The Verge
Bored Ape Yacht Club members want to build an empire, starting with weed
Illustration by Alex Castro
What do you do with the IP rights to your very expensive cartoon primate? Put him on cannabis packaging
The VergeThe VergeI do not fear Jurassic World Dominion’s dinosaurs or its raptor-infested future
The latest trailer for Jurassic World Dominion has arrived, picking up on the cliffhanger from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and showing off a (jurassic) world that is now full of feral dinosaurs, roaming the fields, streets, and forests.
This, the movie seems to be positing, is a bad thing, one that might see the dinosaurs move to displace man from its place on the top of the evolutionary food chain. “Humans and dinosaurs can’t coexist!” Laura Dern’s returning Dr. Ellie Sattler explains in a voiceover, amidst shots of T-rexes running wild. “We’re racing towards the extinction of our species” adds Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm in a subsequent shot.
Ignoring the fact that having dinosaurs running around everywhere would be,...
The VergeBig tech’s 2021 earnings were off the chart
Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge
2021 is in the rearview mirror, but the year’s final reckoning didn’t come until the past week — at least where Wall Street is concerned. Major companies ranging from Apple and Google to Netflix and Tesla all announced their earnings for the holiday quarter — and, as has been the case for more or less the last decade-plus of history, Big Tech made Big Bucks.
But taken in total, 2021 looks like a different year, even by Big Tech company standards. Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the fluctuating economy and job market, supply chain issues, semiconductor shortages, and other socioeconomic issues, major tech firms didn’t just manage to scrape out some tiny margins of revenue last year: they more or less broke the bank with some of the...
The VergeAlienware’s thin, 14-inch X14 gaming laptop is now available
Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge
Alienware’s new 14-inch X14 gaming laptop is now on sale, following its announcement in January at CES 2022. While the X14 is considerably smaller (and thinner) than the 15-inch X15 or 17-inch X17, it borrows some of the highlights of those pricier, more powerful machines. At launch, it features a 14-core Intel Core i7-12700H processor, up to Nvidia’s RTX 3060 graphics chip, and up to 2TB of SSD storage and 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM clocked at 5,200MHz. If you want a machine with those specs inside, it’ll cost you $2,299.99 — not cheap for an RTX 3060-equipped laptop.
There are less costly options at launch, and more are on the way. Prices for the low-end X14 configuration currently start at $1,649.99, and you’ll get the same Core i7-12700H...
The VergeArtists are playing takedown whack-a-mole to fight counterfeit merch
Illustration by Claudia Chinyere Akole
‘There are all sorts of obstacles that are thrown up in front of artists’
The VergeAlienware X14 review: fast and thin, but far from perfect
This size reduction comes with a mix of good and slightly disappointing results
The VergeStartup’s 5G Blackberry revival is reportedly no more
A close-up of the 2015 BlackBerry Priv. | Image: The Verge
Plans to resurrect the Blackberry brand with a new keyboard-equipped 5G Android device have been shelved, according to reports from AndroidPolice and CrackBerry. Development on the device was announced in 2020 by Texas-based startup OnwardMobility, after it licensed the brand name from Blackberry. The device was rumored to use a similar design to 2015’s Blackberry Priv — which had a physical keyboard that could be revealed with a slide of its screen — with a release date planned for some time in 2021.
That, obviously, didn’t happen, but there were signs of life earlier this year when OnwardMobility published a blog post titled “Contrary to popular belief, we are not dead.” Although the company admitted that it had “encountered various...
The VergeSSD prices could spike after Western Digital loses 6.5 billion gigabytes of NAND chips
Image: Western Digital
Western Digital says it has lost at least 6.5 exabytes (6.5 billion gigabytes) of flash storage due to contamination issues at its NAND production facilities. The contamination could see the price of NAND — the main component of SSDs — spike up to 10 percent, according to market research firm TrendForce. Any potential NAND shortages or price fluctuations could affect the PC market over the next few months, which had another big year in 2021 despite global chip shortages and demand for GPUs.
