Google Drive’s new filters that make search easier are rolling out to everyone

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Search chips, a feature that’s supposed to make it easier to search for files in Google Drive, is becoming available to all Workspace users, including G Suite Basic and Business users. It was first released as a beta in November and should let you narrow down your search results by location, file type, date modified, people, tasks, and shared label.

Image by Google

Search chips appear right below the search bar after you conduct a search.

As Google demonstrates in the above GIF, you can use search chips by entering a keyword in Drive’s search bar as you normally would. Right below the search bar, you’ll see six different dropdown menus for search chips: Location, File Type, People, Last Modified, Title only,...

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Twitter is significantly expanding its autoblocking Safety Mode beta

The feature is still in beta but will be available to many more people. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter is significantly expanding the beta of its Safety Mode feature, the company announced Tuesday. Safety Mode, which initially rolled out in September, lets you temporarily autoblock accounts that send you harmful or abusive tweets.

Safety Mode was previously available to approximately 750 beta users, but it will be expanding to ~50 percent of people in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand, Twitter spokesperson Tatiana Britt tells The Verge.

Twitter is also introducing proactive Safety Mode prompts. “Since the initial rollout of the Safety Mode beta in September, we’ve learned that some people want help identifying unwelcome interactions,” Britt said. “For this reason, our technology will now proactively identify...

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Nvidia Shield TV gets bug fixes for last month’s buggy Android 11 update

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Today, Nvidia’s Shield TV got some software fixes with the rollout of Shield Experience Upgrade 9.0.1 (via 9to5Google), a much-needed patch to last month’s buggy 9.0 release based on Android 11. Nvidia posted release notes on its forum today that detail some more fixes and details in another post some known issues that still lurk in the update.

The Shield is one of the most-upgraded Android devices ever released

The biggest fix of the bunch resolves major Plex Media Server issues and the handling of file access permissions that changed as a part of the move to Android 11. This stable release follows about a month of the company trickling out smaller hotfix patches to brave users willing to subject their Shield TVs to beta releases.

But...

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The Overwatch League returns on May 5th

Photo courtesy Stewart Volland for Blizzard Entertainment.

In light of Activision Blizzard’s pending acquisition by Microsoft, flagging interest, sponsorship troubles, a global pandemic, uncertainty regarding Overwatch 2, and talent layoffs and departures, the Overwatch League has had a giant question mark hanging over its head. Today, in a community update, the League confirmed its fifth season is indeed happening, with an opening day set for May 5th.

The fifth season of the Overwatch League brings with it several monumental changes to gameplay. Matches will now be played with teams of five instead of six, with teams fielding one tank instead of the traditional two. The wildly unpopular Assault game mode will be replaced with a new mode called Push. Push is similar to payload-style game types....

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Billionaire Jared Isaacman talks origin of Polaris Program and how it could impact spaceflight

The Polaris Dawn crew (from L to R): Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, Jared Isaacman, and Sarah Gillis | Image: Polaris Program/John Kraus

Yesterday, billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacman announced his plans to fly to space again on another SpaceX mission. His next flight, targeting the end of the year, will take him even deeper in space than his last flight with the company. It will also be the first in a series of three human spaceflight missions he’s funding with SpaceX, called the Polaris Program.

The creator of Shift4 Payments, Isaacman is perhaps best known for funding an entire flight on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, which took him and three other private flyers on a three-day trip to Earth’s orbit. Called Inspiration4, the mission was meant to showcase how everyday people — not just NASA and government astronauts — can train and fly to space.

Isaacman...

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Put Doctor Strange and the Scarlet Witch on trial

Anyone who watched _WandaVision_could tell you how Wanda Maximoff became the villain of her own story, but in the latest trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the newly diademed Scarlet Witch steps back into the spotlight with a bit of a bone to pick about how her reputation in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been shifting as of late.

