CES 2022 will introduce HDMI 2.1a, another confusing new spec

The HDMI standards are a mess. HDMI 2.1, in particular, is a uniquely frustrating mess, with haphazard support among TV manufacturers, cable makers, and devices that make setting up, say 120Hz gaming on a PS5 or Xbox Series X a uniquely harrowing experience.

Fortunately, the HDMI Forum is swooping in ahead of CES with its latest revision to the HDMI specification stack, HDMI 2.1a, which is here to make everything better and simpler.

... I’m kidding, of course. It’s gonna make things more complicated. It’s a new HDMI standard, what on earth did you expect?

What on earth did you expect?

Let’s start with the good: HDMI 2.1a is an upcoming revision to the HDMI 2.1 stack and adds a major new feature, Source-Based Tone Mapping, or SBTM. SBTM...

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10 Apple Arcade games for your new iPhone or iPad

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

There’s a lot to play on Apple’s game subscription service

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You’ll see even more Roku TV Ready soundbars in 2022

TCL’s Roku Wireless Soundbar with Roku TV Ready certification from this past October. | Image: Roku / TCL

Roku today announced the expansion of its “Roku TV Ready” certification program, bringing in newcomer brands Polk Audio and Westinghouse early next year (and joining recent manufacturers Philips, JVC, and Element).

First launched in 2020, Roku TV Ready lets audio products (like soundbars) easily link up with a Roku TV set. Customers with supported soundbars get full integration of the audio settings and volume control within the Roku TV’s interface — all while using a single remote.

Owners of some early Roku TV Ready audio devices (like the Bose TV Speaker) needed only to connect the speaker hardware to a Roku TV via HDMI — but more recent devices like the TCL Roku TV wireless soundbar can simply work without the cable.

Roku reiterates...

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You must never press the original Razr’s forbidden internet button

The first phone I ever owned was a Motorola Razr. The Razr’s buttons are some of the finest ever to grace a mobile device. The keypad is laser-etched out of a sheet of shimmering aluminum, and when pressed, ignites in a lambent blue glow that looked like the sci-fi future.

But there was one button that I was terrified to press. In all my years of owning a Razr, I can’t say I tapped it more than once or twice, and never on purpose: the internet button.

Located on the upper left side of the keypad, the internet button was emblazoned with a blue globe and would open the Razr’s built-in internet browser. The problem, of course, was that in the heady days of 2007, when I first got a cellphone, I didn’t pay for data. Which meant that...

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Waymo plans fleet of self-driving, all-electric robotaxis with Chinese automaker Geely

Flat floors, low entry, and B-pillarless design — Waymo’s concept art of the coming cars. | Image: Waymo

Alphabet’s self-driving car company Waymo is partnering with Chinese automaker Geely to create a fleet of all-electric, self-driving robotaxis.

The cars will be designed in Sweden (where Geely owns Swedish carmaker Volvo) and will be adapted from Geely’s all-electric five-door Zeekr. Waymo will then outfit the cars with the hardware and software necessary for autonomous driving. Waymo said in a blog post that it plans to deploy the vehicles in the US as part of its existing fleet of self-driving robotaxis some time “in the years to come.”

Concept images of finished vehicle shared by Waymo show a car that is designed specifically for autonomous ride-hailing trips. It has a flat floor, low step-in height, and B-pillarless design for easy...

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LG says next-generation OLED EX technology delivers improved brightness and accuracy

LG will be incorporating OLED EX technology into its TVs from the second quarter of 2022. | Image: LG Display

LG is the maker of some of our favorite OLED TVs, so when the company says it’s improved on its basic panel technology, it’s worth paying attention. Today it did just that, with LG Display announcing its next-generation OLED technology — dubbed OLED EX — which the company says will increase brightness by up to 30 percent, boost picture accuracy, and allow for smaller bezels in finished products.

These improvements are due to two key changes. The first is the use of an element known as deuterium in the chemical make-up of LG’s OLED panels, and the second is the incorporation of algorithmic image processing. LG says the latter will predict the usage of each individual light emitting diode in your TV based on your personal viewing habits...

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LG’s new recipe service uses Walmart and Amazon Fresh to deliver ingredients

LG ThinQ Recipe app features 10,000 one-click shoppable recipes. | Image: LG

LG just announced its latest lineup of smart kitchen appliances. Fine, but what’s notable this time is a service that could make life just a little bit easier. LG says the ThinQ Recipe app and service is “new for 2022” and will let users seamlessly select from thousands of recipes for delivery directly from Walmart or Amazon Fresh without ever leaving the app.

The LG ThinQ Recipe app is powered by SideChef, which LG has been partnering with since at least 2019. According to an LG press release, ThinQ Recipe offers “10,000 one-click shoppable recipes” that can be added to a shopping list within the app for delivery by Walmart or Amazon Fresh. If it’s as seamless as it sounds, the service could take some of the pain out of the weekly...

