Xiaomi announces Redmi Note 11 series with iPhone-style flat sides

Xiaomi has announced the Redmi Note 11 series, continuing its popular line of budget-friendly handsets that sell in huge numbers in India and various other markets.

There are four phones in total, but they only differentiate themselves in a few specific areas. All of them have what Xiaomi describes as a “trendy flat-edge body” — in other words, yes, it looks like an iPhone — and most of the specs are shared across at least two models. Here’s how it all breaks down:

• The Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G is the highest-end model and has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 processor with 5G support. The screen is a 6.67-inch 120Hz 1080p OLED panel, there’s a 5,000mAh battery with 67W fast charging, and a 108-megapixel main camera backed by an 8-megapixel...

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Will your PC run Crysis 4? We’re about to find out

Crytek has teased a new entry in its long-running _Crysis_series in a short trailer posted from its Twitter account. “Join the journey. Become the hero,” the trailer reads as it displays a large “4.” The announcement comes almost nine years after the release of the last numbered entry in the _Crysis_series, Crysis 3, which was released on February 19th, 2013.

The official Crysis 4 teaser comes just hours after Crytek China appeared to confirm news of the game early in a post on Chinese social media site BiliBili. Its post, which now appears to have been deleted, said “The ‘Crysis 4’ project is confirmed, opening a new nano battlefield!” when translated into English, according to Eurogamer.

It's time to join the journey and be the hero.

A...

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The self-driving car industry is abandoning the term ‘self-driving’ and leaving it to Tesla

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

So long, Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets; hello, Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association!

The AV industry’s top lobbying group in Washington, DC is rebranding, dropping the reference to “self-driving” in exchange for a more straightforward moniker. The group, which was founded in 2016 by Waymo, Ford, Lyft, Uber, and Volvo, lobbies lawmakers to pass legislation favorable to its members. It has since grown to include the top AV operators in the country, including Cruise, Aurora, Argo AI, Motional, Nuro, and Zoox.

It’s the latest move by the AV industry to distance itself from the term “self-driving”

It’s the latest move by the AV industry to distance itself from the term “self-driving,” which many observers interpret as an...

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Huawei’s P50 Pro and foldable P50 Pocket are getting pricey Google-free releases outside China

Huawei’s P50 Pocket. | Image: Huawei

Huawei, the embattled Chinese tech giant that continues to be the target of strict US sanctions, has announced that its flagship P50 Pro and foldable P50 Pocket will be sold outside of China. The P50 Pro will cost €1,199 (around $1,353), while the P50 Pocket will start at €1,299 (around $1,466). Huawei’s press release says the two phones will be available in “key markets across Asia Pacific, The Middle East & Africa, Europe and Latin America,” but declined to say exactly when and where.

Nevertheless, at those prices, and without access to key Google apps and services like the Google Play Store, both devices will represent interesting curios rather than anything you should seriously consider buying. Sanctions have also impacted Huawei’s...

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Microsoft got a whole lot of people to play Halo and Forza

_Over 20 million people have played_Halo Infinite.

Microsoft seems to have had a lot of success getting people to try out its games. During the company’s earnings call on Tuesday, CEO Satya Nadella said that 20 million people had played Halo Infinite and 18 million people had played Forza Horizon 5. While it’s worth noting that those numbers will include people who played for a few minutes and didn’t stick around, it speaks to the pull of the just-download-it-and-give-it-a-whirl model.

Both games can be played without any direct cost; Horizon 5 is available on the Xbox Game Pass subscription service, which has around 25 million subscribers according to Microsoft, and Halo Infinite’s multiplayer uses a free-to-play model (though non-Game Pass subscribers will have to buy the campaign...

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Facebook’s embattled cryptocurrency project is likely coming to an end

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

More than two years after it was first announced, the Facebook-sponsored cryptocurrency formerly known as Libra appears to be coming to an end. The Diem Association set up by Facebook to manage the digital token is exploring a sale of its assets after meeting resistance by regulators who opposed the initiative, according to a new report by Bloomberg.

