Where to preorder the colorful new PS5 covers and DualSense controllers

The five matching case and controller colors of the PlayStation 5. | Image: Sony

Ever since the PlayStation 5 was announced, opinions regarding its design and styling have been, well, mixed. Many jokes and memes have been made about the gargantuan size of the PS5, and how its two-tone monochromatic color and stretched-out wings are reminiscent of an oversized router. Jokes aside, once Sony revealed that the white covers are user-removable, there has been a demand for replacements. Enough people instantly wanted to own a blacked-out PS5 that a small cottage industry of third-party suppliers cropped up, selling unlicensed accessories until Sony came out swinging with cease and desist letters.

Sony finally came around and announced its own official replacement covers for the disc-based PS5 and the Digital Edition in...

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The 2021 iPad Mini with 5G support is $20 off today

The iPad mini 6 (LTE) is selling for $629.98 today. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

If you’ve been waiting for a deal to drop on Apple’s latest iPad Mini, today is your lucky day. Discounts on the LTE- and 5G-ready version of the iPad Mini are rare, but Amazon has the 64GB model (usually $649.99) for $629.98. That is a small discount, but for context, it’s actually $1 shy of its best price we’ve seen yet for this model. The tablet, which released in 2021, is equipped with Apple’s A15 Bionic processor, a 12MP rear camera, and USB-C support. It also comes with Apple’s Center Stage feature, which allows the front-facing camera to digitally pan and zoom in during video calls. Read our review.

We’ve got another Apple deal for you, but this one may help you achieve your fitness goals, if you have some. While we’ve been...

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CES had a pretty good year

A BMW concept using e-ink to automatically change the paint color on a car from white to black and back again | BMW

Another year of the Consumer Electronics Show has wrapped up, and it was a strange one: the weeks leading up to it were filled with cancellations due to Omicron, and as a result the show floor was virtually empty. The keynote presentations lacked the usual spectacle; the pomp was overshadowed by the circumstance.

Nevertheless, I found myself surprised to realize that CES 2022 was a slightly better than average year for the show. There weren’t any industry-shaking products announced and shipping — but that almost never happens at CES, and the expectation that it should was always misguided.

Instead, we saw some genuinely good improvements on technology that will actually ship, which isn’t always the case at CES. Here are just a few of my...

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Amazon’s latest Echo Show update adds more live video news providers

Last year’s Echo Show 10. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Amazon has announced a couple of small quality of life improvements for different Alexa devices. Its Echo Show lineup of smart displays are getting more live video news content in the US and an easier way to navigate news channels. Meanwhile, mobile Alexa devices are also gaining the ability to share your ETA while you’re using their navigation features.

The new live video content providers for Echo Show owners in the US are from People TV, ET Live, and Bloomberg TV Plus. Amazon says it has more on the way soon. These new channels, as well as the Echo Show’s existing library of live video and on demand audio news channels, can now be accessed via a new provider list that’ll be displayed at the bottom of the screen.

Live content from...

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Discord hacking is the newest threat for NFT fans

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

One compromised admin account led to two projects being scammed in a day

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France fines Google and Facebook for pushing tracking cookies on users with dark patterns

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

If you ever feel like websites have turned the simple business of rejecting tracking cookies into a labyrinthine task that involves close-reading of multiple dialog boxes, then France’s data protection agency has your back. The watchdog (CNIL) has fined Google €150 million ($170 million) and Facebook €60 million ($68 million) for making it too confusing for users to reject cookies. The companies now have three months to change their ways in France.

With Facebook, CNIL notes that in order to refuse cookies, French users first have to click on a button labelled “Accept cookies” (emphasis ours). Such labelling “necessarily generates confusion,” says CNIL, leading users to believe they have no choice in the matter.

With Google, the problem...

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Google’s Stephen Hawking Doodle includes narration in the physicist’s voice

Image: Google

This weekend, Google will release a Doodle celebrating what would have been Stephen Hawking’s 80th birthday. The two and a half minute-long video will go live in the US at midnight ET tonight (9pm PT) and includes a narration in the physicist’s own computer-generated voice (created and used with permission from his estate) outlining his work and painting a message of hope for the future.