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FCC win clears the way for a massive Wi-Fi 6E upgrade

Illustrator by Alex Castro / The Verge

A ruling (pdf) on Tuesday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has backed up an April 2020 decision by the FCC to open up 1,200MHz of spectrum in the 6GHz band for unlicensed use. Unlicensed means anyone can use it, as long as they do so responsibly, covering uses like your future Wi-Fi 6E home network.

While Wi-Fi 6 connections make more reliable and efficient use of the same spectrum that’s been in use for the last couple of decades, especially when multiple devices are connected, Wi-Fi 6E routers will work at 2.4GHz and 5GHz plus the new 6GHz band. That has enough room for up to seven maximum capacity Wi-Fi streams to broadcast in the same area at once without interfering with each other or using any...

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Another T-Mobile cyberattack reportedly exposed customer info and SIMs

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

T-Mobile has suffered another cyberattack after being rocked by a massive data breach in August. This time around, attackers accessed “a small number of” customers’ accounts, according to documents posted by The T-Mo Report.

According to the report, customers either fell victim to a SIM swapping attack (which could allow someone to bypass SMS-powered two-factor authentication), had personal plan information exposed, or both. The document shows that the customer proprietary network information that was viewed could’ve included customers’ billing account name, phone and account number, and info about their plan, including how many lines were attached to their account.

The person who took credit for the summer hack called T-Mobile’s...

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LastPass says no passwords were compromised following breach scare

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

LastPass says there’s no evidence of a data breach following users’ reports that they were notified of unauthorized login attempts, as reported by AppleInsider. The password manager maintains that it was never compromised, and users’ accounts haven’t been accessed by bad actors.

Something very strange and bad is happening to a lot of people's @LastPass accounts. I posted this to Hacker News and it gathered 192 comments, including 7 separate reports of master password breaches & login attempts from the same Brazil IP range. Uhh. https://t.co/tcM0aFdavv`

— Greg Technology (@technology_greg) December 27, 2021

Reports started cropping up on the Hacker News forum after a LastPass user created a post to highlight the issue. He claims that...

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Rivian’s 400-mile electric vehicles delayed to 2023

Photo by Mitchell Clark / The Verge

Rivian is telling customers that it won’t be building R1T pickup trucks with the “Max pack” battery option until 2023, as it’ll be prioritizing ones with the standard “large” battery pack for production throughout next year (via Electrek). In an email attributed to CEO RJ Scaringe, the company says it will work on orders for the higher-trim “Adventure Package” trucks with the regular battery first, and that the lower-end “Explorer Package” and bigger battery will come later.

When the company debuted its truck in 2018, the 400-mile estimated range afforded by the 180kWh Max pack was a big selling point. The “large” battery pack that comes standard with the trucks gets an EPA estimated range of 314 miles, but for the adventurous, off-road...

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The Quest Store has a very good New Year’s sale going on

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The Quest Store is offering a lot of VR games and experiences at a discount for its New Year’s sale, which lasts until January 2nd, 2022.

Some of my personal favorite titles like Job Simulator, Arizona Sunshine, and Gorn have their prices slashed by up to 35 percent. Job Simulator is a place where you can do your job as horribly as you want without any real consequences, while Arizona Sunshine is a zombie shooter with a surprisingly decent story, and _Gorn_lets you take your anger out gladiator style, complete with mace-swinging. I find all of them to be pretty therapeutic (although they aren’t the newest games to come out for the Quest).

There are also a number of themed game bundles for sale, such as the Thrilling Adventures Pack,...

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Samsung resumes Android 12 rollout, updates some foldables, and more S21s

Samsung’s starting to roll out One UI 4 again. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

Samsung is starting to roll out its Android 12-based One UI 4 update again after the company paused its original release due to reports of bugs and soft bricks from users, according to XDA Developers. The update, which is hopefully a bit more stable, should soon be available for Galaxy S21 phones (including the S21 Plus and Ultra), along with the Galaxy Z Flip 3 and Z Fold 3.

One UI 4 includes a visual redesign based on Google’s Material You design that debuted with Android 12. It also includes an updated keyboard. Despite a public beta process, Samsung’s initial release in November had some issues, and users said they were getting poor performance, saw some screen flicker, and experienced other bugs. Last week, the company reportedly...

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Matter’s plan to save the smart home

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

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How to activate and use Google Chat

Real-time collaborative chat, as exemplified by apps such as Slack, has become a common way to communicate between colleagues and friends, especially since last year when so many of us transitioned to working from home. Google has apparently taken note of this and is pitting itself against Slack by taking two of the features from its corporate Workplace app suite — chat and spaces (previously called rooms) — and integrating them into its standard Gmail app.

