YouTuber figured out Asus Z690 Hero motherboards melted down due to backward capacitor

An Asus Z690 Hero motherboard with burnt up MOSFETs. | Image by Actually Hardcore Overclocking via YouTube

A YouTuber who goes by the name of Buildzoid on the Actually Hardware Overlocking channel has figured out that a backward capacitor on the Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero motherboard is causing it to melt down, according to a report by Tom’s Hardware. Asus has since acknowledged the issue in a post on its site and plans on issuing replacements to customers with affected motherboards.

Problems with the Z690 Hero motherboard started turning up on the Asus support forum, as well as onReddit, and the issues experienced by users are pretty much identical. As noted by Tom’s Hardware, users reported that their motherboards started smoking in the same spot: the two MOSFETs (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor) next to the DIMM slots...

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AT&T, Verizon CEOs reject FAA request to delay 5G expansions scheduled to start January 5th

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

In an ongoing battle pitting the FAA and airlines against the FCC, Verizon, and AT&T over their planned launch of mid-band 5G service, the mobile carriers are declining a request by the FAA for a two-week delay.

Earlier this year, an FCC auction sold the two carriers rights to use so-called “C-band” frequencies at a price of nearly $70 billion. Verizon and AT&T are eager to roll it out so that in addition to offering ultra-fast 5G connectivity in specific areas using high-band millimeter-wave technology and much slower 5G over low-band frequencies, the new spectrum will provide in-between performance over much wider areas. T-Mobile currently uses mid-band spectrum that isn’t in the C-band.

Thank goodness: No more delays for #5G in...

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Microsoft issues a fix for Exchange Y2K22 bug that shut down company emails

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

If you woke up on January 1st, 2022, and found that your work email’s inbox was unusually empty, you aren’t alone. Microsoft rang in the New Year with a bug that prevents Exchange servers from sending emails, but fortunately, a fix has since been issued, as detailed in a report by Bleeping Computer.

“The problem relates to a date check failure with the change of the new year”

“The problem relates to a date check failure with the change of the new year and is not a failure of the AV engine itself,” Microsoft explains in a post on its Tech Community forum. “The version checking performed against the signature file is causing the malware engine to crash, resulting in messages being stuck in transport queues.”

Microsoft outlines the solution...

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Tesla delivered close to one million vehicles in 2021

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

Tesla delivered a record 936,172 vehicles in 2021, as outlined in a report from Tesla, representing an 87 percent increase over the 499,550 vehicle deliveries Tesla made in 2020.

Great work by Tesla team worldwide! https://t.co/lsDTCJtMrp

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 2, 2022

The company managed to deliver 308,600 cars in the last quarter of 2021 alone, up from 241,300 deliveries in the third quarter. Of those deliveries, 11,750 were for the Model S and X, while 296,850 were for the Model 3 and Y. Both the Model 3 and Y also made up the majority of deliveries throughout the entire year at 936,172 shipments, compared to the 24,964 Model S and X deliveries.

Tesla previously stated that it plans on increasing its deliveries by about...

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Twitter permanently suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal account over COVID-19 misinformation

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Twitter has permanently suspended Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal account for repeatedly violating the platform’s rules on COVID-19 misinformation, as noted in a report by CNN. Since the ban only affects Greene’s personal Twitter account, @mtgreenee, she can still access and tweet from her governmental account, @RepMTG.

In a statement to The Verge, Twitter spokesperson Katie Rosborough explains that the platform “permanently suspended” Greene’s account “for repeated violations” of the platform’s COVID-19 policies. “We’ve been clear that, per our strike system for this policy, we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of the policy,” she adds.

Twitter implemented a five-strike system for COVID-19...

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Samsung’s new smart monitor can control your IoT devices, stream games, and more

Samsung

Samsung is adding onto its lineup of smart monitors with the 4K 32-inch M8. Like the models that are currently on sale, this new one can deliver smart TV-like functionality, including offering access to streaming apps, in addition to being able to plug into a computer like normal monitors. The company hasn’t revealed a release date or price, but the initial details we’ve learned prove that Samsung is going a few steps further with the M8 to make it even more useful to a variety of people.

