Peer-to-peer car-sharing service Turo files to go public

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Turo, the peer-to-peer car-sharing service, has filed for its initial public offering, the latest transportation-related startup to sell its shares on a public stock exchange. The company proposes to sell $100 million of stock, but that figure could change as Turo gets closer to its public debut.

Founded in 2010, the San Francisco-based company allows people to rent out their personal cars to other customers, much like Airbnb does for homes. In its S-1 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Turo claims it has 85,000 active hosts (meaning vehicle owners), 161,000 active vehicles, and 1.3 million active guests over the period of 12 months ending September 30th, 2021.

opting for an old-fashioned IPO rather than a SPAC

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What qualifies as a hit podcast?

Photo by Alix Diaconis / The Verge

Hello again. Welcome to your Tuesday Hot Pod. Today, we’re catching up on all sorts of big moves in the industry, layoffs at Spotify, and talking about what makes a podcast a hit. Let’s get to it.

But first, one exciting announcement: On Air Fest announced its in-person return last week with plans to take over Brooklyn’s Wythe Hotel on February 25th and 26th. Here’s the bigger news for us, though: Hot Pod Summit is returning on February 24thas part of the festival**.**For the new folks here, Hot Pod Summit is an invite-only industry conference where we’ll discuss the topics of the moment, interview big names in the space, and broadly, network with the people you want to know. We’ll have more to share in the coming weeks on how you can...

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Facebook contractors threaten to stop work over missing paychecks

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Facebook moderators at an Accenture site in Austin are facing a payroll disaster that has left many without their holiday paychecks. Workers at the site handle moderation, customer service, and other tasks for Facebook and WhatsApp — and a work stoppage has already been threatened if the situation is not resolved.

The problems began as early as January 4th, when some workers noticed errors in the system that tracks paid time off (PTO), a clerical confusion that was attributed to a recent change in payroll providers at the site. Things got more serious when the January 6th round of paychecks failed to arrive. Internal pay stub systems showed many paychecks as zeroed out, and workers were left with no idea of when they might get their...

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Lego delays Overwatch 2 set as company reevaluates relationship with Activision Blizzard

Photo: Blizzard

The name Overwatch 2 has become synonymous with delay. First reported by The Brick Fan, a Lego review site, the extremely popular toymaker is delaying the release of an Overwatch 2-themed set as the company reviews its relationship with Overwatch 2 publisher Activision Blizzard.

In a statement to The Verge, Alice Carter, Lego’s senior manager of corporate brand communication, said:

We are currently reviewing our partnership with Activision Blizzard given concerns about the progress being made to address continuing allegations regarding workplace culture, especially the treatment of female colleagues and creating a diverse and inclusive environment. While we complete the review we will pause the release of a LEGO Overwatch 2 product...

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Roku rolls out all-new Live TV Zone

Roku is making live TV even easier to find with its new Live TV Zone, a one-stop shop for all things live and linear.

The Live TV Zone will be home to not only Roku’s own Live TV Channel Guide, which previously existed as a standalone channel, but also third-party services like YouTube TV, Hulu with Live TV, and Sling, among other apps. Users will also find their recently watched content in this tab, in addition to entertainment programming, sports, and local and national news coverage.

The Live TV Zone can be found under the Live TV tab from the left-hand navigation menu.

Roku has been leaning heavily into its live TV features. The company last year expanded voice command support for its live TV guide with the Roku OS 10.5 update. It...

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Google can’t cloak documents showing an ‘antiunion campaign,’ NLRB judge rules

Judge rules Google has to turn over 180 documents in an NLRB case | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A judge appointed by the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Google must turn over some 180 documents related to an internal campaign to fight union organizing efforts by employees. Dubbed Project Vivian, a Google attorney described the ongoing effort between 2018 and 2020 as a way to “engage employees more positively and convince them that unions suck,” according to one of the documents.