The contamination of materials used in the manufacturing processes appears to have been detected in late January at two plants in Japan, with Western Digital’s joint venture partner, Kioxia (previously Toshiba), revealing it has affected BiCS 3D NAND...
The VergeYep, Android 13’s dessert codename is ‘Tiramisu’ after all
Tiramisu (the cake, not the Android version). | Image: Getty
Android 13’s first developer preview has confirmed what we’ve long-suspected: that the dessert-based codename for this year’s Android update is “Tiramisu.” _9to5Google_spotted the codename in the debut developer preview under “Android Version” in the “About phone” menu. The Italian dessert has been cropping up in commits since July last year.
Although each version of Android hasn’t been publicly named after a dessert since 2019’s Android 10, the tradition is still alive and well internally at Google. Android 10 was Quince Tart, Android 11 was Red Velvet Cake, and Android 12 was Snow Cone.
Android 10 was Quince Tart
Now that we know that Google has settled on Tiramisu as a codename, we can’t help but turn our attention to Android 14’s...
The VergeGoogle’s Privacy Sandbox ad-tracking overhaul clears major regulatory hurdle
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Google’s plan to phase out third-party cookies and replace them with a bundle of new standards referred to as the “Privacy Sandbox” just overcame a key regulatory hurdle. The UK’s competition regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), has formally accepted Google’s commitments about how it’ll develop the new standards so they don’t harm competition or unfairly benefit the search giant’s own advertising business, the regulator announced today.
Google’s plans are still in flux, and it’s not yet clear exactly what technologies Privacy Sandbox will use to replace third-party cookies. Just last month, Google abandoned one planned approach, FLoC, in favor of a new system called Topics API. Today’s approval is for Google’s approach,...
The VergeGoogle will shut down Currents, the work-focused Google Plus replacement
Currents was introduced in 2019. | Image: Google Currents
Google has announced that it’ll shut down Currents, which was introduced in 2019 as a replacement for Google Plus for G Suite. In a blog post, the company says it’s “planning to wind down” Currents, and that it’ll push the people who were using it to Spaces, which is sort of like Google Chat’s version of a Slack channel or Discord room.
Google says that it’s making the change so users won’t have to work in a “separate, siloed destination” — instead, they’ll be using Chat and Spaces, which will soon be prominently integrated into Gmail. The company promises it’s going to make Spaces a more suitable replacement over the next year, saying it’ll “deliver new capabilities” like “support for larger communities and leadership communication,...
The VergeTinder’s new Blind Date feature wants you to judge matches based on personality
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Tinder is adding a new “Blind Date” feature that switches up the dating app’s usual left or right swipe: this time, you have to chat with other users before you can see what they look like.
The Blind Date feature supposedly appeals to the “’90s nostalgia” felt by Gen-Z
Blind Date is the latest addition to Tinder’s Fast Chat lineup that features other in-app experiences like Hot Takes and Swipe Night. With the feature, users will be paired based on what they have in common, answer prompts, and play games. If both users decide to match, they will be able to finally see each other’s photos.
Image: Tinder
Within the feature, Tinder users answer timed questions / prompts like “It’s OK to wear a shirt ___ times without...
The VergeFord’s mobile app update hints at new driverless parking features
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Ford’s remote vehicle app FordPass was updated a week ago, and Electrek reports that it contains a set of image files hinting at a possible driverless parking assistant feature.
Following in the steps of Tesla’s quite popular Summon feature
The images have filenames beginning with “freeDriveBehind” and “freeDriveForward,” which show stencil drawings of what looks like an overhead view of a Ford F-150 Lighting with arrows pointing from the rear-back and the front-forward, respectively.
Associated images included also show the electric truck’s front view in between two Mustang Mach-Es while a checkbox displays on an iPhone, which is a fairly apt representation of a driver-free parking function.
It wouldn’t be off-brand either for Ford to...
