the HDR10+ Gaming standard, an expanded games-focused version of HDR10 that can also calibrate automatically. HDR10+ Gaming was initially announced in October, but now Samsung reveals that its new 2022 lineup of QLED TVs (Q70 and above) and gaming monitors will be the first to support the standard.

Samsung partnered with Saber Interactive to bring support for HDR10+ to Redout 2 and Pinball FX, which will both be showcased at CES 2022 (as long as the game developer doesn’t drop out). Also, Game Mechanic Studios will have its HDR10+ gaming title Happy Trails and the Kidnapped Princess on the floor.

The games Samsung is touting are in contrast to major games available on the...

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The best deals on 4K TVs

LG’s A1 OLED is now available starting at just $799.99, making it one of the most affordable OLEDs to date. | Image: LG

There are a lot of 4K TVs available to choose from, complete with a wide variety of prices and performance. And while we saw some incredible TV deals during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, fret not, as there are still plenty available for those looking to pick up a TV. Even if your budget is less than $500, you can get a good 4K TV in a bigger size than you might expect. Whether you want a secondary TV for the bedroom or a high-end OLED that’s built for a cinema-like experience, we’ve picked out the best TV deals across four common categories.

Note: We provide regular updates to this post so be sure to check back periodically for the most up-to-date info on the best deals available.

Select a category

• The best 4K TV deals for most...

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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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Tesla will stop letting people play games in cars that are moving

Tesla says it’ll turn off its Passenger Play feature with an update. | Image: The Verge

Tesla won’t let people play video games on its cars’ built-in display while in motion anymore, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This change, which will be included in a software update, comes right on the heels of the NHTSA announcing an investigation into the feature, which would include the evaluation of over half a million cars.

When The Vergetested out the feature, called Passenger Play, earlier this month, we could play a few Tesla Arcade games while the car was moving. A warning popped up on the screen, saying only passengers are allowed to play while the car’s moving, along with a button asking to confirm that the player is a passenger.

Safety advocates called Passenger Play “dangerous”

But...

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Anker’s four-port 120W power brick is built for the USB-C warrior

The Anker 547 Charger has four USB-C ports, with one that’s able to pump out 100W. | Image: Anker

Anker’s newly available 547 Charger may be a power brick to consider if you frequently travel with lots of USB-C devices or are in charge of keeping your family’s devices topped up (via 9to5Toys). Despite its relatively compact size, it packs four USB-C ports that are capable of putting out 120W of power at once.

The $120 charger has two 20 watt ports for phones or tablets and two higher-power ports, one of which is capable of providing up to 100W (or 90W if you have a phone plugged into one of the 20W ports).

High-power bricks with four USB-C ports aren’t exactly common

Charging bricks with four USB-C ports aren’t exactly common, which can be annoying now that so many devices are compatible with the standard. Plus, with 120W, you...

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Amazon UK has had Xbox Series X consoles in stock all day

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

We’ve been keeping an eye out for end-of-year next-generation console drops in the US, and despite exceptions like a recent PlayStation 5 sale from Walmart that went on for an hour, they’ve remained as hard to get as ever. Things may be different on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, however, where Amazon UK has had a for sale sign posted next to Microsoft’s £449.99 Xbox Series X — complete with same-day delivery — for over 12 hours with no end in sight.

The cheaper Xbox Series S has been much easier to find, but sales for either of the two flagship 4K gaming consoles never go on for this long. In a reply to our reporter Tom Warren on Twitter, one person reports similar sightings in France this week, so it’s possible the continent is...

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CES 2022 loses another key exhibitor as Intel pulls out of in-person show

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

CES 2022’s exodus of exhibitors over rising COVID-19 concerns continues, with the latest withdrawal coming from Intel. The company typically has one of the biggest presences of major tech companies at the show. Intel joins a slew of other key companies skipping this year’s show in-person, which also includes Lenovo, Hisense, T-Mobile, AT&T, Amazon, Waymo, Meta, Twitter, Pinterest, and iHeartRadio.

“The health and safety of our employees, partners and customers is always a top priority. After consulting with health officials and in the spirit of Intel’s safety policy, our plans for CES will move to a digital-first, live experience, with minimal on-site staff. We encourage you to join us as we deliver all our CES content and experiences...

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The Matrix Resurrections has an incredibly smart take on showing video games in movies

Warner Bros.

Movies and TV have a notoriously tough time depicting video games. They tend toward presenting games as either generic arcade titles or as impossibly full-featured virtual realities, neither of which captures the typical experience of playing one. But _The Matrix Resurrections,_a film that’s all about virtual reality, has managed one of my favorite takes on it yet by embracing its own world’s unrealism.

Below, I’m going to talk about a few specific plot points from The Matrix Resurrections, which premiered yesterday in theaters and on HBO Max. It’s a movie I found a lot of problems with but that many of my colleagues at other publications enjoyed, and if you don’t want some light spoilers, you should stop reading now.

All right. Let’s...

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Amazon’s nationwide NLRB settlement makes it easier for workers to organize

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon has reached a nationwide settlement for six National Labor Relations Board cases, agreeing to notify workers of their rights and let workers organize on company property outside of their shift time. According to a report by The New York Times, the company previously didn’t allow employees to be around its warehouse, delivery, or other facilities more than 15 minutes before or after their shifts, making it more difficult to organize with co-workers.

The agreement, which you can read here or below, requires Amazon to notify its workers that it’s legally obligated to let them create or join a union and that it can’t retaliate against them for protected actives or staying on company property after their shift for organizational...

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Astronomers discover largest group of ‘rogue planets’ yet

An artist’s impression of a rogue planet | Image: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Astronomers just discovered a treasure trove of “rogue planets” — free-floating planets that don’t orbit a star but exist all by their lonesome in the depths of space. With masses comparable to that of Jupiter, the 70 or more rogue planets spotted throughout the Milky Way galaxy are the largest such group of cosmic nomads ever found.