After years of Vision warning Wanda that the day would come when her fellow heroes would fear her, _Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness_appears poised to make good on that promise with a story making the case that Strange and the Scarlet Witch should be held accountable for their crimes against the natural magical order of things.

WandaVision’s finale made it seem like the...

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Disney has appointed a leader for its metaverse strategy

Disney’s getting serious about the metaverse. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Disney is appointing an executive to head up its metaverse plans, according to a memo CEO Bob Chapek sent to employees (via Reuters and CNBC). Mike White, who previously held the title of SVP of consumer experiences and platforms, will now be SVP of next generation storytelling and consumer experiences.

“For nearly 100 years, our company has defined and re-defined entertainment by leveraging technology to bring stories to life in deeper, more impactful ways,” Chapek said in the memo, which Disney shared with The Verge.

“Today, we have an opportunity to connect those universes and create an entirely new paradigm for how audiences experience and engage with our stories,” he continued. “This is the so-called metaverse, which I believe is...

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iFixit has a Steam Deck teardown — and will officially sell replacement parts from Valve

Image: Creative Electron via iFixit

Valve’s $400-and-up Steam Deck handheld is less than two weeks away from launch, but you can already see its guts spread across a table in no fewer than four teardown videos, including a new one published today by our friends at iFixit. What’s more, Valve has announced today that it’s making good on its promise to sell replacement parts for the Steam Deck so you can repair it yourself, and it has made iFixit the first authorized seller of parts for both the new Deck and the existing Valve Index VR headset.

Unfortunately, Valve isn’t yet saying which parts will be available — when I asked if the Deck’s screen and battery might be among them, Steam Deck designer Lawrence Yang told me it’s still working with iFixit to hammer the details...

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Discord recovers from brief outage

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Discord has recovered from a brief outage, after many users experienced connectivity issues. “We’re looking into issues with people sending messages, logging in, streaming videos, etc.,” reads a Discord status message, before the service was back online 30 minutes later.

The issues seem to affected a large amount of Discord’s 150 million monthly active users briefly, but The Verge is aware of multiple Discord users who were still able to participate in calls and messaging on the service during the 30-minute outage.

Connection should fully be restored now. Restart your client if you're still seeing issues.

Thanks for the patience (･ω･)b

— Discord (@discord) February 15, 2022

This is the second outage for Discord in a matter of weeks....

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How to learn a language online

The owl is cute, though. | Illustration by Alex Castro/The Verge

Last year, I decided to start learning Korean. It was entirely on a whim — I don’t live in Korea and have no reason I’d ever need to go there. Nonetheless, it’s been an incredibly rewarding experience, and I’ve gotten to a point where I can speak, read, and write comfortably much faster than I ever thought I could.

That’s entirely due to the wealth of apps and online services out there that I’ve been able to take advantage of. Without easy access to native speakers or in-person classes, much of my early journey involved scouring the internet for resources and trying every one I could find. Here, I’m going to briefly discuss my experience with each one and whether I’d recommend it for its price.

It’s important that I make a few caveats...

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NASA reveals first images from its new X-ray mission

Image: NASA

On Monday, NASA released the first science images from its new Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE. A look at the Cassiopeia A supernova — the bright remnants of a star that exploded in space in the 17th century — the image provides a first glimpse of what the space agency’s new X-ray mission will teach us about some of the most extreme events in the cosmos,like supernova explosions and cosmic collisions.

Launched in early December, IXPE is NASA’s first mission dedicated to studying X-ray polarization, or X-ray light whose vibrations are all aligned in a single direction. The explorer builds on the work of the Chandra X-ray Observatory by using polarization to help explain exactly where the X-ray light produced from space events...

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OpenSea launches verified customer support to fight Discord scammers

Illustration by Dale Crosby Close / The Verge

On Tuesday, OpenSea and NFT communications platform Metalink announced a new partnership aimed at preventing social engineering attacks carried out through Discord DMs. As_The Verge_ previously reported, some confidence tricksters have made millions of dollars by posing as customer service agents in OpenSea’s official Discord server and tricking NFT holders into sharing details that will let the scammers take control of their cryptocurrency wallets.