The U.S. Federal Reserve “dealt the effort a final blow” by putting pressure on Silvergate, the banking partner that Diem said it was partnering with last year to launch the token, _Bloomberg_reports. I’ve also heard from someone involved that the Fed threatened Silvergate, putting the launch on ice.

A Diem Association spokesperson, Michael Crittenden, told The Verge that Bloomberg’s story...

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It just got a lot easier to get PS5 screenshots on your phone

You can now auto-upload your PS5 captures from your console to your phone | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Sony is making it a lot easier to share your PS5 screenshots outside of your PS5. The company appears to finally be rolling out a way to have screenshots and videos captured on your PS5 auto-upload to the PlayStation app, where you can save them to your camera roll for whatever you might need. This feature was first tested in Canada and Japan in October, but it became available for me in the US on Tuesday.

To get the new feature to work, I had to do a couple things. First, I had to open up the Media Gallery on my PS5, which you can find by going to the Games menu, scrolling all the way to Game Library icon, clicking that, and navigating to the Media Gallery. When I did, a prompt appeared that gave me the option to “Enable Auto-Upload,”...

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Call of Duty’s next three games will hit PlayStation despite Microsoft’s Activision deal

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Activision plans to release at least the next three Call of Duty games on both Sony and Microsoft consoles, Bloomberg reports. The new report should be a sigh of relief to fans who were worried Microsoft would immediately make new Call of Duty games Xbox exclusive if its blockbuster acquisition of Activision goes through.

According to Bloomberg, Activision had already committed to bring “the next few” Call of Duty titles to PlayStation sometime before Microsoft’s acquisition was announced. Last week, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said he told Sony that Microsoft wants to “keep Call of Duty on PlayStation” and that the company intends to honor existing agreements, so it seems like Activision’s commitment with Sony will stay in place....

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The best deals on MacBooks right now

The 2020 MacBook Air, one of the best laptops you can get, is now available at Amazon starting at $849.99.

With multiple configurations and various models to choose from, including ones equipped with Apple’s M1 processor, finding a deal on a MacBook or Mac Mini is not all that difficult. It’s a slightly different story for the newer M1 Pro and M1 Max-equipped MacBook Pros, but any bit of savings you can get on the new Pro models is sure to be worthwhile.

Here, we’ll run through the discounts that are currently available for the latest MacBook models, as well as any deals to be had on the Mac Mini. Of course, there are also frequent discounts available for older Intel-based configurations — which are compatible with the recently released macOS Monterey — but we strongly recommend opting for a newer model now that Apple has introduced its M1...

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Samsung’s next Unpacked event is set for February 9th

The Galaxy S22 leaks are coming in hot ahead of the upcoming Unpacked event scheduled for February. | Image: Samsung

Samsung has confirmed a date and time for its next Galaxy Unpacked event: Wednesday, February 9th at 10AM ET / 7AM PT. The invitation features a large letter “S” with the words “The Epic Standard,” indicating that we can expect to see the Galaxy S22 series debut on the livestream, to nobody’s surprise. Samsung itself had already hinted that a new S-series Ultra device would be coming in February — one that will likely absorb the Note series.

As they tend to, the S22 leaks have been coming in strong over the past month. From the looks of it, the S22 Ultra will indeed have a silo for the S-Pen stylus, like the Note does (did?), and the S22 is rumored to have a slightly smaller 6.1-inch display compared to the S21’s 6.2-inch panel. The...

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Microsoft is emailing out links to buy an Xbox Series X bundle from its online store

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

If you’re hunting for an Xbox Series X, you might want to check your email inbox. As we noted last fall, Microsoft has occasionally been contacting Microsoft Store customers, offering a “limited supply of Xbox Series X bundles” that are available to “valued Microsoft customers” in the US.

Image: The Verge

Xbox Series X bundles now available

The emails are addressed to Microsoft Store customers, and bundles are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Microsoft is limiting orders to one bundle per order or two bundles per 30-day period. The links to order a bundle are unique and tied to a Microsoft Account and don’t always guarantee that stock is available for purchase.

