Google adds National Domestic Violence Hotline to search results

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google search results for domestic violence-related topics now show a box with contact information for the National Domestic Violence Hotline, the tech giant and the hotline announced today.

Searching terms like “domestic violence” and “boyfriend hit me” in the United States generates the box, which includes the phone number for the hotline, a direct link to the online chat services, and a direct link to place a call. “This will help survivors, especially those in crisis, get the information and connection to the 24/7 support they need quickly and with less scrolling,” said Crystal Justice, chief external affairs officer at The National Domestic Violence Hotline, in a blog post.

This box appears in searches for...

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Cruise launches public waitlist for its robotaxis in San Francisco

Photo by Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images

Cruise, the self-driving company backed by General Motors and Honda, announced a public waitlist for its robotaxi service in San Francisco. It’s a significant step for the company that has previously been beset by delays in its quest to get paying customers into its autonomous ride-hailing vehicles.

The rides will be free to start out, as Cruise has yet to be approved to accept paid rides. The company, which has previously only allowed employees to ride in its autonomous vehicles, says it has tested the waters with a few of its first non-employee customers, including GM CEO Mary Barra, as well as a few non-employees.

According to Cruise:

We’re also opening a public waitlist at www.getcruise.com for when we’re ready to offer even more...

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The EARN IT Act is back in Congress

Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have reintroduced the EARN IT Act, a bill that would undercut Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

The EARN IT Act is described as an incentive for social media services to crack down on child sexual abuse material (or CSAM) online. While the bill’s text wasn’t immediately released, a summary indicates it’s similar to a proposal that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last year. That bill limited the typically broad protections that Section 230 grants “interactive computer services” against being sued over user-generated content, adding special conditions for material that runs afoul of CSAM laws.

The original EARN IT Act’s sponsors touted endorsements from the...

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The Joe Rogan controversy is what happens when you put podcasts behind a wall

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge | Photo by Vivian Zink/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

This story originally ran in Hot Pod, The Verge’s preeminent audio industry newsletter. You can subscribeherefor more scoops, analysis, and reporting.

Spotify didn’t discover Joe Rogan, and Joe Rogan didn’t create Spotify, but their union portends the future of a closed podcasting ecosystem. Up until September 2020, The Joe Rogan Experience was available through RSS feeds, YouTube, and podcast players. His content bubbled up every so often, but broadly, Rogan did his show, and the various distribution platforms let him do so without having to worry and monitor every episode — if it infringed on a policy, it could be removed, and so it went. This is the world in which Rogan stans and haters can find common ground.

Rogan could have been...

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Destiny 2: The Witch Queen’s new weapons and gear look super powerful

Hot off the heels of Sony’s Bungie acquisition news, Bungie is in full teaser mode for _Destiny 2: The Witch Queen._The latest Destiny 2 expansion launches on February 22nd, and it’s set to include a trio of new exotic weapons. Destiny 2 already has some incredibly unique weapons, but these three look like they will up the ante.

First up is the Grand Overture, a slug launcher that charges full auto missiles at enemies. It appears to be similar to what the Scorn enemies use in Destiny 2 and will act like a machine gun with explosive projectiles (think Wardcliff) to wipe out hoards of Hive.

Image: Bungie

It looks like some type of machine gun.

Where things really start to get interesting is the new Parasite...

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It Takes Two is being adapted for film and television

Screenshot: It Takes Two

Hazelight Studios, the indie developer behind the action-adventure game It Takes Two, is working with dj2 Entertainment to adapt the title for film and television, according to a report from Variety. Pat Casey and Josh Miller, the screenwriters behind the _Sonic the Hedgehog_movie, are set to adapt the game, although no studio or network has been attached to the project yet.

“The potential is huge for a great adaption to film or television”

“Creating the world and story in It Takes Two was so much fun for me and the team,” Hazelight founder Josef Fares told Variety. “Since it has a strong narrative with many crazy characters and just as crazy co-op action moments, the potential is huge for a great adaption to film or television.”

Fares,...