The VergeThe New York Times runs Wordle now, and stats are getting m-e-s-s-y
Wordle, the extremely popular online puzzle, is now officially being run by The New York Times after its creator sold it a few weeks ago. It lives at a new URL, https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html, but before you head there for your daily game, you should know that there’s currently issues with how player statistics (including streaks, win percentages, and guess distribution) are being transferred from the old version to the new.
Here’s what an FAQ page from The Times says about how the stats transfer should work:
How can I transfer my game statistics to the new Wordle site?
We have automatically transferred your game statistics (including streaks) to Wordle’s new home on New York Times Games. Nothing to do on your end.
H...
The VergeMoviePass is officially coming back
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Two years after the wildly popular subscription service MoviePass crashed and burned, its co-founder Stacy Spikes is determined to bring it back. Spikes says MoviePass will return this summer.
The company, recently bought by Spikes after his unceremonious ouster from MoviePass in 2018, held its launch event today at the Walter Reade Theater Lincoln Center in NYC. Spikes began by wasting absolutely no time addressing the Helios and Matheson Analytics-shaped elephant in the room. The firm is now infamous for being the parent company of MoviePass that managed to blow the entire thing up shortly after the firm bought the startup, which became famous for offering unlimited movie tickets for a monthly fee.
“A lot of people lost money, a lot of...
The VergeHow to activate and use Google Chat
Real-time collaborative chat, as exemplified by apps such as Slack, has become a common way to communicate between colleagues and friends, especially since early 2020, when so many of us transitioned to working from home. In mid-2021, Google apparently took note of this and pit itself against Slack by taking two of the features from its corporate Workplace app suite — Chat and Spaces (previously called Rooms) — and integrating them into its standard Gmail app.
Google Chat allows you to hold chat sessions with friends and groups of friends either on an informal or formal basis. The former can be done just between two people or between several in what Google calls a group conversation. The latter is done via a separate area that Google...
The VergeBowser is going to prison for selling Nintendo Switch hacks
Photo by James Bareham / The Verge
Gary Bowser, a leader of a group that sold mod chips for video game consoles, has been sentenced to 40 months in prison over his involvement with the organization, the Department of Justice said in a release Thursday.
Bowser was a part of Team Xecuter, which made hacks for the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo 3DS, NES Classic Edition, Sony’s PlayStation Classic, and Microsoft’s Xbox, the DOJ said. Bowser’s role was to “administer the websites that communicated with customers offering devices for sale.” He pleaded guilty to two felony charges in October 2021, and the DOJ’s release noted that as part of his plea agreement, Bowser has agreed to pay $4.5 million in restitution to Nintendo of America.
The sentencing is the latest update in what’s...
The VergeAstra’s first launch from Florida ends in failure mid-flight
Small rocket company Astra’s launch today out of Cape Canaveral, Florida, ended in failure a little more than three minutes after takeoff, when an unexpected issue cropped up during flight and prevented the vehicle from reaching orbit. It’s unclear what exactly happened, but live footage from the rocket showed it spinning out of control just after the two main stages of the vehicle separated as planned.
Today marked Astra’s first time launching out of the Cape, after launching primarily out of Kodiak, Alaska, for all of its previous missions and test flights. NASA was the customer for today’s mission, marking the first time Astra launched a payload for the space agency. Called the ELaNa41 mission, the launch carried four small satellites...
The VergeFewer robot cars are driving more miles in California
Photo by Smith Collection / Gado / Getty Images
California, you may have noticed more robot cars on your roads than usual over the past year. That’s because autonomous vehicle testing is booming in the state, with AV companies having driven more than 4 million miles in 2021, according to data released by the California Department of Motor Vehicles. This represents a sharp increase over the previous two years, a sign that the AV industry has come roaring back after the pandemic-influenced lockdowns of 2020.
There were also fewer companies testing vehicles overall, a reflection of the increased pace of mergers and acquisitions that have taken place in recent years. Of the 50 companies registered with the DMV, only 22 reported testing during the year. Despite skepticism about the...