These Xbox Series X consoles are...

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Fashion Nova first to be fined by FTC for blocking bad reviews

The FTC fined a fashion website for allegedly blocking negative customer product reviews | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has fined Fashion Nova, a California fast-fashion retailer, $4.2 million to settle allegations that it blocked negative product reviews from being posted on its website. The agency says this is its first case to challenge the practice of suppressing negative customer reviews.

The FTC said in a complaint (pdf) that between 2015 and 2019, Fashion Nova used a third-party tool that allowed it to automatically post four- and five-star customer reviews but withheld “hundreds of thousands [of] lower starred, more negative reviews,” which was misleading to customers. “Suppressing a product’s negative reviews deprives consumers of potentially useful information and artificially inflates the product’s average...

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The path to unionizing has been rough for Raven Software, and it’s about to get rougher

Raven’s QA workers have formed a union — now what?

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Don’t Look Up narrowly misses becoming Netflix’s all-time-best film debut

Image: Netflix | NIKO TAVERNISE/NETFLIX

_Don’t Look Up_is Netflix’s second most popular film debut to date, coming in around 4 million viewing hours short of Netflix’s crown jewel Red Notice.

The new film racked up nearly 360 million hours of viewing during its first 28 days on the service, per Netflix’s Top 10 portal for tracking its most successful titles. Red Notice, meanwhile, tallied 364 million hours during its first four weeks on Netflix, while Bird Box holds third place with 282 million hours viewed.

While it narrowly missed its opportunity to overthrow Netflix’s biggest film success to date — it looked like it still had a chance last week — Don’t Look Up is still a monumental win for the streamer. It’s the second major film release in a matter of months to topple...

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The International Monetary Fund tells El Salvador it shouldn’t use Bitcoin as legal tender

El Salvador introduced Bitcoin as a legal tender alongside the US dollar in 2021. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The International Monetary Fund’s executive board has recommended El Salvador no longer use Bitcoin as a legal tender, citing potential risks to financial stability and consumer protection. The country’s use of Bitcoin could make it difficult for it to get a loan from the IMF, according to Bloomberg.

The recommendation comes as part of the organization’s consultation, where staff members visit a country and prepare a report that’s discussed by the IMF’s executive board. The summary from the board looks at and discusses El Salvador’s economic policies as a whole, but the country’s 2021 adoption of Bitcoin as a legal tender got a lot of attention.

The IMF’s board agrees with its staff’s recommendations from November that the country...

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Here are the best Kindle deals right now

The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is one of many e-readers currently available as part of a discounted bundle at Amazon. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

When it comes to finding a device to use to read your ebooks, you have a few options to choose from. You can always buy a tablet or use your smartphone, but those devices are multipurpose and can be used for a ton of things, like surfing the web or doom-scrolling on Twitter. If you are looking for something to strictly read books, e-readers, while niche, are designed to store all of your books in a virtual library with limited functionality.

Amazon, one of the pioneers of the e-reader, has dominated the space for years with its Kindle lineup, which consists of several unique models with their own pros and cons.

Below, we’ve listed each model currently available for purchase. Sometimes, there isn’t a deal for one, or any, of the...

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Microsoft Office, cloud services, and Windows boost revenue in Q2

Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge

Microsoft posted the second quarter of its 2022 financial results today, reporting revenue of $51.7 billion and a net income of $18.8 billion. Revenue is up 20 percent, and net income has increased by 21 percent.

The PC market just had another big year thanks to continued pandemic demand, with around 340 million PCs shipped in 2021. This is now Microsoft’s second quarter of Windows 11, and Windows OEM revenue has increased by 25 percent in Q2, year over year. Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenue also increased 13 percent.

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Microsoft’s Surface Pro 8.

Despite a healthier PC market, Microsoft did warn that Surface might take a hit this quarter, and it...

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The man who oversaw YouTube Gaming’s huge streamer deals is leaving for crypto

Ryan Wyatt is leaving YouTube to join Polygon Tech. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Ryan Wyatt, YouTube’s head of gaming who oversaw some of its big deals to bring Twitch streamers to YouTube, is leaving to join the crypto company Polygon Technology, where he will be leading its Polygon Studios organization.