The documents are part of a case the NLRB brought against Google in December 2020, which alleged the internet giant violated US labor law by spying on and firing employees who were organizing protests and trying to unionize. Former Google employee Laurence Berland, fired in 2019, was organizing against the company’s hiring of IRI Consultants,...

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Microsoft’s new matte black Surface Go 3 launches with optional LTE connectivity

Microsoft is announcing a new matte black option of its Surface Go 3 today, with optional LTE connectivity. The announcement comes just a day after images of the new Surface Go 3 model leaked online, with a new matte black finish. The new color option and LTE connectivity are the only changes, as it’s identical to the regular Surface Go 3 otherwise.

Microsoft first launched the Surface Go 3 in September, with new Intel processor options. The Surface Go 3 can be configured with an Intel Pentium Gold 6500Y or Core i3-10100Y, upgrades over the Surface Go 2, which launched with a Pentium Gold 4425Y or a Core m3 chip.

Now in Matte Black, our most portable Surface touchscreen 2-in-1 is perfect for your everyday tasks, homework, and play.

—...

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Sony Xperia 5 III now shipping in the US, almost nine months after initial announcement

Image: Sony

Sony’s Xperia 5 III, the compact counterpart to its Xperia 1 III, is now on sale in the US, almost nine months after the company initially announced the device in April 2021. The phone retails for $999.99 and will be available in black or green, with the latter exclusive to Sony’s own online store. The phone went on sale in the second half of last year in the UK and Europe.

The phone has seen some internal upgrades compared to the Xperia 1 II, which bring it more into line with mainstream handsets from 2021. It’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor, runs Android 11 out of the box, and should also be able to benefit from at least some 5G connectivity in the US. Elsewhere, battery capacity has been upped to 4,500mAh, and Sony...

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GameStop has Xbox Series X bundles for order right now

The monolithic Xbox Series X console is still a bit tricky to get. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Another week, another restock of Xbox Series X consoles at GameStop. Hopefully this is a trend that new console availability is opening up in 2022 to a point where soon anyone will be able to walk into a store and pick up their hardware of choice without any fuss. While we’re not quite there yet, the restocks are remaining fairly consistent.

GameStop has two Xbox Series X console bundles today, offered on its website for shipping to US addresses — as opposed to some of the recent in-store restocks we have seen. The first bundle includes the Xbox Series X console, Far Cry 6, NBA 2K22, a three-month subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and a $50 GameStop gift card for a total of $749.95. The second bundle has the Xbox Series X console...

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What comes after the smartphone, with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

Cristiano Amon is optimistic about everything

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Belle director Mamoru Hosoda on creating a metaverse fairy tale

Image: GKIDS

The mind behind Summer Wars and Mirai discusses his latest anime feature

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Everything you need to know about 2022’s biggest chips from CES (and elsewhere)

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

It’s a new year, and like clockwork, 2022 has brought with it a plethora of new chips for laptops, desktops, phones, and more.

Intel announced new CPUs for virtually every product it makes, AMD refreshed its laptop processors and graphics cards for its whole lineup and started teasing its next major desktop overhaul, and Nvidia came out swinging with the announcement of its most powerful GPU yet. If you weren’t keeping up (or even if you were) it was a lot. And that was just CES: Qualcomm already announced its next-gen chips for smartphones and laptops in December, and Samsung is teeing up a new Exynos processor, too. And that’s not even considering Apple, which tends to play its cards closer to its chest.

But as the dust settles and...

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Monster Hunter Rise is better on PC, but something’s missing

Monster Hunter Rise was one of the best games of 2021, taking almost all of the improvements Capcom made to its famously punishing action RPG series with Monster Hunter World and bringing them to an even breezier package on the Nintendo Switch. The series only took off in popularity with its portable entries on the PSP, so this new title tailored just for the Switch felt right at home.

That said, if you were used to World, Rise was a noticeable technical step back. It’s one of the best-looking games on the Switch, but it’s still a game on the Switch — it runs on a TV at roughly 720p and 30 frames a second, and the environmental design is much simpler than in World.

