Daft Punk is streaming a 1997 concert on Twitch, and this may be your only chance to see it

Image: Daft Punk on Twitter

Daft Punk may have announced their split exactly one year ago today, but the famous electronic music duo made a surprise reappearance on the internet Tuesday and, as of this writing, are streaming footage from a 1997 concert on Twitch. (Warning: the footage features flashing lights.) If you want to watch the show, which features the duo before they wore their iconic metal helmets, you should tune in right now because the concert will only air once, Pitchfork reports. (It’s unclear if it will be available on-demand later.)

The stream features footage from a concert Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter, the two people behind Daft Punk, played at a Los Angeles nightclub near the release of the band’s debut Homework album,...

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Amazon’s Astro robot has been spotted in the wild... bringing people beer

Amazon’s new home robot Astro has been spotted in the wild. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Photos and videos of Amazon’s home robot Astro in the real world have begun to emerge as early adopters of the invite-only smart home gadget start to play around with their new bot.

Surprisingly, despite the device starting to ship last November, only a couple of videos have emerged so far. Bob Rekieta uploaded this video of his Astro trundling off after being commanded to go to the den with a beer onboard (presumably that someone put there, as this thing does not have hands).

Screenshot from YouTube video by Bob Rekieta

Astro brings Celeste a beer.

Then Astro is told to “find Celeste,” and the robot tilts its screen disarmingly while looking around with its circular “eyes.” It executes the command, finding...

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Asustor network storage devices are being hit by a nasty ransomware attack

The message that appears on affected Asustor NAS devices. | Image: Reddit user Patrick12289

Owners of various Asustor Network Attached Storage (NAS) device models took to Reddit and the company’s official forum today, alerting others of an active ransomware attack holding hostage their media libraries and other stored data (via Windows Central and Tom’s Hardware). At first, it was suspected that users using Asustor’s EZConnect configuration feature were vulnerable, but according to accounts from some affected Reddit users, they had the service turned off on their NAS.

The r/asustor community is keeping track of the available information here, and after cross-referencing the services on affected devices, suspect Plex as one of the possible attack vectors.

Asustor is actively investigating the ransomware attack, known as...

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Here are the best AirPods deals you can get right now

Apple’s AirPods Pro wireless earbuds are a go-to pick that’s often on sale. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

If you know where to look, there are typically some great discounts available on Apple’s popular — yet oftentimes expensive — AirPods. Since Apple launched the third-gen AirPods in October and unveiled its new lineup, we’ve seen the starting price of the second-gen, entry-level model drop from $159 to $129. What’s more, we’ve seen many retailers starting to heavily discount the second-gen AirPods as well as the more expensive AirPods Pro and Max, which offer noise cancellation and better sound quality than the standard model. We’ve even recently seen some significant discounts on the third-gen model, despite how recently they launched.

Here, we’ll run through the best deals available on each model, including the entry-level AirPods, the...

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How a high-tech twist on a 19th-century process could clean up steel and cement making

MAY 14, 2021: A blast furnace attendant at the EVRAZ ZSMK steel mill.  | Photo by Sergei Bobylev\TASS via Getty Images

Greenhouse gas emissions need to virtually disappear within the next few decades to avoid the worst effects of climate change, and the most difficult emissions to erase could come from industries like steel and cement set to play a big role in new, green infrastructure. Wind turbines, for example, are made mostly of steel — but, at least until now, it’s been almost unheard ofto make that steel using renewable energy.

That could start to change if a startup developing a “heat battery” can successfully move from the lab to the real world. It’s what Oakland, California-based Rondo Energy aims to do with $22 million in new funding from Bill Gates’ climate investment fund, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and utility-backed investment firm...

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You can now make cross-platform parties in Fall Guys

Play_Fall Guys_with friends on PC or PlayStation. | Image: Mediatonic

_Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout_has significantly expanded its crossplay functionality between PlayStation and PC, developer Mediatonic (which is owned by Epic Games) announced on Tuesday. As part of the game’s season 6 mid-season update, you can now make cross-platform parties in “any of our applicable playlists in Fall Guys—from Squads, to Duos, to Main Show and beyond,” Mediatonic said in a blog post.

To party up with your friends, you have to link your Epic Account to Fall Guys. If you haven’t done that yet, Mediatonic says you’ll be prompted to do so when you launch the game.

The feature builds on the previously more limited crossplay functionality in the game. Before now, players had to make custom lobbies to play with friends on...

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Netflix is testing its curated stream of comedy clips on TVs

Netflix is testing Fast Laughs on TVs in select English-speaking countries. | Image by Netflix

Netflix is testing Fast Laughs, a stream of comedy clips hand-picked by Netflix, on its TV app. The feature lets you sift through a collection of funny short videos — each about 30 seconds or longer — from shows and movies on Netflix, with the goal of introducing you to new content or helping you decide on what to watch.