Hawking’s digital voice was one of the most recognizable characteristics of the late physicist, who used it to speak after losing his voice due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Although more advanced artificial voices were developed over the course of his lifetime, the physicist continued to use the original voice with its American accent after...

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Microsoft PowerToys gets a new Always On Top feature and launcher web search

Microsoft is updating PowerToys this week to include a new Always On Top feature and web search functionality in its Spotlight-like launcher. Version 0.53.1 includes the two highly-requested features, alongside a long list of bug fixes and improvements to Microsoft’s 12 PowerToys tools.

Always On Top, as the name implies, allows any app to always be in front of others, even if you switch focus to another window. While many apps already support this, PowerToys now ensures anything can be pinned, which is particularly useful for older apps that you might want to keep on top of others across multiple monitors.

The new Always On Top PowerToy.

As games typically run fullscreen and on top of other windows, the Always On...

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GameStop reportedly has a whole unit working on NFTs and cryptocurrency

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Video game retailer and memestock darling GameStop is making a big bet on NFTs and cryptocurrency technology. According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, the company has built up an over 20-person strong team working on an online marketplace for the virtual items, which could include cosmetic skins and in-game items.

The company is said to be courting game developers and publishers to list NFTs on its marketplace, and hopes to ink deals with crypto companies to develop the underlying technology and help invest in games featuring NFT and blockchain tech. In total, the WSJ reports that GameStop’s investments in crypto could stretch into the tens of millions, and involve agreements made with over a dozen other companies.

A...

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Amazon’s Fallout TV series goes into production this year

Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images

Amazon’s TV series based on the Fallout video games is moving into production this year. Deadline and Variety report that Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Captain Marvel) and Graham Wagner (Silicon Valley) will be showrunners on the project; the official Fallout Twitter account retweeted Deadline’s story by way of confirmation.

The Prime Video show will be executive-produced by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, creators of Westworld. Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard and Bethesda Softworks’ James Altman are also on board as executive producers. Nolan will direct the first episode, according to Deadline and Variety.

The show was first announced in July. “Fallout is one of the greatest game series of all time,” Joy and Nolan said in a statement to The...

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The OnePlus 10 Pro gets a better RAW mode and a wider ultrawide camera

OnePlus continues to lean into partner Hasselblad’s image tuning expertise and branding. | Image: OnePlus

OnePlus is sharing a few more details about the upcoming OnePlus 10 Pro, this time with a focus on camera specifications. If you were hoping for lots of hardware upgrades from this second-gen partnership with Hasselblad, it looks like you’ll have to keep waiting — with the exception of a new ultrawide, these updates are primarily software-based.

To recap some basic camera specs that we learned earlier this week, the OnePlus 10 will offer a triple rear camera — likely the same 48-megapixel main, 50-megapixel ultrawide, and 8-megapixel telephoto configuration as last year. There’s a 32-megapixel front-facing camera, which is a significant resolution bump from the 9 and 9 Pro’s 16-megapixel selfie camera.

A notable update is the addition...

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Your Google home speakers are about to get slightly worse because Sonos sued and won

Photo: Dan Seifert / The Verge

If you have multiple Google smart speakers in your house, you might want to be aware of a certain legal ruling — because it’s going to affect how your speaker groups work. After the US International Trade Commission ruled that it was infringing on Sonos’ patents, Google has already announced software workarounds including the “need to adjust each speaker individually instead of using the group volume controller,” and that users will no longer be able to adjust a speaker group’s volume with their phone’s volume rocker. It blames this change on “a recent legal ruling,” one which you can read all about right here.

When news of the patent decision broke, Google told The Verge it had gotten non-infringing designs approved by the ITC. Sonos...

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Amazon wants to take Sidewalk beyond the neighborhood

Amazon’s Sidewalk network is moving out of neighborhoods and into more public places. | Image: Amazon

After going very quiet on its once much-touted connectivity network Sidewalk, Amazon is starting 2022 with a bang. Today it launched the Amazon Sidewalk Bridge Pro powered by Ring (doesn’t that just roll off the tongue?).