Polygon is a “protocol and a framework for building and connecting Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks,” according to its website. Said another way, it can help people build decentralized apps that aren’t as tied to one blockchain’s fees, hurdles, or performance. In one description Polygon compares itself as the “broadband” to Ethereum’s internet, with faster transaction speeds and fees that are “10000x cheaper.”

Wyatt will be focused on leading Polygon’s non-tech-related efforts, he said to The Verge in a...

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Facebook’s plan to offer free internet in developing countries ended up costing users, WSJ reports

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Facebook partners with mobile carriers in developing countries like Indonesia, the Philippines, and Pakistan to give users free access to Facebook and a few other websites, but users have been unknowingly getting charged by their cellular providers, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The service, called Free Basics, is offered through Meta Connectivity (formerly Facebook Connectivity) and is supposed to provide users with “access to communication tools, health information, education resources and other low-bandwidth services” at no charge. The program has been around since 2013, and as of last October, it serves more than 300 million people.

Pakistan has been charged the most for using Facebook’s “free” internet at a...

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What’s next for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope now that it’s reached its parking spot

NASA’s next-generation James Webb Space Telescope may have reached its final parking spot in space, but there’s still a long road ahead for the observatory before it can start taking the dazzling pictures of the cosmos that scientists have been eagerly awaiting. Over the next five months, mission engineers will meticulously tweak and test the telescope in order to prepare the spacecraft for its lifelong mission of observing the Universe.

Yesterday at around 2PM ET, the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, fired its onboard thrusters for a little less than five minutes, putting the vehicle into its final orbit in space. It was a crucial last step for JWST’s journey through the cosmos, capping off a 30-day voyage from the launchpad to its...

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A Percy Jackson and the Olympians series is ‘really, truly, and for sure’ coming to Disney Plus

Hyperion

_Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief_author Rick Riordan will be the first person to tell you how much he didn’t care for 20th Century Studios’ 2010 adaptation of the novel from director Chris Columbus. For years, Riordan’s been insisting to his fans how he’s been longing to see his work transformed into a live-action story that squares with the grand vision in his mind, and now, Disney Plus plans to make that happen.

Though Riordan already announced almost two years ago in a series of now-deleted tweets that Disney Plus was moving forward with a new show based on the book series, the prolific author reiterated today the studio’s plans and shared some new details about the project in a new video posted to Twitter. Along with Riordan,...

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Blizzard announces new survival game while still reeling from multiple controversies

A week after the news Microsoft will acquire Activision Blizzard, and amidst news of alleged union-busting, labor strikes, unionization and the continuing investigation of allegations of discrimination and abuse, Blizzard has announced it’s working on a new IP.

We’re building a survival game in an all-new universe.

Join us in writing our next chapter: https://t.co/yf7W5p9ERQpic.twitter.com/vWtkDYh1kX

— Blizzard Entertainment (@Blizzard_Ent) January 25, 2022

The new game is the first new universe from Blizzard since Overwatch in 2016; it’s also the studio’s first survival game. While it’s fairly common to announce games early to recruit new talent — Respawn Entertainment’s announcement of its new Star Wars game contained job listings...

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Here’s how bad the chip shortage is, according to the White House

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Today, the White House is saying out loud what you’ve likely already heard: the chip shortage won’t end anytime soon. “We aren’t even close to being out of the woods,” said US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in a briefing with reporters today, according to Bloomberg, The Washington Post_,_and others.

Her comments come alongside a new Department of Commerce report that cites chipmakers who “did not see the problem going away in six months,” which also isn’t exactly news: chipmakers like Nvidia and AMD have repeatedly suggested the shortage wouldn’t ease until the second half of 2022, while Intel has said it might not end until 2023.

But the report, based on 150 responses from “nearly every major semiconductor producer and from companies...