Image by Netflix

You can advance to the next clip by selecting the rightmost arrow.

Once you’ve opted into the feature (and if you’re part of the test), you can access Fast Laughs by scrolling down on the Netflix homepage until you reach the Fast Laughs row. From there, you can click into the feature, where full-screen clips from Army of the Dead, Big Mouth, Jerry Seinfeld’s stand-up special,...

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Google acknowledges Wi-Fi issues in ‘very small number’ of Pixel 6 phones, fix coming in March

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Google says a fix is on the way for Pixel 6 owners who are dealing with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity issues after installing a security patch earlier this month, as reported by 9to5Google. In response to a user on Reddit, Google acknowledges the problem and says it’s bundling a fix in a March software update.

“A software fix that will be available in the next Google Pixel Update”

“After some investigation, we identified the root cause and determined that it impacts a very small number of devices,” Google says. “Of course, we realize this is a poor experience and immediately developed a software fix that will be available in the next Google Pixel Update, rolling out in March.”

Google also says to contact its support team “to explore...

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk accuses the SEC of ‘leaking’ information

Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

Elon Musk is escalating his war of words with the Securities and Exchange Commission, accusing the agency of “leaking” information from a federal investigation in retaliation against him for his public criticisms.

The accusation is contained in a new letter from Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro to US District Judge Alison Nathan, who oversaw the settlement between Musk and the SEC over his 2018 “funding secured” tweet that got him charged with securities fraud. It was the third letter in the past two weeks in a back-and-forth between Musk and the US government that shows little sign of abating.

the third letter in the past two weeks

In the most recent letter, Musk accuses the SEC of leaking information regarding a federal probe into his...

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Proctorio subpoenas digital rights group in legal spat with critical student

Photo by Friso Gentsch/picture alliance via Getty Images

The controversial proctoring platform Proctorio has filed a broad subpoena against the prominent digital rights nonprofit Fight for the Future as part of its legal battle with Miami University student Erik Johnson, in what the group describes as an effort to silence critics through legal maneuvering.

The fight between Johnson and the company began in September of 2020 when the student published a lengthy Twitter thread criticizing Proctorio’s practices, including excerpts of the platform’s source code that he’d posted on PasteBin. Proctorio filed a copyright takedown notice. Three of the tweets were removed but later reinstated. The Electronic Frontier Foundation then sued Proctorio on Johnson’s behalf, arguing that the takedown had...

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The IRS will use Login.gov in the future, but for this tax season, video interviews are here to stay

Two weeks after dropping a controversial facial recognition plan, the IRS has given new details about how it plans to replace the system. In a statement on Monday, the agency confirmed that all users of the IRS.gov website will be able to opt out of biometric data collection, offering video interviews as an alternative for this year’s filers and promising a shift to the government-run authentication system Login.gov service in the future.

“[A] new option in the agency’s authentication system is now available for taxpayers to sign up for IRS online accounts without the use of any biometric data, including facial recognition,” the statement said. “This is consistent with the IRS’s commitment earlier this month to transition away from the...

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China casts doubt on origin of rocket debris about to slam into the Moon

Part of a Chinese Long March 3C, shown here, is thought to be the piece of debris about to slam into the Moon in March. But China is casting doubt on that claim. | Image: STR/AFP via Getty Images

China claims that a piece of distant space debris that’s about to slam into the Moon does not stem from one of the nation’s lunar missions, as astronomers tracking the object believe. However, it’s possible that China may have mixed up which mission the debris originally came from, as most evidence points to it being an old Chinese rocket.

This doomed space object has received quite a lot of attention over the last few weeks, ever since an astronomer and space tracker by the name of Bill Gray first predicted that it would slam into the Moon on March 4th after years of orbiting the Earth. At first, Gray thought the object was a leftover chunk of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched a satellite for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric...

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Bethesda’s launcher is going away, but you’ll be able to get your games again on Steam for free

It will be going away this year. | Image: Bethesda Softworks

Bethesda is retiring its Bethesda.net Launcher this year and will let people move their games and Wallet to Steam starting in early April, the company announced Tuesday. You’ll be able to access and play games on the Bethesda launcher until May.

Any game you own on Bethesda’s launcher will be available for free on Steam. When you migrate to Steam, “you will not lose anything from your Bethesda.net account,” Bethesda says. “Many games will also have their saves migrated, with a few requiring some manual transfers. For games that require it, you will still use your Bethesda.net login to sign in to play.”

However, Bethesda is only letting you migrate what’s on your Bethesda Launcher to Steam — you can’t use the switch as an opportunity to...