Google Chat allows you to hold chat sessions with friends and groups of friends either on an informal or formal basis. The former can be done just between two people or between several in what Google calls a group conversation. The latter is done via a separate area that Google...

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China complains to UN after maneuvering its space station away from SpaceX Starlink satellites

Chinese astronauts Nie Haisheng and Liu Boming waving their hands during a spacewalk out of the space station core module Tianhe in August of 2021 | Photo by Tian Dingyu/Xinhua via Getty Images

China filed a complaint this month with the United Nations, arguing that it had to conduct evasive maneuvers of its space station to avoid potential collisions with two of SpaceX’s internet-beaming Starlink satellites. The country is requesting that the UN’s Secretary General remind countries of their obligations under international space law, though China did not specify exactly what actions it wants to be taken.

In the complaint, dated December 6th, China details two instances on July 1st, 2020 and on October 21st, 2021 when the nation had to maneuver the core module of its space station, called Tianhe, out of the way of two separate Starlink satellites. The three Chinese astronauts currently living on Tianhe had just arrived to the...

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Tumblr goes overboard censoring tags on iOS to comply with Apple’s guidelines

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

An update to Tumblr’s iOS app censors a long list of tags to comply with Apple’s strict safety guidelines. The platform explains that it’s changing iOS users’ ability to access sensitive content, affecting their experience when it comes to searching for content, scrolling through the “Stuff for You” and “Following” sections of the dashboard, and could even prevent access to blogs that are flagged. Tumblr says it has to “extend the definition of what sensitive content is” to “remain available within Apple’s App Store,” and it seems that Tumblr stretched it pretty far.

Tags are what make posts searchable on Tumblr; posts with censored tags won’t appear on a users’ dashboard, nor will they show up on the platform’s search page. A Twitter...

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Samsung’s Family Hub smart fridge gets a colorful new look

Samsung’s Family Hub smart fridge will now be part of its colorful, customizable Bespoke line. | Image: Samsung

The smart fridge has long been the butt of many IoT-related memes, but Samsung is betting that maybe all smart fridges needed to nab a spot in your kitchen was a more colorful look. The company will show off its newest iteration of the smart fridge at CES 2022 next week, and while it still can’t reliably determine what food you need and automatically order it so you don’t even have to think about shopping, it can be a pretty shade of blue.

The Samsung Family Hub fridge is now a part of Samsung’s Bespoke appliance line. First introduced in 2021, the Bespoke range is a selection of modular, configurable appliances with a clean, modern look and customizable colors and finishes.

Image: Samsung

The Family Hub fridge...

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The Xbox Series X is available at Best Buy right now

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Microsoft’s Xbox Series X keeps coming and going, but the next-gen console remains tricky to get a hold of. We just saw it go up for sale at Costco this morning but it did not last long before it sold out. Now, after a PS5 drop earlier, another chance has sprung up at Best Buy.

Right now, you can queue up for the Xbox Series X from Best Buy. The retailer is just selling the console — no bundle required — and it is open to anyone, including those who are not Best Buy Totaltech subscribers. Just click the “Add to Cart” button and be patient while you are put in a digital line. As of right now, Best Buy appears to be releasing stock in waves, meaning you may have a second opportunity even if the console appears to be sold out.

Also, be...

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The PS5 is available right now at Best Buy (update: sold out)

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Update 12:37PM ET, December 28th: Best Buy has sold out of consoles for now.

If you’re currently shopping for a PlayStation 5 console and have been recently striking out with restocks at Walmart, Costco, and other retailers, you have another chance right now at Best Buy. The electronics retailer just opened up a fresh batch of PlayStation 5 consoles for $499.99. Best Buy is only selling the disc-based version, however, not the Digital Edition.

Be sure to log in and queue up on Best Buy’s site, with your billing and shipping info saved. Click the “Add to Cart” button on the right to jump into the waiting line, and stay calm. You don’t need to refresh the automated system, though, you may be prompted to verify your account when it’s your...

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Alexa told a child to do potentially lethal ‘challenge’

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Amazon’s Alexa told a child to touch a penny to the exposed prongs of a phone charger plugged into the wall, according to one parent who posted screenshots of their Alexa activity history showing the interaction (via Bleeping Computer). The device seemingly pulled the idea for the challenge from an article describing it as dangerous, citing news reports about an alleged challenge trending on TikTok.

According to Kristin Livdahl’s screenshot, the Echo responded to “tell me a challenge to do” with “Here’s something I found on the web. According to ourcommunitynow.com: The challenge is simple: plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs.” In a statement to the BBC, Amazon said: “As soon...