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The business of finding a better job, with Career Karma CEO Ruben Harris

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

Turning the ‘Great Resignation’ into good business

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Death is not the end of life in After Yang’s first trailer

A24

Though the future of writer / director Kogonada’s After Yangis a lush, calm, near-utopia, human life finds a way to engineer its own tragedy in the movie’s first trailer.

Set in a future where it’s become commonplace for people to buy sophisticated androids to take care of their organic children, _After Yang_tells the story of Jake (Colin Farrell), his wife Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith), their adopted daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja), and Yang, their “son” charged with watching over his younger sister. Despite all of the time that Yang’s spent with the family acting as both a caregiver and a general assistant, when he begins to malfunction, there’s some disagreement as to what they should do, seemingly because Jake and Kyra aren’t...

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Refurbished Sonos tech is up to $140 off

The Sonos Move can be used indoors via Wi-Fi, or connected to your devices over Bluetooth. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Sonos deals can be hard to come by, but right now, you can save a lot of money if you don’t mind buying products refurbished. Sonos is currently discounting a range of its items, including the latest generation of the Sonos One, which at $149 is $70 cheaper than its $218 retail cost when purchased new. If you want a Sonos speaker that you can use at home or portably as a powerful Bluetooth and Wi-Fi-enabled speaker, check out the Move, which costs $319 through Sonos’ refurb store (usually $399).

Other highlights include the first-generation Sonos Beam soundbar. Originally $399, it’s selling for $259 instead. While it lacks the second-gen Beam’s support for Dolby Atmos, it’s still a competent soundbar that is otherwise similar to the...

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The best TVs to buy ahead of the Super Bowl

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

The Super Bowl LVI matchup is now set, and with the big Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams face-off less than two weeks away, TV makers are slashing prices on many of their 2021 models in hopes of clearing out stock. Super Bowl season is often among the best times to land an unbeatable deal on the big-screen TV you’ve been eyeing for months.

Whether you’re shopping at Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, or elsewhere, you might not see savings quite like this until the holiday season rolls around. And with consumers generally moving towards bigger and bigger screens, we’ve highlighted some 75-inch models below — but there are also deals to be had on smaller sizes.

1. LG C1

The best OLED to buy right now

It’s hard to find a better all-around...

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Sony’s Bungie acquisition is all about Fortnite

Image: Bungie

And huge virtual worlds on multiple platforms

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The best streaming device deals for Super Bowl LVI

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

The dust has settled from the NFL conference championships, and it’s time once again to get ready for the Super Bowl — also known as the “big game” if you’re an American or an advertiser legally barred from using the trademarked term. Whether you’re into the actual game of football and rooting for the Los Angeles Rams or Cincinnati Bengals — or you’re just there for the commercials, snacks, and halftime show — you want to ensure the stream you’re watching looks good.

The Super Bowl may not be broadcast natively in 4K, but you want to have a streaming device that stacks up to whatever performance your TV is capable of. The big finale of the football season drums up all sorts of discounts, so you can save money in the process. Here are...

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Corsair’s PS5-ready M.2 SSD is fast and relatively inexpensive

Corsair’s MP600 Pro LPX can fit into the PS5, or into PC motherboards that support the M.2 2280-sized form factor. | Corsair

Corsair has launched a new line of PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 SSDs made with PS5 compatibility in mind. The MP600 Pro LPX is now available in four capacities: 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and a big 4TB drive. Each of these drives comes with an elegant heatsink pre-installed, making it easy to know that it’ll have thermal protection, whether you put it in a PS5 or your PC.

The other key details come down to price and speed, and in both categories, Corsair is aiming to deliver a better value than Samsung does with the slightly slower, slightly pricier 980 Pro that also comes with its own heatsink. You can get Corsair’s 500GB model for $99.99, and the 1TB model isn’t too much more at $169.99. The 2TB SSD is $339.99, and the price gets a little wild with the 4TB...

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Tesla to disable ‘rolling stop’ feature after NHTSA says it can ‘increase the risk of a crash’

Photo by Chukrut Budrul/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Tesla is disabling a self-driving feature in nearly 54,000 vehicles that can prompt cars to autonomously perform a “rolling stop” — a maneuver in which the vehicle moves slowly through a stop sign without coming to a full stop.