OpenSea hopes to mitigate these scams by using Metalink, which operates a “token gated” communications platform so that only users holding certain NFTs in their cryptocurrency wallets will be able to get access. When they do so, they’ll be connected with authenticated OpenSea support...

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Facebook rebrands News Feed after more than 15 years

The News Feed will now just be the Feed. | Image: Facebook

Meta is changing the name of Facebook’s News Feed, the primary part of the service that users scroll through to see what their friends and family have shared. Going forward, it’ll just be called the “Feed,” according to a tweet from the company on Tuesday. The “News Feed” name had been in place since the feature was first introduced more than 15 years ago.

In some ways, it’s a massive change — Facebook is one of the world’s most-used platforms, and the Feed is its main interface. On the other hand, it is “just a name change to better reflect the diverse content people see on their Feeds,” according to an email sent to The Verge by Facebook spokesperson Dami Oyefeso. The change “does not impact the app experience more broadly.”

Starting...

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Meta’s Facebook to pay $90 million to settle decade-old privacy lawsuit

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, agreed to pay $90 million to settle a 2012 lawsuit accusing the company of tracking users even after they logged out of their accounts.

The settlement was submitted for approval Monday evening in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. It is still awaiting final approval from the court. Plaintiffs affected by Facebook’s improper data tracking will receive portions of the $90 million. Meta will also be required to delete all of the data it wrongfully collected from those users.

“We’re glad to move past this issue”

Reached for comment, Meta spokesperson Drew Pusateri told The Verge, “Reaching a settlement in this case, which is more than a decade old, is in the best interest of our...

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Netflix is making a live-action BioShock movie

Details are light right now. | Image: Netflix

Netflix, 2K, and Take-Two Interactive announced Tuesday that they will be partnering to make a live-action film adaptation of BioShock_._While it’s a potentially exciting announcement, details beyond the existence of the movie are extremely light.

There’s no release date, and according to Variety, it doesn’t have a director or a cast yet. And Netflix’s website says the movie is an adaptation of the BioShock franchise, which leaves open the possibility that it could feature characters and locales from the underwater city of Rapture from BioShock 1 and 2, as well as the sky city of Columbia from BioShock Infinite.

However, Netflix did share a press image featuring a creepy Little Sister and an imposing Big Daddy, so it seems like a safe...

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Elon Musk’s brain implant startup Neuralink denies that researchers abused monkeys

A monkey in Neuralink’s in-house facility. | Neuralink

Elon Musk’s company Neuralink has denied claims that university researchers abused monkeys in experiments backed by the brain-computer interface startup. In a statement posted online, Neuralink responded to a federal complaint from the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), which alleged that Neuralink and its partners at the University of California, Davis conducted inhumane tests on animals.

A PCRM statement said that monkeys at UC Davis “had their brains mutilated in shoddy experiments and were left to suffer and die.” Neuralink, by contrast, says that the lab “did and continue to meet federally mandated standards,” although it has since moved the animals to an in-house facility.

The PCRM complaint, filed with...

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You can still get up to $250 credit on Samsung Galaxy S22 preorders

Samsung has some aggressive deals for Galaxy S22 early adopters. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event was already six days ago, and we’re now just 10 days away from the launch of the new Galaxy S22 phones. But today, just like any other, we’re talking deals.

Teeing off, those exact Samsung Galaxy S22 phones already have some juicy deals even before you get them in your grubby mitts. There are some choice bonuses to take advantage of if you preorder by February 24th, and while we’ve gone into some of the details and carrier promos, here’s the long-short you should know right now: if you preorder any Galaxy S22 phone, you’ll get a free storage upgrade and credit back from Samsung to use on accessories or future products (with an added $50 credit exclusively for Verge readers).