This professional-grade bridge is designed to extend the low-bandwidth, long-distance wireless network into public spaces, such as city parks, state parks, city centers, universities, businesses, and other places where there aren’t likely to be a lot of Ring and Echo devices hanging out.

“The long-term vision of Sidewalk is to drive proliferation of smart and connected things,” Stefano Landi, director of Amazon Sidewalk, said in an interview with The Verge. “Today, connectivity is the biggest challenge for devices.”...

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Tim Cook’s 2021 pay package swelled to $98.7 million

Utah Jazz Owners, Dwyane Wade and Ryan Smith sit with the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook during a preseason game between the against the Utah Jazzv and the against the Milwaukee Bucks on October 13, 2021 | Photo by Melissa Majchrzak/NBAE via Getty Images

A proxy statement filed by Apple on Thursday revealed exactly how much one can earn after ten years of running the world’s most valuable and most profitable company, and for Tim Cook, that number is $98.7 million. While his base salary stayed at $3 million, an additional $12 million in incentives, $82 million worth of stock awards, and the money spent to cover items like security and private flights — since 2017, Apple doesn’t let its CEO fly commercial — nudged the entire thing closer to the $100 million mark.

Image: Apple

According to Apple, its total shareholder return “was at the 97th percentile of the companies that were included in the S&P 500 for the entire performance period” from 2018 to 2021.

That’s...

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Trump’s Truth Social app will apparently launch in February

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump’s new social network, Truth Social, will launch on iOS on February 21st, according to a listing on the App Store. (That’s Presidents Day, if you didn’t know. Subtle.) The app is being made by the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), Trump’s new media company led by former US Rep. Devin Nunes.

Truth Social looks very much like a Twitter clone, based on screenshots in the App Store listing. The profile page shown in one screenshot looks almost exactly like Twitter’s, and posts appear to have icons for replies, retweets, faves, and sharing. (Truth Social describes each individual post as a “truth” in the app’s description. The retweet equivalent is apparently called a “re-truth.”)

The Twitter-like design...

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Google copied Sonos’ multi-zone speaker technology, US import regulator rules

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

The US International Trade Commission has ruled that Google is in violation of five Sonos patents relating to smart speakers (via The New York Times). The decision affirms a judge’s ruling in August, and could force Google to stop importing products using the infringing technology.

It's not yet clear whether any specific Google products will necessarily disappear from shelves — in fact, Google spokesperson José Castaneda suggests the company’s customers would not “experience any disruption” as a result of the decision. _Bloomberg_reported in September that Google may have software workarounds for Sonos’ patents, and Sonos itself admits that Google could possibly “degrade or eliminate product features in a way that circumvents the...

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The iPhone 14 Pro could have a hole-punch camera and hide Face ID under the screen

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Rumors for Apple’s upcoming 2022 iPhone refresh are continuing to roll, with Twitter leaker DylanDKT claiming that the iPhone 14 Pro lineup will feature a pill-shaped hole-punch design for its front-facing camera, with the bulk of Apple’s Face ID hardware being placed under the display (instead of an eyesore of a notch).

The report corroborates earlier rumors from well-regarded Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from late last year, which also claimed that the 2022 iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max would be shifting over to a hole-punch cutout for the camera.

I am able to corroborate information regarding a hole punch camera for the pro models of the iPhone 14. Face ID hardware will be placed under the display. As a reassurance to any concerns,...

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Natural Cycles’ data shows limited menstrual changes after COVID-19 vaccination

Photo by Annette Riedl/picture alliance via Getty Images

Getting a COVID-19 vaccine is associated with only a small change to the menstrual cycle, according to a new study using data from the birth control app Natural Cycles. The study follows widespread reports of heavier and longer periods from people who had recently been vaccinated after the start of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in the United States.

“This is reassuring for health and reproductive health,” says Alison Edelman, a study author and professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health and Science University. “It’s also validating in regard to patients reporting that they’d experienced something.”

Longer, heavier periods were always a plausible side effect of COVID-19 vaccination. Any stress on the...

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Mozilla pauses accepting crypto donations following backlash

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Mozilla, the nonprofit organization that makes the Firefox web browser, announced Thursday that it would be pausing the ability to accept cryptocurrency donations following significant backlash spurred in part by a Mozilla founder, Jamie Zawinski (via Business Insider).