The VergeApple’s latest update should fix MacBooks’ battery drain issue
Apple says the issue affected Intel Macs. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Apple has released an update to solve the battery drain issues some Mac users experienced since upgrading to macOS 12.2. The release notes for the new version, 12.2.1, say it contains fixes for “an issue for Intel-based Mac computers that may cause the battery to drain during sleep when connected to Bluetooth peripherals.”
Before Thursday’s updates, some users reported their MacBooks’ batteries would drain while the computer was asleep, sometimes even reaching 0 percent charge overnight. While there was evidence that Bluetooth was the culprit, some users reported that turning off Bluetooth before closing their computers didn’t help, making it slightly unclear what the issue was. Now, Apple’s said it’s specifically fixing an issue with...
The VergeWindows 11’s big February update finally brings back the time and date on multiple monitors
Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge
If, like me, you’ve missed the taskbar time and date on multiple monitors in Windows 11, you’ll be pleased to hear it’s returning. Microsoft is finally bringing this functionality back after shipping Windows 11 last year without the ability to see the time or date on secondary displays.
“We added the clock and date to the taskbars of other monitors when you connect other monitors to your device,” reads the release notes for a new Windows 11 build that has just been released to Release Preview testers. It’s good to see one of the many missing taskbar features returning to Windows 11, but there are still plenty more that Microsoft needs to address.
Microsoft already promised a larger than usual update to Windows 11 in February, and it...
The VergeAmazon Music signs an exclusive deal with How I Built This
Photo by Joshua Yospyn/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
Amazon Music has signed an exclusive deal with NPR to distribute Guy Raz’s _How I Built This_podcasta week before any other platform starting in March. The show will be produced twice weekly, an increase from its once-a-week cadence, and available early through Amazon Music and Wondery Plus. After that one-week window, the episodes will be released widely both on podcast platforms and radio stations. Wondery will also receive the exclusive ad sales rights and YouTube distribution rights, while NPR will maintain the radio distribution rights and underwriting.
In an internal memo to NPR staff obtained by The Verge, Anya Grundmann, SVP of programming, and John Lansing, CEO and president, write that the deal is the “first of its kind for...
The VergeAMD’s $35 billion Xilinx deal has gone through
AMD’s $35 billion acquisition of semiconductor company Xilinx is officially going through, with the deal — originally announced in October 2020 — finally meeting all the various regulatory approval it needs to happen. The transaction (which would be the largest in AMD’s history) is set to go through next week on February 14th, AMD announced.
The deal cleared its final hurdle — regulatory approval in China — on January 27th, setting the stage for AMD and Xilinx to finally close the acquisition.
Xilinx, while also a semiconductor company, specializes in a very different kind of chip than the CPUs and GPUs for computers and serves that AMD has built its brand on. Specifically, Xilinx produces programmable semiconductors, including FPGAs...
The VergeMicrosoft offers 60 percent discount to Google ‘legacy’ G Suite customers
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Google announced last month that it plans to make free “legacy” G Suite accounts pay for a subscription by May 1st. The move surprised a bunch of G Suite users that have been using the service with custom domains, and now, Microsoft is trying to entice G Suite users to pay for Microsoft 365 instead with a 60 percent discount offer.
“If you’re a small business that’s relied on G Suite legacy free edition, we couldn’t help but notice you might be in the market for a new solution,” says Jared Spataro, head of Microsoft 365. “We’ve got news for you: today, you can get a 60 percent discount on a 12-month Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard, or Business Premium subscription, along with the help you need to make the move.”
Microsoft...
The VergeNike is testing NFT trademark law by suing a sneaker reseller
StockX
Nike is suing an online marketplace for launching non-fungible tokens (NFTs) based on Nike shoes, testing the limits of crypto trademark law and what an NFT actually is.