As per a safety recall notice issued by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the consequence of this feature is that “failing to stop at a stop sign can increase the risk of a crash.”

The change will be made as an over-the-air software update to Model S, X, 3, and Y vehicles using the beta version of Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” driver-assist feature, release 2020.40.4.10 or newer. (Referring to such software as “self-driving” has become somewhat controversial in the car industry, with...

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Android Messages beta starts properly displaying iOS Message reactions

Emoji reactions from an iOS user, seen in Android Messages. | Screenshot: Google Messages

Google is widely rolling out a new Google Messages feature to beta users that allows the Android messaging app to correctly interpret emoji reactions sent from the iOS Messages app, 9to5Google reports. The feature appears to be live in version 20220121_02_RC00 of the app, according to Droid-Life, but not for every user. Although it didn’t work on every phone we tried, we were able to get it working on an Oppo Find X3 Pro, which is more than can be said for when the feature initially started appearing last November.

The feature fixes a long-standing issue that can affect SMS chats between iPhone and Android users. When an iPhone user reacts to an Android message with emoji, the Android user typically sees this reaction sent as an entirely...

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Sonos acquisition fuels new headphone rumors

Images of Sonos’ rumored headphones from a patent application. | Image: German Patent and Trademark Office

Sonos has acquired the Bluetooth audio startup T2 Software, _Protocol_reports, adding fuel to rumors that Sonos is developing its own headphones. T2 had been working on implementations of the new Bluetooth LE Audio standard and LC3 codec, which delivers better audio quality at lower bitrates for improved headphone battery life.

A recent LinkedIn post from Sonos VP of global marketing and communications Pete Pedersen suggests that a Sonos headphone launch may be imminent. He said the company was looking for a marketing agency to help it launch “a new category” of product, “targeting a new audience/consumer segment.”

A spokesperson for Sonos confirmed the acquisition to Protocol. “Occasionally, we will acquire teams, talent, and/or...

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Yahoo Japan is going dark in Europe

Photo by STR/JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty Images

Yahoo Japan has announced that most of its online services will cease to be accessible in the European Economic Area and the UK as of April 6th. The company’s email, credit card, and ebook services will continue to be available, but everything else is going dark.

The given reason is the cost of complying with European regulations, which would include GDPR. In a statement, Yahoo Japan says it would be difficult to provide continuous service for customers in the EEA and UK, and went further in telling Japanese publication IT Media that it would be “impossible” to meet the cost of compliance and respond to the related laws.

Yahoo Japan is an entirely separate entity to the American former web giant now owned by the Apollo private equity...

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Your work Gmail is about to look different

You’ll be able to easily switch between Gmail, Chat, Spaces, and Meet. | Image: Google

Google has announced that Gmail’s new layout, which changes how Google Chat, Meet, and Spaces are integrated, will be available to try starting in February; become default by April; and become the only option by the end of Q2 2022. The view makes it so Google’s other messaging tools, which are part of (but not necessarily limited to) its business-focused Workspace suite, are no longer just little windows floating alongside your emails, but get their own screens in Gmail that are accessible with large buttons on the left-hand side.

Google calls this the integrated view, and it’ll soon be familiar if you (or your employer) are a Workspace customer. Starting February 8th, Google says you’ll be able to start testing the layout for yourself....

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Crisis Text Line claims anonymized conversation data helps build AI for ‘a more empathetic world’

Photo by Neil Godwin/Future via Getty Images

Politicorecently reported how Crisis Text Line (which is not affiliated with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline) is sharing data from conversations with Loris.ai, which builds AI systems designed to increase empathetic conversation by customer service reps. Crisis Text Line is a not-for-profit service that provides a text line for mental health discussions, but it is also a shareholder in Loris.ai and, according to Politico, at one point shared a CEO with the company.

“No data scrubbing technique or statement in a terms of service can resolve that ethical violation”

Before hotline users speak with volunteer counselors, they consent to data collection and can read the company’s data-sharing practices. Politico quotes one volunteer...