Zawinski, who stopped working for mozilla.org in 1999, tweeted scathing criticism to a December 31st Mozilla tweet promoting that it accepted cryptocurrency donations. Mozilla began accepting bitcoin for donations in 2014.

“Everyone involved in the project should be witheringly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters,” Zawinski said on January 3rd. (Cryptocurrencies have come under significant scrutiny for their impact on the...

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Twitter joins Instagram in copying TikTok’s reaction videos

Twitter’s new “quote tweet with reaction” feature | Image: Twitter

Twitter has announced that it’s testing a feature called “quote tweet with reaction,” where you can embed a copy of a tweet into a photo or video instead of just replying to it with text.

Twitter says that the feature is currently being tested on iOS. If you have access to the feature, the retweet menu will have a “Quote Tweet with reaction” button. Tapping it will take you to a screen where you can take a photo or video to put the tweet on top of, or choose one from your camera roll. One of Twitter’s product leads did a reaction quote tweet to the announcement, which lets us see how the reactions will show up to users.

Tweet reaction videos can now start on Twitter!

Testing on iOS: when you tap the Retweet icon, choose “Quote Tweet...

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E3 2022 will be online-only again following COVID-19 surges

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

E3 — one of the largest video game trade shows of the year — will once again be an online-only event this summer, the ESA has announced, citing ongoing concerns around the COVID-19 pandemic. The news, first reported by VentureBeat, marks the third year in a row that E3 will have skipped its in-person event due to the pandemic.

“Due to the ongoing health risks surrounding COVID-19 and its potential impact on the safety of exhibitors and attendees, E3 will not be held in person in 2022,” the ESA commented in a statement to VentureBeat. “We are nonetheless excited about the future of E3 and look forward to announcing more details soon.”

E3 will miss a third straight year in person

The ESA had originally planned to bring back E3 as an...

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iRacing buys Monster Games, teases racing games for the ‘broader market’ like consoles

James Davison, driver of the #15 Chevrolet races during the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series race at virtual Chicago Street Course on June 02, 2021 in Chicago, Illinois. | Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images

One of the paid subscription services that experienced sudden growth during the pandemic has been iRacing. While real-life racing leagues were on hiatus, they used the detailed and realistic sim racing service as an esports broadcasting platform, and enough new people started playing to grow its base of racers on PC from 110,000 at the beginning of 2020 to over 200,000 today.

Now iRacing.com Motorsport Simulations says it has acquired Monster Games, Inc. (MGI). That Minnesota-based studio developed the first four games under the NASCAR Heat brand and its most recent title, SRX: The Game,for play on PC and the PlayStation and Xbox consoles.

A press release announcing the purchase is careful to note, “The iRacing development team will...

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Eargo’s new hearing aids can automatically adjust to your environment

The Eargo 6 automatically adjust to a user’s environment. | Image: Eargo

While a lot of health tech shown at CES is doomed to become vaporware, there’s reason to believe that 2022 is going to be a big year for hearables. Case in point: Eargo, a CES regular since 2015, is announcing the Eargo 6. The buds are the sixth iteration of the company’s smart hearing aids and feature nifty new tech that automatically adjusts sound levels on the go.

Hearing aids work by converting sound picked up by a microphone into a digital signal that’s then amplified. They can also amplify certain sounds, like your voice, while also dampening background noise. Eargo’s are registered as an FDA Class II exempt device, meaning they are a medium-risk device with specialized controls.

Given that this is Eargo’s sixth version of its...

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GM says Qualcomm’s computer chips will power its next-gen ‘hands-free’ driving mode

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge

General Motors completely redesigned the compute architecture that powers its next-generation “hands-free” driving system thanks to US semiconductor company Qualcomm.

The automaker’s Ultra Cruise system, which will make its debut in the 2024 Cadillac Celestiq electric sedan, will be the first advanced driver assist system (ADAS) to use Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Ride Platform. The size of “two laptops stacked together,” GM claims the new architecture will have the processing power equivalent to “several hundred” personal computers.

“two laptops stacked together”

GM first announced Ultra Cruise during an investor event last year, describing it as a massive leap over the company’s Super Cruise system, which allows for hands-free driving...