That’s why I was interested to check out the PC version of the game,...

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Several Corsair gaming keyboards are cheaper than ever

We found three discounted gaming keyboards from Corsair that should please most people, coming in a variety of form factors and with different features. First up is Corsair’s first 60 percent keyboard, the K65. This compact keyboard is normally $109.99 but has recently dropped to $89.99 at Best Buy and Amazon. We last saw the K65 drop to this price during Black Friday. While the diminutive layout of this keyboard certainly isn’t for everyone, it should appeal to those who are striving for a minimalist aesthetic on their desk.

Just like other 60 percent keyboards, the K65 eliminates the function row, directional arrows, and navigation keys that let you easily go up and down the page. This keyboard uses Cherry MX Silver switches and uses...

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Nvidia announces new RTX 3080 with 12GB of memory

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

Nvidia is launching a new 12GB model of its RTX 3080 today. Revealed initially in Nvidia’s latest GeForce drivers, the new 12GB model goes on sale today from select board partners and offers 2GB more memory than the original 10GB RTX 3080.

A memory bump is welcome, particularly as it was a source of concern during our initial review of the RTX 3080 in 2020. It also matches the 12GB found on the RTX 3080 Ti. This new RTX 3080 model also includes 8960 CUDA cores, a bump of nearly 3 percent over the original. The upgraded memory also means this GPU has 20 percent more cumulative bandwidth over the original 10GB variant, thanks to a wider 384-bit memory bus.

Nvidia is still recommending a 750W power supply, but this 12GB RTX 3080 draws an...

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Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker is an emotional culmination of a decade-long journey

Thou must live, die, and know

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Done your Wordle for the day? Try out these spoofs instead

The stupidest (and hence best) Wordle spoof we’ve seen: Letterle. | Image: @edjeff

Part of the charm of Wordle — this season’s must-play puzzle game — is that you can only do it once a day. But that’s also part of the frustration, too.

For while it is wonderful to think to yourself: “Ah, a coffee break. Time to sit down and do my Wordle” (part and parcel of the indulgent “treat brain” we all seem to have developed during the pandemic), you sometimes want to scratch that puzzle itch just a _little_longer.

With that in mind, here are some of the best and stupidest Wordle spoofs we’ve seen so far. They either push the format to ridiculous degrees, offer genuinely fun challenges, or are single-click jokes that may, at least, help temporarily release you of your Wordle cravings.

1) Sweardle

This one does...

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Spotify shuts down its namesake podcast studio

Photo by Michele Doying / The Verge

Spotify is disbanding its founding podcast studio and laying off some of the team. An affected employee tells _The Verge_that Studio 4, or Spotify Studios as it’s been referenced externally, consisted of 10 to 15 employees and produced shows like Dissect_and_Chapo: Kingpin on Trial. Spotify called affected employees on Friday and said their last days would be January 21st. They’ll receive two months’ worth of severance. Some employees were reassigned while others were laid off and pointed to the Spotify job board. The studio’s head, Gina Delvac, was also let go.

Spotify declined to comment. In a note to Spotify staff obtained by The Verge, however, Julie McNamara, head of US studios and video, acknowledged the layoffs and said shutting...

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NordicTrack will now let you yell at its smart dumbbells

NordicTrack’s new smart adjustable dumbbells also come with a tablet holder in the rack. | Image: iFIT

Smart dumbbells aren’t new in connected fitness, but today, NordicTrack is announcing a unique take on the product. The NordicTrack iSelect Adjustable Dumbbells are voice-controlled weights that work with Amazon Alexa. As in, you can now ask Alexa to adjust how heavy your dumbbells are instead of having to do it yourself.