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Zuckerberg’s dream of launching a cryptocurrency is officially over

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

After multiple rebrands, congressional hearings, and several high-profile staff departures, the Meta-backed cryptocurrency known as Diem is calling it quits.

The association behind Diem confirmed Monday that it sold its assets for around $200 million to Silvergate, a crypto-focused bank it was working with last year to launch a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar. The decision to sell was made after it “became clear from our dialogue with federal regulators that the project could not move ahead,” Diem CEO Stuart Levey said in a press release. (It’s already known that the U.S. Federal Reserve was a key opponent to Diem launching.)

The sale of Diem’s assets marks the end of an effort that, in retrospect, was doomed from the start.

The...

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Big video game companies just can’t stop buying studios

Sony’s deal for Bungie caps what’s been a huge month for gaming acquisitions. | Photo by STR/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Sony just announced its intent to acquire Destiny maker Bungie for $3.6 billion, capping what’s been an absolutely massive month for gaming acquisitions. Take-Two kicked things off with its deal to buy Zynga for $12.7 billion, which at the time may have counted as the biggest deal in the video game industry, but Microsoft significantly one-upped that just a week later with its $68.7 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard. The total value of all three acquisitions, assuming they all go through, is a staggering $85 billion.

With Bungie, Sony will house the talent behind the hugely popular Destiny 2, and it seems likely the company will use Bungie’s expertise to help create similarly expansive and long-running live service titles. Sony is...

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Tesla is now selling karaoke microphones in China

Hopefully this only works in park | Image: Tesla

Tesla last week released its latest distraction product: a set of karaoke microphones dubbed TeslaMic for use in its vehicles (via Electrek) and works with accompanied in-car software. The accessory, which is only available in China for now, was released alongside a Chinese New Year software update that includes a companion karaoke app called Leishi KTV.

The TeslaMic was available on the Chinese Tesla online shop for 1,199 CNY ($188.48 USD). We say “was” because it apparently sold out within an hour, and the listing does not currently load anymore. There are accounts of people already scalping the product for more than it’s worth:

TeslaMic is a hot seller. Sold out 1 hour after launch. Now this scalper is selling it for 3300 CNY. h...

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Discord is finally starting to let users link their PlayStation Network accounts

Discord is finally rolling out the ability to connect your PlayStation Network account to the chat app, following an announcement last May that it and Sony would “bring the Discord and PlayStation experiences closer together on console and mobile.” Right now, the integration is pretty limited, both in terms of what it can do and seemingly who has access to it, but it’s likely the first step for things to come later. Outside of its partnership with Sony, Discord is also working on an interesting account management feature that we’d love to see make it to everyone.

Linking your accounts will let your Discord friends see what game you’re currently playing on your PlayStation, and you have the option of adding your PSN ID to your Discord...

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Echelon persuades USPTO that Peloton’s streaming tech is unpatentable

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

In some more bad news for Peloton, rival Echelon Fitness has persuaded the US Patent and Trademark Office that two of Peloton’s patents related to streaming and on-demand classes aren’t actually patentable. The decision was made last week by the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board as they were found to be “obvious inventions,” according to Bloomberg Law. While it may not be the biggest blow Peloton has faced in recent months, it does raise questions about the company’s tendency to be heavy-handed with patent lawsuits.

To back things up, all this came about after Peloton sued Echelon in 2019 for getting a “free ride” off its technology and thereby flooding the market with cheaper copycat imitators. If you’ve ever considered buying a...

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Bloodborne is finally on PC (in the form of a neat PS1 demake)

Bloodborne is finally on PC — in a manner of speaking. Fans of 2015’s FromSoftware roguelike have been fervently wishing for a PC port. At long last, their prayers have been answered on the gnarled finger of a monkey’s paw with a PSX “demake” available now for free.