This smart monitor is 11.4mm-thick, which Samsung says is significantly thinner than prior models. Perhaps the most impressive feature is its magnetic and moveable SlimFit camera that can attach to the monitor for video calls. The monitor itself...

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Samsung announced a smaller 4K version of its curviest, best-looking gaming monitor

Samsung

Samsung has announced a smaller version of its Odyssey Neo curved gaming monitor. The Odyssey Neo G8 is a 32-inch gaming monitor with the same 1000R curvature of the $2,500 49-inch Odyssey Neo G9. The R stands for radius and, compared to 1800R and 1500R curvature, which are both common in the monitor market, Samsung specializes in the 1000R curvature that’s far more, well, curvy. It makes 1800R look like a flat panel by comparison. The G8 similarly has 2,000 nits of peak brightness and promises brilliant picture quality with its Quantum Mini-LED panel.

Samsung hasn’t shared a price or a release date for the Odyssey Neo G8, but it’s offering up just a few images and details until a later date. Aside from the difference in size, the...

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AirPods Pro 2 may come with lossless audio and a charging case that makes sound

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

The second-generation AirPods Pro may support Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC), and could even come with a case that makes a sound to help you find it, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo in a note to investors seen by AppleInsider and 9to5Mac.

There currently isn’t an AirPods model that supports lossless audio, a form of file compression that preserves all of the data in the original audio file, resulting in higher quality sound. Each AirPods model — even the pricey AirPods Max — uses Bluetooth to deliver audio, which limits the devices to using Advanced Audio Codec (AAC), a lossy form of audio compression. Thus far, the only Apple devices that can take advantage of lossless audio on Apple Music (and elsewhere) include the iPhone,...

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It’s 2022, and the Surface Duo still doesn’t have Android 11

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

We are officially in 2022. Know what that means? That’s right: It means Microsoft has failed at its stated goal of bringing Android 11 to the Surface Duo by the end of 2021.

Attentive readers may recall that Microsoft said the following this past September: “We remain committed to providing updates to Surface Duo, and we’re working to bring Android 11 to existing customers before the end of this year.” Okay, so the company wasn’t exactly promising Android 11 by the end of 2021 — but that was the heavily implied intention, and it likely gave some Surface Duo users a lot of hope.

“We’re working to bring Android 11 to existing customers before the end of this year.”

As Windows Central first reported, Duo devices still haven’t received...

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Square Enix promises ‘decentralized games’ in 2022

What would a Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, or Deus Ex look like if it were partly powered by the blockchain, so gamers could make money from their contributions? You may get to find out: Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda has revealed that the company’s New Year’s resolution is to release “decentralized games” starting in 2022.

While you won’t find any details in Masuda’s letter discussing the company’s strategy for the new year, you will find a good sense of his cautious-but-optimistic stance — not surprising, given how other game companies that recently Leeroy Jenkins’d their way into NFTs saw such immediatewhiplash you could practically feel the vibrations over the internet.

Here’s the most relevant section, which comes near the...

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Airbnb will hide guests’ names to fight discrimination (but only in Oregon)

Photo by Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Airbnb announced that it’s changing the way guest profiles are displayed in its app — for Oregon residents specifically. Airbnb hosts who are based in Oregon will now see a potential guest’s initials, rather than their full name, until after they’ve confirmed that guest’s booking request. The change will fully roll out by January 31st.

The change aims to prevent racial discrimination among hosts, per the company’s announcement, by stopping them from gleaning a guest’s race from their name. A 2016 study found that Airbnb guests with names that sounded Black were 16 percent less likely to have bookings confirmed than guests with names that sounded white.

The announcement follows a voluntary settlement agreement that Airbnb reached in...

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Apple’s new ad invites you to imagine dying alone without a Watch on your wrist

Apple wants you to know that buying a $400 smartwatch could be a matter of life-and-death — and it’s brilliantly, gruesomely captured that feeling in a new TV ad.

Titled “911,” the one-minute ad spot doesn’t show any of the gory details — you simply hear three phone conversations between 911 operators and people who managed to use their Apple Watch when facing seemingly imminent death: one who might drown in a sinking car, one who fell a great distance and broke his leg, and a paddleboarder who got swept out to sea.