StockX is a reseller for streetwear, bags, and sneakers, among other items. Unlike some marketplaces, it’s also an intermediary that takes in items and verifies their authenticity. StockX built on that system in January by launching NFTs linked with physical goods. The announcement promises these “Vault NFTs” can be redeemed for physical items but also traded instantly as digital goods.
The problem is that Nike shoes are extremely popular on StockX, and its Vault tokens are linked with the name and picture of their corresponding products. Nike alleges that the resulting...
The VergeHow to watch Elon Musk’s Starship presentation live
SpaceX stacking its Starship spacecraft on top of a Super Heavy booster at the company’s launch site in Boca Chica, Texas. | SpaceX
This evening, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will give a presentation about his company’s next generation Starship system — a massive new rocket that SpaceX has been developing over the last few years to take humans to the Moon and eventually Mars. It’ll be Musk’s first presentation on the vehicle since 2019 and his fifth one overall since 2016.
Starship is by far SpaceX’s most ambitious project to date. The design calls for a giant spaceship and rocket combo that would be more powerful than the Saturn V rocket that took humans to the Moon. Starship, the passenger part of the vehicle, is meant to launch to space on top of a gargantuan booster rocket known as the Super Heavy. Starship is supposed to be capable of landing on the surface of the Moon...
The VergeAndroid 13’s first developer preview includes more theming options
Material You’s dynamic app icons are being extended beyond Google’s apps. | Image: Google
Android 13’s first developer preview has just been released, and it offers a couple of interesting hints about Google’s focus for this year’s big mobile OS update. The new features include upgraded theming options and privacy features, new language controls, and, of course, plenty of back-end updates. These early previews are meant for developers rather than end users, so it’s best to hold off on upgrading until the software is in a more finished state.
After Android 12’s heavy focus on Material You customizable themes, Android 13 is expanding the dynamic app icons to all apps rather than just Google’s. The themed icons feature lets app icons take on a color tint that compliments your wallpaper so long as app developers supply a...
The VergeApple says it will make unknown AirTags alert you sooner
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Following multiple reports of stalking, Apple says it plans to improve AirTag safeguards against unwanted tracking later this year. Specifically, Apple says users will be alerted sooner when an unknown AirTag is detected traveling with them. It also it’ll make unknown AirTags easier to find by “adjusting the tone sequence,” which might make them sound louder, and by guiding people directly to a mystery AirTag using the ultrawideband chip available on newer iPhones.
“AirTag was designed to help people locate their personal belongings, not to track people or another person’s property, and we condemn in the strongest possible terms any malicious use of our products,” Apple writes in a press release. The company also acknowledges that it’s...
The VergeRussian fans of The Sims can’t play My Wedding Stories expansion pack because of anti-gay law
EA has decided it will not sell the newest The Sims 4 wedding expansion pack in Russia due to the country’s anti-LGBTQ “gay propaganda law.” The Sims 4: My Wedding Stories is a content pack that allows players to create their dream (or nightmare) wedding in The Sims 4. Marketing for My Wedding Stories centers on a lesbian couple, Camille and Dominique, as they plan their big day.
“As we moved through our development and brand storytelling process, we became aware that the way we wanted to tell Cam and Dom’s story would not be something we could freely share around the world,” EA said in its announcement. “We are steadfast in upholding that commitment by shining a light on and celebrating stories like Dom and Cam’s, so we have made the...
The VergeNew algorithm bill could force Facebook to change how the news feed works
Senator Klobuchar of Minnesota poses for a portrait in her office in Washington, D.C. on January 19th, 2022. | Photo by Leigh Vogel for The Verge
A new bipartisan bill, introduced on Wednesday, could mark Congress’ first step toward addressing algorithmic amplification of harmful content. The Social Media NUDGE Act, authored by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), would direct the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to study “content neutral” ways to add friction to content-sharing online.
The bill instructs researchers to identify a number of ways to slow down the spread of harmful content and misinformation, whether through asking users to read an article before sharing it (as Twitter has done) or other measures. The Federal Trade Commission would then codify the recommendations and mandate that social...