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NPR’s losing top talent — everyone has a theory why

Photo by Brad Barket/Getty Images for Vulture Festival

This story originally appeared in Hot Pod Insider, The Verge’s subscription audio industry newsletter. For more stories like this, you can subscribehere.

Something’s happening at NPR, and everyone has a theory as to what. But first, the impetus. On Tuesday, All Things Considered host Audie Cornish announced she’s leaving the program after nearly a decade as its host. Her departure, which she says on Twitter is her joining many others in the “great resignation,” marks three hosts of color to leave the network in recent months. (Noel King of Morning Editionleft in November for Vox Media — disclosure that Vox also owns Hot Pod — and Lulu Garcia-Navarro of Weekend Editionjoined_The New York Times_in late September.) This also follows a...

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For some reason Megalovania played during audience with the Pope

Six days into 2022 and we’ve already had one of the weirdest collisions of gaming culture and the wider world. Yesterday, during Pope Francis’ weekly general audience in which he said a few prayers, made a few addresses, and casually shamed voluntarily childfree people for preferring the company of their pets to tiny, screaming humans most of us cannot possibly afford, a troupe of jugglers / acrobats / general circus folk performed to a jazzy ska-esque rendition of “Megalovania” from Toby Fox’s Undertale.

This year just started and we already have the insanity of Megalovania being performed in front of the Pope. pic.twitter.com/QBxGtl9v1c

— Ultima | #вʟм (@UltimaShadowX) January 6, 2022

Everything about this performance inspires in...

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All the smart home gadgets worth knowing about from CES 2022

Roborock’s latest robot vacuum is getting closer to the Rosie the Robot of our dreams. | Image: Roborock

The devices that will be vying for a spot in your home this year

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Googling climate change? You might see fossil fuel ads

 In this photo illustration a Google Ads logo of an online advertising platform developed by Google is seen on a smartphone and a pc screen. | Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Fossil fuel companies and their close allies are some of the top spenders on Google ads that look similar to search results, according to a new analysis by The Guardian and climate think tank InfluenceMap.

The two groups searched for 78 terms related to climate change on Google and then looked at the ads that popped up on the platform. Of more than 1,600 ads, over one in five were from companies “with significant interests in fossil fuels.” The top twenty advertisers included fossil fuel giants ExxonMobil, Shell, and Aramco. Consulting firm McKinsey and investment firm Goldman Sachs, which have been criticized for working with fossil fuel companies, were also big spenders.

“Google is letting groups with a vested interest in the continued...

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Snap suing to trademark the word ‘spectacles’ for its smart glasses

Snap wants to trademark the word Spectacles for its smart glasses | Photo by Amanda Lopez for The Verge

Snap is suing the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for rejecting its application to trademark the word “spectacles” for its digital eyewear camera device. But the USPTO has maintained that “spectacles” is a generic term for smart glasses and that Snap’s version “has not acquired distinctiveness,” as required for a trademark.

In its complaint filed Wednesday in US District Court in California, Snap claims that the Spectacles name “evokes an incongruity between an 18th century term for corrective eyewear and Snap’s high-tech 21st century smart glasses. SPECTACLES also is suggestive of the camera’s purpose, to capture and share unusual, notable, or entertaining scenes (i.e., “spectacles”) and while also encouraging users to make...

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VW sets a date for the reveal of its production-ready electric Microbus

Volkswagen

Nearly five years after it first revealed its ID Buzz concept at the Detroit auto show, Volkswagen is finally ready to show off a production-ready version of the beloved vehicle. VW CEO Herbert Diess tweeted that the “legend returns” on March 9th, along with a gif of the automaker’s iconic Microbus.

A staple of coastal California’s towns, the VW Microbus’ reincarnated as an electric vehicle was never a foregone conclusion. It wasn’t until an outpouring of positive feedback that VW decided to greenlight the concept for production. And even then, it won’t be road-ready until 2023.

The legend returns on 03/09/22! pic.twitter.com/Q4hFyCN5mr

— Herbert Diess (@Herbert_Diess) January 6, 2022

The vehicle is a clear homage to the iconic...

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