They each have a happy ending, Apple informs us: “With the help of their watch, Jason, Jim, and Amanda were rescued in minutes.” But the underlying message is brutally clear: if they didn’t have this miraculous life-saving...

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AT&T and Verizon may have to delay 5G deployments another two weeks over airline safety fears

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

US officials have asked AT&T and Verizon to further delay new 5G deployments so that the Federal Aviation Administration can have more time to determine where they might interfere with airlines. US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and FAA Administrator Steve Dickson sent a letter to the CEOs of the two telecoms on Friday requesting a delay of “no more than two weeks,” according to Reuters.

AT&T and Verizon had already delayed these deployments by a month over regulators’ concerns and planned to start the rollout on January 5th as a result. The two telecoms now tell Insiderthey are reviewing the latest request for a further delay. Buttigieg and Dickson write that, even with an additional delay, they expect 5G deployment will still...

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Winnie-the-Pooh and around 400,000 early sound recordings enter public domain

Cover art for A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh.

A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and other books, movies, and compositions from 1926 enter into the public domain today in the US. The works are now “free for all to copy, share, and build upon,” according to Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, which tracks which copyrighted materials will become public each year.

This year, the usual list of books, movies, and compositions comes with a sizable bonus: a trove of around 400,000 early sound recordings. A recent law, the 2018 Music Modernization Act, standardized how early sound recordings are handled under federal copyright law. As part of that, it set today as the date that copyright protections would end for “recordings first published...

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Merry Christmas! Santander Claus made a $176 million payment mistake

Photo by HUSSEIN FALEH/AFP via Getty Images

Some tens of thousands of people woke up on Christmas Day to doubled wages and a higher-than-expected bank balance after Santander did an oopsie, depositing £130 million ($176 million) into accounts held by its UK customers. Santander would now like the money back, please.

The deposit mishap was the result of a mysterious “scheduling issue,” according to The Times, which first reported the story. The bank confirmed to _The Verge_that some payments were accidentally doubled. (Santander is characterizing it as a “technical issue.”) Those transactions included those from 2,000 businesses, as well as accidental deposits across 75,000 accounts of individuals and companies like a corporate Ebeneezer Scrooge who’d been scared into generosity.

S...

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CES 2022 will close a day early because of COVID concerns

Amelia Holowaty Krales

CES has dropped the last day of its 2022 tech conference in Las Vegas, and the show will now end on January 7th, the Consumer Technology Association announced today. The shorter schedule is “an additional safety measure” in the face of a surge of COVID-19 diagnoses.

Over the last two weeks, a number of large companies — including BMW, Intel, AMD, GM, Google, T-Mobile, Amazon,Microsoft and the company formerly known as Facebook — have dropped their physical presences at the conference. It’s the largest tech conference in the world, which typically pulls more than 10,000 people in each year.

The CTA’s president and CEO has said the show “will and must go on.”

Yesterday the US set a grim new record in COVID: the highest number of...

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Biden administration will continue ISS cooperation through 2030

The US will continue to work with other countries’ space programs on the International Space Station through 2030, NASA announced today. That will allow for an uninterrupted transition to a planned commercial space station (or stations!) in the late 2020s.

Funds for the ISS have already been approved through 2024. NASA administrator Bill Nelson told The Verge in May that he wants to continue work on the ISS through 2030.

The ISS’s future was called into question in 2018

The ISS’s future was called into question in 2018, when a draft budget proposal from President Donald Trump’s administration had scheduled ending support for the space station in 2025. More recently, escalating tensions between the US and Russia have threatened the...

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Colorado fires close out a year of disastrous drought

Fires continue to burn into the evening in neighborhoods on December 30, 2021 in Louisville, Colorado. | Photo by Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Devastating fires in Colorado cap off a year of awful drought across the US. Dry conditions helped set the stage for blazes that scorched hundreds of homes and forced tens of thousands to evacuate just ahead of New Year’s Eve.

The fires have been raging through suburbs near Denver since December 30th. Strong winds fanned the flames and knocked out power. About 6,000 acres and at least 500 homes had burned by Friday morning. But there were no casualties, which Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle called “miraculous” given the severity of the fire in a press briefing. Families had “minutes” to evacuate their homes, Governor Jared Polis said.