What that means is at the very...

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Master Chief’s chili recipe needs a day one patch

I spent hours making it exactly to spec.

I actually made the Chief’s chili, and it made me real sad

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Newegg promises ‘no questions asked’ returns on CPUs and motherboards after YouTube scandal

Newegg logo box (1020)

Newegg says it will now accept returns of open box CPUs and motherboards with “no questions asked,” according to a report by Windows Central. This comes after popular PC hardware review YouTube channel Gamer Nexus posted videos claiming Newegg knowingly sold them a defective open-box motherboard and then refused them a refund.

Customer Service Update pic.twitter.com/qxAYjDCdCU

— Newegg (@Newegg) February 14, 2022

In a post on Twitter, Newegg says that “a very small number of returns may not have been thoroughly inspected before being routed for returns, liquidations, or e-waste recycling and were accidentally resold as ‘open box’ merchandise. It also says these cases were “unintentional process errors and isolated incidents” and that...

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Sony announces open-style LinkBuds earbuds for $179.99

Image: Sony

Sony is taking another crack at the open-style earbuds market. Today, the company is introducing its new LinkBuds, priced at $179.99, and it takes just one look at them to realize that these aren’t your everyday true wireless earbuds. The LinkBuds have a unique style, which Sony refers to as an “open ring design.”

That big donut hole cut through the earbuds allows you to hear more ambient sound at all times. Unlike Samsung’s Galaxy Buds Live, Sony isn’t bothering to equip the LinkBuds with ineffective active noise cancellation. If you want actual ANC, the WF-1000XM4 earbuds are still your answer.

Image: Sony

The LinkBuds come in white or dark gray.

The LinkBuds don’t have silicone tips; they just sit in your...

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The LinkBuds are Sony’s strangest earbuds in years — and surprisingly good

They’re weird, refreshing, and fantastic at voice calls

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Windows 11’s first big update arrives with Android apps, taskbar changes, and more

Microsoft is releasing its first big update to Windows 11 today, and it includes a lot of new additions. A public preview of Android apps on Windows 11 will be available today in the US, alongside redesigned Notepad and Media Player apps. The first big Windows 11 update will also include a bunch of improvements to the taskbar.

The public preview of Android apps on Windows 11 will allow users to install apps from Amazon’s Appstore. That’s a limited number of Android apps compared to the broader Google Play store, but there are workarounds to get Google Play Store running on Windows 11 unofficially.

Image: Microsoft

The taskbar gets a new share this window feature.

The biggest changes in this Windows 11 update...

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Google is bringing Chrome OS to PCs and Macs

This is the Chrome OS Flex UI — it looks exactly like regular Chrome OS. | Image: Google

Google has announced early access to a new version of Chrome OS called Chrome OS Flex. The new version of Chrome OS, designed for businesses and schools, is designed to run on old PCs and Macs. The operating system can be installed “within minutes,” according to Google’s blog post.

Google told me that Chrome OS Flex will look and feel identical to Chrome OS on a Chromebook — it’s built from the same code base and follows the same “release cadence.” It did caveat that some features may be dependent on the hardware of the PC you’re using. In fact, it said this for every specific feature I asked about, including always-on Google Assistant and Android phone syncing. So, if you’re going to try this, keep an eye out.

This won’t be the first...

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The Verge and On Air Fest Announce Hot Pod Summit Lineup

Today, The Verge and On Air Fest announced the lineup for Hot Pod Summit, the invite-only conference for the people building the future of the audio industry. Hot Pod Summit will return to On Air Fest for a 5th year, kicking the festival off on February 24th at the Wythe Hotel in New York City for a day of conversations with the audio world’s biggest movers and shakers.

Hot Pod Summit is hosted by The Verge’s senior reporter Ashley Carman, who writes the Hot Pod newsletter. This year’s Hot Pod Summit will pick up where the industry left off in March 2020, with conversations on the burgeoning podcast subscription business, audiobooks, YouTube, and more, including:

• New money in audio: subscriptions, audiobooks, and IP : In just the past...