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Costco members can order the Xbox Series X right now

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Xbox Series X console has remained hard to come by, and with the holidays looming the window to get one in time is narrowing. Many retailers have turned to charging for the chance just to buy a console via subscription-based memberships, which is a game that Costco has been playing from the beginning. The warehouse retailer has gotten its fair share of console restocks, and today it has Microsoft’s flagship console available for its members.

You can order the Xbox Series X from Costco right now, which is only sold as a bundle with an extra controller (if you’re signed in, then you can add it directly to your cart by clicking here). You need a paid Costco membership to order this, which you can get here at the retailer’s site for a...

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Riot Games will pay $100 million to settle discrimination lawsuit

Illustrations by Alex Castro / The Verge

Riot Games has struck a $100 million settlement deal in a discrimination and harassment lawsuit brought by female employees. The _League of Legends_and _Valorant_publisher will pay at least $80 million to members of the settlement class and around $20 million in legal fees, and it will agree to workplace changes that include greater pay transparency and three years of third-party monitoring.

The settlement covers a 2018 class action lawsuit filed by current and former Riot employees in the wake of a Kotaku report detailing systemic sexism and unfair treatment. The suit described an environment where male employees made derogatory sexual comments about female colleagues and passed them over for promotion, creating a company-wide “unwritten...

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Committed adult smokers who start vaping more likely to drop cigarettes

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Adult smokers who say that they don’t plan to quit smoking but who start using e-cigarettes are more likely quit than those who don’t start vaping, according to a new study. People who say they’re not trying to quit often aren’t included in studies of the potential benefits of e-cigarettes for adult smokers, and the new data shows that the group should be considered during that type of analysis.

In the new study, published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open, researchers evaluated data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study, which is run by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Participants were interviewed about their tobacco use four times between 2014 and 2019.

Of the...

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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is about to transform into its final form

A telescope in disguise

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Amazon’s Echo devices are still available for Black Friday prices

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Many Alexa-powered Amazon Echo speakers and displays are still enjoying Black Friday discounts. One of the most appealing deals is on the Amazon Echo Show 5 display, which is normally $84.99 but can be found at Amazon and Best Buy for $44.99. This smart display could be the perfect companion for your nightstand or kitchen counter, since it can handle alarm, recipe, and entertainment duties. While it shares a lot of functionality with Echo speakers, the Echo Show display is capable of more, like streaming video from Prime Video and Netflix, showing you the forecast, or displaying your agenda for the day. Additionally, the built-in camera lets you video chat with family and friends. Read our review.

You can also find the latest version...

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Our predictions for the next year in audio

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Hello, hello. I hope you all had a nice holiday and are ready for another one. Last week we looked back on 2021, and this week, we’re looking forward to 2022. We have a couple quick news hits from last week to get through first, but then Aria and I will offer our predictions for the year to come. Off we go.

Project Brazen and Audiation ordered to release audio recorded forFat Leonard

In a troubling precedent for journalism, a judge in San Diego ruled the podcast companies behind_Fat Leonard_, Project Brazen and Audiation, must share all recorded audio from their lead character, Leonard Glenn Francis — even audio that wasn’t included in the show’s final cut. The San Diego Union-Tribunehas all the details, but essentially, the podcast...

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9 great games for your new Android phone

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

Load your phone with these recommendations, many of which are free

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Lego’s official Sonic the Hedgehog set recreates picture-perfect Green Hill Zone

Image: Lego

After months of waiting, Lego’s official Sonic the Hedgehog set is finally here: a $69.99, 1,125-piece recreation of the iconic Green Hill Zone stage, complete with Lego-ized versions of the titular heroic hedgehog, a handful of classic Sonic villains, Dr. Eggman, and — of course — the Chaos Emeralds.

Officially called the Lego Ideas Sonic the Hedgehog Green Hill Zoneset, the new kit’s origins are in a crowdsourced Lego Ideas set that was suggested by Lego and Sonic fan Viv Grannell in early 2019. After the set reached 10,000 votes through the Ideas program, Lego conducted an official review of the project in March 2020, and in February 2021, greenlit the proposal for development into a real set.

Image: Lego

“...

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COVID-19 patients only need to isolate for five days as long as symptoms are gone, CDC says

Photo by Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

People who test positive for COVID-19 only need to isolate for five days as long as their symptoms have stopped, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday. The change to isolation guidelines from 10 days to five is based on data showing people with COVID-19 are most likely to be contagious to others during the few days before and after they start showing symptoms, the agency said in a statement.

After leaving isolation, people should wear a mask around others for five additional days, the CDC said.

The CDC also said Monday that people who haven’t received a booster dose of a COVID-19 vaccine but received their second dose of an mRNA vaccine six months ago, or who received a Johnson & Johnson vaccine two months ago,...

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