Located within the Scorpius and Ophiuchus constellations, the planets were spotted using a suite of telescopes on both the ground and in space. Typically, rogue planets are difficult to image because they aren’t close to any stars to make them visible. However, with data compiled over 20 years from European Southern Observatory (ESO) telescopes, the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite, and more, Núria...

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The latest trailer for the Uncharted movie displays a borderline contempt for the laws of physics

Impossible as it once may have seemed, but Uncharted (the long-awaited film adaptation of the Naughty Dog game series) is actually set to hit movie theaters early next year, barring any other delays for the decade-in-the-making film.

The new trailer also gives a better idea of what to expect from the movie: as teased, the film is a spiritual prequel of sorts to the characters players know and love from the PlayStation games. Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) is just at the start of his career as a globe-trotting treasure hunter (although the trailer already shows that he’ll be donning the character’s trademark henley and holsters by the end), while a ‘stache-less Sully (Mark Wahlberg) is his gateway to the world of thieves. The duo will be...

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The massive Odyssey G9 gaming monitor is down to its lowest price at B&H Photo

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge

With the current end-of-year promotion happening at B&H Photo, you can get the massive Samsung Odyssey G9 gaming monitor for its lowest price ever. This monitor’s list price is $1,599 and it typically retails around $1,500, but you can currently grab it for $999 at B&H Photo and Best Buy. This same discount is also available at Newegg when you check out with the promo code YEAREND3.

This curved 49-inch monitor sports a 1440p resolution and a blistering 240Hz refresh rate. The display is compatible with both AMD Freesync and Nvidia G-Sync to help cut down on screen tearing and comes equipped with a pair of Display Port and USB inputs, as well as a single HDMI port. The stand thankfully supports height, tilt, and swivel adjustments, so you...

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Where is Spotify HiFi?

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

2021 will have been the year that Apple finally embraced lossless music streaming and prices for hi-fi listening came down at Amazon and Tidal. But the biggest subscription music service of all, Spotify, seems likely to miss its original target for launching a higher-quality streaming plan.

Spotify HiFi, first announced all the way back in February, has yet to roll out despite the company’s early estimate that it would debut “later this year.” At the time, Spotify said HiFi would be available in select markets and that the company would “have more details to share soon.”

Over the next 10 months, those details never came.

Meanwhile, Spotify’s competitors didn’t wait around. Apple Music rolled out lossless and hi-res playback in June,...

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Take a look at this delicious lickable screen to see the future we knew was coming

See the menu. Taste the menu. | Image: Meiji University

If you’ve ever thought, “This 4K HDR OLED TV is great, but I sure wish it tasted better when I licked it,” we may be getting closer to a world where that’s the case — a professor has created a device he calls “Taste the TV,” according to Reuters, and it does exactly what the name implies. Homei Miyashita says he hopes his “TTTV” will let people experience things like far-away world-class restaurants without leaving their own home, which has become an increasingly understandable desire in the past two years of the pandemic.

According to a demonstration video, which you can see below, researchers blended up various foods and used sensors to “taste” them. Then, chemicals are sprayed onto a rolling plastic sheet (or a disposable tray for...

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All the news from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope mission

After decades of work, the launch is here

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FDA authorizes second COVID-19 antiviral pill

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Food and Drug Administration authorized a second at-home antiviral pill to treat COVID-19 on Thursday. The clearance for the drug, called molnupiravir, came a day after the agency signed off on Pfizer’s COVID-19 antiviral, called Paxlovid. Both drugs reduce the risk of hospitalization and death in people diagnosed with COVID-19 and at risk of having a severe case of the disease.

Molnupiravir, made by pharmaceutical company Merck, is authorized for people 18 years of age and older who are at a high risk of getting seriously ill if they contract the coronavirus. It’s a higher age cutoff than Paxlovid, which is cleared for people 12 and up, because molnupiravir might affect bone and cartilage growth, the FDA said in a statement.

Like...

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Our favorite apps, games, and entertainment from 2021 for all of your new tech

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

Our staff lists their choices for the best of the year

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What to expect from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope launch

An anxiety-ridden launch that’s been decades in the making

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11 great shows and movies from 2021 to stream on HBO Max

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

Follow the white rabbit

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Watch Joseph Gordon-Levitt as former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick in new TV show teaser

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is pumped. In fact, he’s super pumped, taking on the role of former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick in a limited series from Showtime that debuts February 27th, 2022 and will chart the chaotic rise of the transportation startup.

The show is titled Super Pumped after the best-selling non-fiction book of the same name from New York Times journalist Mike Isaac. It’s been developed by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, co-creators of Billions, a series which revels in the pugnacious behavior of the super-rich. There’ll be lots of familiar material for Koppelman and Levien in Kalanick’s story, then, with the former CEO described aptly in the trailer as “the notorious bad boy of tech” (those words spoken by Uma Thurman, who’s...

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Alexa is nagging you more because Amazon knows you don’t care about its new features

“By the way, I’m much more than just a voice-activated timer.” | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

If you regularly use an Alexa device, you’ve probably been upsold by Amazon’s assistant at some point. Ask Alexa to carry out some basic task like setting a timer, and it will finish its response with a cheery “By the way, did you know I could [insert feature you’ve never heard of here].” As highlighted in a recent report from Bloomberg, this is because Amazon knows that users aren’t really getting stuck into the full range of Alexa’s capabilities.

Bloomberg’s report is based on internal Amazon docs, and features some interesting statistics about Alexa usage. Here are the ones we found most eye-catching:

• In 2020, Amazon determined that 25 percent of US households have at least one Alexa device, with this rising to 27 percent for...

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