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How to share a Google Doc privately

Recently, I got Slacked by a colleague who was really annoyed and had to let off a bit of steam. It seems that a writer had shared a new Google Docs article with them (a usual way of submitting a freelance piece), and when my colleague opened the article, they found another, unknown person was already reading it — somebody who was definitely not on our staff.

What had happened? The writer, probably in too much of a hurry to share the document with specific people, had simply made it public so that anybody could have access to it. This not only made the article available to anyone before it had been properly edited and published — something no publication wants — but opened it up to all sorts of mischief.

Mischief like what happened in...

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Google abandons FLoC, introduces Topics API to replace tracking cookies

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google is walking back plans to replace third-party cookies with FLoC by instead proposing the Topics API, a new system for interest-based advertising. Topics works by pinpointing five of your interests, such as “Fitness” or “Travel & Transportation,” based on your web activity, as measured by participating sites, for one week.

Your browser will store these topics for three weeks before deleting them. Google says that these categories “are selected entirely on your device” and don’t involve “any external servers, including Google servers.” When you visit a website, Topics will show the site and its advertising partners just three of your interests, consisting of “one topic from each of the past three weeks.”

As noted on the Topics API...

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Amazon Music will offer My Favorite Murder episodes a week early

Exactly Right Media

Hello, hello. I’m back! Welcome to the week from sunny Los Angeles. My trip through California had me disconnecting from the internet, spotting Michael Keaton at a Santa Barbara restaurant inside a furniture store, and, naturally, ending up in multiple conversations about Joe Rogan. Just the R&R I needed :~). Anyway, I’m happy to be back with you and the podcast news. Let’s get into it.

Hot Pod Summit is returning on February 24th to start On Air Fest. Hot Pod Summit is the invite-only industry conference for the people building the future of the audio industry. It will kick off On Air Fest, the audio industry’s premier cultural festival, featuring Jad Abumrad, Chuck D, Dr. Jane Goodall, and more. Buy your tickets here.

If you’re...

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General Motors will build a third EV battery factory in the US

Photo by Nic Antaya/Getty Images

General Motors announced a $7 billion investment in growing its electric vehicle manufacturing capabilities in Michigan, calling it “the single largest investment announcement in GM history.”

The company will spend the money on four manufacturing sites, with plans to create 4,000 new jobs and retain another 1,000 in the state. The investment includes construction of a new battery cell plant in Lansing and the conversion of GM’s assembly plant in Orion for production of the Chevy Silverado EV and the electric GMC Sierra. The latter will be GM’s second assembly plant scheduled to build full-size electric pickups, the first being the company’s Factory Zero in Detroit.

GM has said it will spend $35 billion by 2025 on electric and autonomous...

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Seven CEOs and one secretary of transportation on the future of cars

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

Featuring the CEOs of Volkswagen, Ford, and Jeep

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NSO chairman steps down after domestic spying allegations in Israel

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The chairman of NSO Group, the Israel-based company whose spyware has been used to surveil journalists and human rights defenders around the world, has stepped down following allegations that it was also used to monitor Israeli citizens.

News of former NSO chairman Asher Levi’s resignation was reported by Haaretz on Tuesday, although Levi told the Associated Press that his departure had been planned months in advance and was unconnected to current news.

NSO has been embroiled in a domestic scandal since last week when the Hebrew-language business newspaper Calcalist reported that police in Israel had possessed Pegasus spyware since 2013. Calcalist alleged that the spyware had been used to monitor protest leaders and other anti-government...

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Pfizer launches study of omicron-specific COVID-19 vaccine

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Pfizer and BioNTech are launching a clinical trial to test an omicron-specific version of their COVID-19 vaccine, the companies announced today. They’re moving forward with studies of a new form of the vaccine in response to concerns that the original shot isn’t preventing infection with the newest variant of coronavirus or mild COVID-19 illness — even though it appears to be holding up well in terms of preventing hospitalization and death, especially for people who received a booster.

The original two-dose series of the gene-based COVID-19 vaccines, made by Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna, don’t appear to offer much protection against infection with the omicron variant with the virus. A third booster dose restoressome of that...

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