The dumbbells can be electronically adjusted between five and 50 pounds in five-pound increments. According to iFit, NordicTrack’s parent company, the dumbbells feature a “motorized weight selector” that enables users to quickly change the weight of the device. As for the Alexa integration, you can ask the voice assistant to set a specific weight, increase or decrease weight, or create a preset weight for specific...

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Xbox players are fed up with forced crossplay against PC gamers

Xbox players are growing increasingly frustrated at being forced to play against PC gamers. While crossplay was initially a popular request from Xbox and PC players that Microsoft has backed strongly for years, those playing first-person shooters on Xbox are struggling to opt out of the experience to avoid PC cheaters.

Games like Call of Duty: Warzone and _Halo Infinite_force Xbox players to match against PC gamers in a variety of playlists. You don’t have to look very far to see why people are angry about it. “Now that cheating in Halo is confirmed on PC, can we have to option to opt out of cross-play?” asked one Reddit post in November, just weeks after the multiplayer version of Halo Infinite launched.

“Forced crossplay is a scam by...

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Apple promises third-party payment options in iOS for South Korean users

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple says it will introduce third-party payment options for the first time ever in iOS apps, following South Korean legislation designed to open up the perceived monopolies of Google and Apple’s app stores. The alternative payments will only be available in South Korea and follows the announcement of similar changes by Google last November.

Apple’s decision was shared by the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) and reported by the Yonhap News Agency, but details of the implementation are thin on the ground.

Arguments over payment fees triggered the Epic Games trial

Apple currently charges developers a 30 percent fee on any digital purchases made by consumers using iOS apps. This fee has become increasingly contentious for...

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Obscenely detailed scan lets you peer at Rembrandt’s Night Watch masterpiece online

The level of detail is staggering. | Image: Rijksmuseum

The Rijksmuseum has released what it claims is the “largest and most detailed photograph of any artwork,” and it’s viewable for free on its website. The scan is of Rembrandt van Rijn’s 1642 masterpiece The Night Watch, a roughly 12 by 14 foot painting which is currently the focus of a massive research and restoration project called “Operation Night Watch.”

The technical details of the scan are staggering. In a press release, the Rijksmuseum explains that it’s made up of 8,439 individual photographs taken with a 100 megapixel Hasselblad H6D 400 MS camera. Neural networks were reportedly used to check each image for color and sharpness, and an AI system helped stitch these photos together into a single image.

The result is a 717 gigapixel...

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Intel’s funding threatened by Marco Rubio after ‘humiliating apologies’ to China

Photo by Visual China Group via Getty Images/Visual China Group via Getty Images

US Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has threatened the government funding of chipmaker Intel after the company made what Rubio described as “humiliating apologies” to China.

Intel issued apologies to its Chinese partners and the Chinese public last December after it noted in a routine letter to suppliers that it would not use “labor or source goods or services from the Xinjiang region.” This stipulation is required by US law as part of trading sanctions against China for its ongoing persecution of the Xinjiang region’s Uyghur population (which the US government has designated a genocide). Intel’s letter to suppliers, though, went viral in China, and caused a huge public backlash against the company.

As first reported by The Vergelast year,...

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PSA: Redownload your Harry Potter e-books from Pottermore before they disappear for good

An email sent to customers warning them about the change. | Image: Pottermore

If you own digital Harry Potter books purchased on Pottermore, you might want to redownload your copies before the option disappears for good at the end of the month. The site is emailing its customers to warn them that the books will no longer be available to redownload after January 31st, since being removed from sale in September last year.

When it launched back in 2012, Pottermore was the only official way to download digital copies of the Harry Potter books. Despite big stores like Amazon running promotions for the titles, which are some of the best-selling books of all time, stores would funnel customers to Pottermore to complete the sale (retailers like Amazon reportedly still got a cut, however).

Hey, remember when they...