More than two-thirds of Colorado’s land is experiencing “severe” drought, according to the US Drought...

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A program for cheaper internet for low-income Americans launches today

U.S. President Joe Biden participates in a virtual meeting on Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act at South Court Auditorium at Eisenhower Executive Office Building August 11, 2021 in Washington, DC.  | Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Starting today, eligible US residents can apply for help with their internet bills under the new Affordable Connectivity Program. The program launched today with $14.2 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law passed in November.

Households can apply to take up to $30 a month off their internet service bill. For households on qualifying Tribal lands, the discount is up to $75 per month. The program could help to connect millions of people to the internet who haven’t had access to it at home, especially in communities that have historically faced more barriers to getting online.

Almost a third of people living on Tribal lands lacked high-speed internet at home in 2017, according to a report by the Federal Communications Commission...

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The governor of Missouri still doesn’t know how websites work

Photo by Jacob Moscovitch/Getty Images

Mike Parson, Governor of Missouri, does not understand how websites work. He held a press conference earlier this week in St. Louis to once more reiterate his desire to prosecute a St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalist for looking at the source code of a state-run website.

In October 2021 reporter Josh Renaud reported that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website source code had exposed the social security numbers of over 100,000 school teachers, administrators, and counselors. He published the story only after he’d reported the problem to the state and the vulnerability had been resolved.

Parson and the DESE were apparently not grateful for the alert and immediately accused Renaud of “hacking” the DESE website. Missouri...

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10 great games to play on your new VR headset

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

The best games you can play on the Vive, Rift, or Quest 2

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2021: A year in art on The Verge

As we near the end of 2021, The Verge’s art team looked back on the past year to reflect on some of our favorite pieces. Our team produced a wide range of original art: from captivating photography of the future of energy, to illustrations representing the last 10 years of The Verge for our anniversary issue, to dozens of stunning shots for our reviews, to a photo shoot of a lot of chicken wings. Below is a selection of our best photography and illustration from our reviews, special issues, gift guides, features, and more.

Verge 10

Illustration by Micha Huigen

To mark ten years of publishing at The Verge, we looked back on a decade of tech coverage and examined what might come next. Micha Huigen’s art distills this...

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Apple’s latest iPad is back down to its best price at Amazon

This year’s entry-level iPad is currently on sale at Amazon for $299. | Image: Apple

It’s New Year’s Eve, and while that means we are very soon waving goodbye (and good riddance) to the year 2021, it just wouldn’t be special enough day without a selection of great tech deals from your friends at _Verge Deals._This has certainly been a jam-packed year full of, well, chaos, but also some great gadgets and worthwhile savings that help you save some coin along the way. While we can’t wait to bring you even more in 2022, let’s not get ahead of ourselves too quickly. Below, we’ll highlight some of the best deals for you in the world of tech.

Starting us off, there is no better bang-for-the-buck tablet on the market for most people than Apple’s latest base-model iPad. The 10.2-inch model mostly stands alone in terms of the...

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Apple investigates Indian iPhone plant after workers strike following mass food poisoning

Foxconn’s Indian operation began assembling iPhones for Apple outside of China for the first time in 2021.

Apple is sending independent auditors to investigate an iPhone assembly facility in India, after poor working and living conditions at the plant prompted workers to go on strike.

The facility in southern India is operated by longtime Apple partner Foxconn. An investigation by Reuters found that women working at the plant were laboring in extremely difficult conditions, forced to sleep on the floor in crowded dorms and sharing toilets without running water. Recently, an outbreak of food poisoning left 150 individuals hospitalized, prompting workers to strike and shut down the plant on December 18th.

In response, Apple says it’s put the plant on “probation” (though the company hasn’t said what this means for Foxconn or the workers who...

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BlackBerry will die on January 4th — for real this time

QWERTY and quirky — Blackberry’s later Android incarnations retained the famous keyboard. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Dear friends, we’re gathered here today to mourn the death of that once-beloved monarch of the mobile world: BlackBerry. And, yes, I realize that this is not the first time we’ve announced the death of the company or its devices (and, for reasons I’ll explain below, it likely won’t be the last) but this is a very definite ending for legacy BlackBerry hardware.