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DNA from rape kits used to identify crime suspects in San Francisco, investigation finds

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The San Francisco Police Department includes DNA collected from rape kits in the database it uses to identify crime suspects, District Attorney Chesa Boudin said on Monday. The practice likely is illegal under the California Constitution, Boudin told The Washington Post.

The district attorney’s office discovered the practice when reviewing the case of a woman arrested for property crime. She was identified as a suspect based on a DNA sample collected during a rape investigation in 2016. Searches that include genetic information from rape investigations are done regularly, the crime lab confirmed to Boudin.

Use of this type of data could violate the California Constitution, which requires property be returned to victims when it’s no...

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The EV boom is being fueled by underpaid, underfed cobalt miners

Illustration by Danica Novgorodoff / The Verge

Workers at a Tesla supplier say they can’t get enough food or water on the job

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Cooler Master’s Sneaker X PC case has a lot of sole

Would you put this on your desk?

For Cooler Master’s 30th anniversary, the company has announced several products — some zanier than others. I cannot continue another word without mentioning Sneaker X, which is literally a sneaker-shaped PC case. It builds off of the work from modder JMDF, who originally submitted the design at the brand’s Case Mod World Series 2020.

It’s tough to get a sense of the scale of the Sneaker X case from the images. It is, however, nowhere near as small as an actual shoe. This video from JMDF shows that — beyond being a feat of engineering and a grand homage to sneaker culture — it’s big. The design was inspired by some of the pricey sneakers from brands like Balenciaga, Nike, and Adidas.

As for what can fit inside, Cooler Master says that...

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Cyberpunk 2077’s next-gen update now available for PS5 and Xbox Series X / S

Cyberpunk 2077’s long-awaited update optimizing the game for the PS5 and Xbox Series X / S will be available today. Patch 1.5 is a major update that’s available on all platforms, with big changes to gameplay alongside next-gen improvements for the Xbox Series X / S and PS5.

The next-gen console improvements include ray tracing support, 4K resolution with dynamic scaling, faster loading times, and a variety of other visual and technical improvements. On the PS5, the update also includes support for the adaptive triggers, haptic feedback, and even the speakers on the DualSense controller.

There will be performance modes and ray-tracing modes on both the Xbox Series X and PS5. Performance mode offers 60fps at 4K resolution, whereas...

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The Verge’s favorite audio gear for 2022

Photo by Alix Diaconis / The Verge

It’s been about a year since we first asked the staff of The Verge to tell us about some of their favorite audio gear. As we said in last year’s piece, the people here spend a lot of time listening to a variety of music, podcasts, and other interesting sounds — and that hasn’t changed. Many of us have used music to get through the ups and downs of the past year, and our audio devices have made it possible not only to lose ourselves in our tunes but to communicate with remote friends and relatives and to get work done via Zoom, Slack, and other apps.

But that isn’t to say that we have the same tastes in music or tech. The Verge is an assembly of distinct personalities, and our tastes in music — and the tech we use to listen to that music...

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Spotify’s COVID problems are bigger than Joe Rogan

Photo by Michele Doying / The Verge

Wow, we’re already mid-way through February, and Hot Pod Summit is next week. It’s been a marathon over here, not including my Love Is Blind binge time. Today, we have various stories all connected around the idea of money — making and spending it. Let’s get right to it.

This week’s Rogan check-in

Though Hurricane Rogan has mostly passed over, related stories continue to trickle out. The first comes from The Guardian, which reports that multiple Spotify playlists pushed listeners to anti-vaccine music after they had already listened to similar content. The songs “encourage people not to get vaccinated and say those who do are ‘slaves,’ ‘sheep,’ and victims of Satan,” the publication says. “Others call for an uprising, urging listeners to...

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