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Super Pumped gets a new, longer teaser with more Uber shenanigans

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Travis Kalanick in the show’s first season. | Image: Showtime

There’s a new teaser for the first season of Super Pumped, Showtime’s upcoming anthology show about Silicon Valley startups that hit it big. As we saw in the teaser from December, season one will revolve around Uber and its former CEO Travis Kalanick, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

The show’s first story will be based on the book that’s also named Super Pumped, which was written by New York Times reporter Mike Issac. It’ll follow the, in the trailer’s words, “wild, loud, cocky, shady, reckless, excessive, ridiculous, damaging, outrageous” story of Uber’s founder, who resigned from his role as CEO in 2017 after investors demanded change following a series of controversies.

This new trailer contains some quotable moments, including one...

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Halo Infinite is getting a hotfix for the game’s epic but frustrating 12-player matchmaking

Having trouble connecting to a big game of Halo Infinite multiplayer with a bunch of your friends in the game’s 12-person Big Team Battle mode? That will hopefully soon be a thing of the past: developer 343 says it’s not only aware, it believes it has “a fix in hand for the core issue” and will release a special hotfix specifically for it. “It’s a little too soon to give an ETA yet but please know our goal is to release this as soon as we can,” write the developers in an official blog post,” adding that “It won’t be this week, but we hope it’s not too much further out and we’ll share an update as soon as we have line of sight on a release date (once we clear ‘cert’ we are then ready to ship).”

Halo Infinite is the best thing that’s...

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Meta will require employees to have a COVID-19 booster to return to the office

The company has announced changes to its office reopening plans. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, will require staffers to have received a COVID-19 booster shot to be able to work from its US offices, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. Meta had already said that US office employees would have to be vaccinated against COVID-19 when they returned to the office, but beginning March 28th, they’ll also need proof of a booster vaccine, Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton confirmed to The Verge. The company is also delaying its full office reopening until March 28th, pushing back a return that had been previously set for the end of this month.

Not all Meta employees will have to return to the office on March 28th. Those who want to come back can defer their return by three to five months, a policy that...

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Google exec says Apple is ‘holding back’ customers who text

On Saturday, Android boss Hiroshi Lockheimer accused Apple of “using peer pressure and bullying as a way to sell products,” after a Wall Street Journal report revealed how US teens have turned Apple’s iMessage into a social status symbol that locks Android users out.

Now, Lockheimer is taking a slightly less abrasive stance: the Google executive said Monday that “we’re not asking Apple to make iMessage available on Android. We’re asking Apple to support the industry standard for modern messaging (RCS) in iMessage, just as they support the older SMS / MMS standards.”

We’re not asking Apple to make iMessage available on Android. We’re asking Apple to support the industry standard for modern messaging (RCS) in iMessage, just as they...

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The Associated Press is starting its own NFT marketplace for photojournalism

Resellers will also be to get in on the action. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Associated Press, or AP, has announced that it’s starting a marketplace to sell NFTs of its photojournalists’ work in collaboration with a company called Xooa. It’s billing its foray into NFTs as a way for collectors to “purchase the news agency’s award-winning contemporary and historic photojournalism” and says that the virtual tokens will be released at “broad and inclusive price points” (though it’s hard to tell what types of prices resellers will want on the AP marketplace).

The news outlet says its system will be built on the “environmentally friendly” Polygon blockchain and that the NFTs will “include a rich set of original metadata” to tell buyers when, where, and how the photos were taken. It says its first collection,...

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LAPD officers fired for catching a Snorlax instead of a burglar denied appeal

Two LAPD officers who were fired from their jobs in 2017 for playing Pokémon Go while on duty have had their appeal for reinstatement denied by a California judge.

The officers’ squad car video camera showed the two officers, Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell, ignored a request for backup to play the game, according to court documents. The pair were stationed near a robbery in progress, and after the responding officers put out a call for backup, Lozano and Mitchell seemingly ignored the call and left the area.

When asked later why they hadn’t responded to the call, the two officers said they were in a loud area and couldn’t hear their radio. Lozano and Mitchell’s supervisor was skeptical of their explanation and checked the in-car...

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