As of January 4th, any phones or tablets running BlackBerry’s own software — that’s BlackBerry 7.1 or earlier, BlackBerry 10, or its tablet operating system BlackBerry PlayBook — will “no longer reliably function,” says the company. Whether on Wi-Fi or cellular, there’ll be no guarantee you can make phone calls, send text messages, use data, establish an SMS connection, or even...

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Gamers! Protect your precious tendons with this tabletop hand massager

The test is simple. Remove your hand from the box and you die. | Image: Bauhütte

Here’s something for the gamer that has everything: a tabletop hand massager that can be used to remove fatigue from your aching mitts and keep you on top form.

Created by Japanese makers of gaming hardware and peripherals, Bauhütte, the device uses 15 heated air cushions to supposedly simulate the feeling of a real massage and, well, why the hell not. Bauhütte recommends you use the massager before gaming to warm up your hands; during breaks to improve circulation; and after you’ve finished to rub the stiffness out of your tired little fingers. Because you deserve it.

A shiatsu mode will apparently rub your palms with firm pressure, while a “thimble” mode will pull and stretch each finger one by one. The only thing missing is a...

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Epic Games Store closes out 15 days of free games by giving away the Tomb Raider trilogy

Shadow of the Tomb Raider | Image: Square Enix

If you’re a PC gamer who has not already done so, you may want to open up the Epic Games Store and snag the final installment for its 15 Days of Free Games promotion. It’s especially worth your time because instead of gifting users a single title like Shenmue III or Control, the Epic Games Store is ready to cough up the entire rebooted Tomb Raider trilogy: Tomb Raider Game of the Year Edition, Rise of the Tomb Raider 20 Year Celebration, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider Definitive Edition.

Trying to add the titles to your digital library earlier today was harder than it should’ve been, as continued server problems, following yesterday’s Fortnite outage, slowed down the store. It’s unclear if Epic Games is still having issues or if people...

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Here are the best iPad deals right now

Select iPad models go on sale quite regularly. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

We saw some of the best iPad deals of the year during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but if you missed out, there are still a couple of decent discounts available. Whether you’re after the high-end iPad Pro or the most affordable Apple tablet, the entry-level iPad, there’s a sale going on somewhere you may be interested in.

Of course, it’s difficult to know exactly where you can find the most notable deals unless you’re looking around at all of the major retailers on a daily basis. But that’s often what our deal hunters at _The Verge_are doing each and every day, so let us help you out. Below, we’ve listed the best deals available on each iPad model that is currently available, some of which are outgoing models with freshly introduced...

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Canon’s flagship DSLR line will end with the EOS-1D X Mark III, eventually

Canon EOS-1D X Mark III | Image: Canon

When Canon revealed the EOS-1D X Mark III in January 2020, we proclaimed that the DSLR “still isn’t dead,” but that camera will mark the end of the line for a flagship model that some pro photographers still swear by to capture everything from sporting events to wild animals.

An end to the production and development timeline of the EOS-1 is estimated as “within a few years.”

CanonRumors points out an interview Canon’s chairman and CEO Fujio Mitarai gave this week to the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun (via Y.M. Cinema Magazine). The piece highlight how high-end mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras have taken market share digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras previously dominated.

In it, the CEO is quoted (in Japanese, which...

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Samsung teases Exynos 2200 with AMD’s RDNA 2 graphics coming January 11th

Samsung has started teasing its next flagship smartphone SoC — expected to be called the Exynos 2200 — ahead of a January 11th announcement with a tantalizing tidbit of information: the new chipset will feature a GPU powered by AMD’s RDNA 2 graphics architecture, better known for powering the next-gen graphics on the Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, and AMD’s RX 6000-series graphics cards.

Of course, given that the Exynos 2200 will be powering a smartphone, the new GPU won’t be magically enabling next-gen graphics on par with the most powerful consoles and gaming PCs. But it likely will enable some improvements in graphics, along with whatever other upgrade Samsung has up its sleeve for its latest flagship chip.

#PlaytimeIsOver. The...

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