BloodbornePSX: NOW AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD

➡️Get it here: https://t.co/40oWAplt4y

Thank you for the support over the 13 month dev period. It means so much to me

➡️Discord: https://t.co/kzxCUCCn44
➡️Extended Launch Trailer: https://t.co/qUn6qLdkhi#BloodbornePSX#Demakepic.twitter.com/FTxl8YlFVC

— Lilith Walther ️‍⚧️ (ps1 goth girl) BLM ACAB (@b0tster) January 31, 2022

Developer Lilith Walther has been working on the demake for 13 months and has drummed up considerable...

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Tesla has a new feature that will disable your seat controls if you keep messing with them

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

Tesla’s new vehicles rolling out of the factory will include a bizarre feature designed to prevent abuse of the seat adjustment controls. The new seats will track and measure the amount of adjustments users make and will disable the controls if they detect “excessive” changes. The feature was first identified by @greentheonly, an anonymous hacker and researcher, and subsequently covered by Jalopnik.

Tesla recently began installing new seat motors in some of its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, in addition to the seats it gets from China’s Yangfeng and the ones it makes in-house. The new motors come from Brose, a 110-year-old German company that supplies a lot of components to the automotive industry.

“seat abuse” metrics

The difference...

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Wordle has been bought by The New York Times, will ‘initially’ remain free for everyone to play

The smash online word game Wordle has been bought by The New York Times, which will integrate the daily word puzzle into The New York Times Games suite of word games, creator Josh Wardle announced today.

Wordle will “initially remain free to new and existing players” once it moves over to the Times’ site, and Wardle says that he’s working with _The New York Times_to preserve players’ existing wins and streak data oncethe game heads to its new home. That said, The New York Times’ announcement leaves plenty of room for the company to decide to put Wordle behind its paywall in the future.

An update on Wordle pic.twitter.com/TmHd0AIRLX

— Josh Wardle (@powerlanguish) January 31, 2022

In his announcement of the sale — for a price that The...

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Disenchantment’s first season 4 trailer is dark and full of hellish terrors

Netflix

By the end of Disenchantment’s third season, Bean, Elfo, and Luci were all down for the count and left in places that made it seem like they might have been ready to call it quits on their journeys through Dreamland. The gang’s all back in the first trailer for Disenchantment’s fourth “part” (read: season), though, and while things have certainly gotten bad, the story’s not over yet.

Disenchantment’s third season closed out on Bean (Abbi Jacobson), Luci (Eric André), and Elfo (Nat Faxon) being split up as the kingdom was coming under siege by ogres, and Bean’s mother Dagmar (Sharon Horgan) reappeared to spirit her daughter away to the underworld. Though Bean struggled with becoming Dreamland’s newly crowned queen when last we saw her, D...

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A prototype 500Hz gaming monitor has broken cover

The world’s fastest esports gaming monitors can refresh at 360Hz — that’s 360 times every second — but display panel manufacturer BOE thinks it can do better. This past week, it revealed a 27-inch prototype monitor with a 500Hz refresh rate, according to a Sina.com news report from an account dubbed OLEDIndustry (via Videocardz and Wccftech).

It doesn’t use OLED, though: in what little description we have (via Google Translate), BOE is bragging that it’s made “important breakthroughs in the field of oxide semiconductor display technology” and “mass production of copper interconnect stack structures” that, combined with “high refresh rate, high resolution, low power oxide display technology,” can make this 500Hz gaming display possible....

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Federal court decision could slow oil industry efforts to store carbon in the Gulf of Mexico

OIL PLATFORM, GULF OF MEXICO - DECEMBER 10, 2014:  | Photo DigitalGlobe via Getty Images via Getty Images

Fossil fuel companies’ hopes of sequestering captured greenhouse gas emissions at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico hit a snag last week when a federal court revoked a gigantic oil and gaslease sale the Biden Administration held last November. ExxonMobil was the biggest spender at the time, bidding on nearly 100 leases in shallow waters. Because the areas it bid on weren’t expected to be very lucrative for oil and gas drilling, experts speculated that ExxonMobil would use the areas for storing captured CO2.

But late last week, US District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras canceled leases issued during the November sale. The enormous sale, which auctioned off 80.8 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico, was challenged in federal court by...

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