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The Xbox Series X is available at Best Buy right now for Totaltech subscribers

Microsoft’s flagship Xbox Series X supports 4K gaming and up to 120 frames per second. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

If you’ve had no luck nabbing the Xbox Series X, today may be your lucky day. Best Buy has the coveted next-gen console in stock for its usual price of $499.99, though, the drop is exclusive to paying Totaltech subscribers. Totaltech is Best Buy’s premium membership, one that combines tech support, product protection, and access to the occasional exclusive console restock for $199.99 per year. It’s a pricey service, though if you feel it’s worth your money, it should improve your chances of landing a console.

Make sure you’ve logged into your account ahead of time and with a paying subscription to Totaltech (sorry, no free trials). Double-check that your billing and shipping information is correct as well, and stay persistent. To get in...

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Audi is bringing 5G connectivity to its vehicles in 2024

Photo by Phil Esposito / The Verge

Audi of America and Verizon are teaming up to add 5G connectivity to the automaker’s lineup by 2024, the companies announced. The improved connectivity will mean better software performance, enhanced navigation, and faster music and video streaming capabilities.

It’s the latest deal to bring faster network speeds to new model vehicles with more advanced software needs than analog cars of the past. It also comes as car companies explore new technologies, such as vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication, that could enhance safety and drive quality in the future.

Audi and Verizon say the plan is to bring 5G Ultra Wideband technology to the automaker’s vehicle lineup, starting with model year 2024. The improved connectivity will pave the...

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Meta launches Reels in Facebook globally, with more ads and editing features

Meta is launching its TikTok-clone Reels worldwide on Facebook, making the feature available through the service’s iOS and Android apps in more than 150 countries.

In addition to expanding access to Reels, the social media conglomerate is adding new editing features to the Facebook version of the platform and expanding advertising options. Most of these features are already available on Facebook Reels in the US and elsewhere and in Instagram Reels in the US and more than 50 countries.

Facebook Reels users will be able to “remix” others’ videos (duet them) and upload clips up to 60 seconds in length, just as with Instagram Reels. They’ll also be able to save drafts, and Meta will be adding new video clipping tools in the coming months...

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Peloton is down, so you might have to exercise alone

Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

If you were hoping to use the Slack outage to sneak in a Peloton ride, there’s bad news: the popular connected fitness company is also “currently investigating an issue with Peloton services.”

On Peloton’s status page, it appears that users cannot access logins, live classes, on-demand classes, leaderboards, or activate services on Peloton bikes and treadmills. On Twitter, the company said this may also impact users’ ability to access Peloton’s websites. However, as of this writing, the only Peloton site suffering a major outage is the member profile/workout history page. According to DownDetector, people began reporting Peloton outages at around 10AM ET.

While the outage isn’t necessarily Peloton’s fault, it does highlight one of the...

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Can the law keep up with crypto?

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge | Photo by MDJ Photography

I’m going to let you in on a Decoder secret: at the end of last year, I tasked our producers with finding better ways for us to cover crypto and Web3 on Decoder. I don’t think it’s any secret that I’m fairly skeptical of crypto, but I want to come by that skepticism honestly — and on the flip side, I want to make sure to see its opportunities and benefits clearly. We’ve already done episodes on Bitcoin and DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), and we’re going to do more episodes as the year goes on.

A lot of Web3 ideas seem to run directly into the existing legal system in complicated and sometimes very funny ways. The NFT world seems to have an impressionistic understanding of copyright law. DAOs, well, they aren’t actually...

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Gigabyte’s 48-inch OLED TV is $800 at Newegg after a rebate

If you’re on the hunt for a budget-friendly OLED TV, one of the best values at this moment is Gigabyte’s 48-inch Aorus FO48U OLED. It costs $800 at Newegg (via Slickdeals), but two steps are required to get this price. First off, enter the code FEB4SALE at the checkout page to knock $200 off the cost. You’ll pay $999.99 today. But make sure you fill out the mail-in rebate before March 29th, 2022, which will then take an additional $200 off (the rebate will come in the form of a prepaid card).

While Gigabyte certainly doesn’t have the same (or, frankly, any) brand cache in the home entertainment space as LG, this model packs in many of the same specs as the coveted C1 OLED for a few hundred dollars less. It has two HDMI 2.1 ports that...

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Slack is down

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Slack is experiencing some issues, making it difficult for users to send and receive messages, as well as access the platform altogether. Across social media, users have complained that trying to access work-related chatrooms meets long load times, the inability to view threads, and issues when trying to send a message to colleagues.

Slack’s status page currently acknowledges the platform “is not loading for some users.” The page says problems started around 9:25AM ET. It seems the issue is widespread, with a numberofusers complaining on Twitter and a huge spike in issues noted on Down Detector.

We’re investigating the issue where Slack is not loading for some users. We’re looking into the cause and will provide more information as...

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Crestron puts the power of the sun in its smart home

Crestron is launching a line of connected in-ceiling LED light fixtures that can pair with a solar sensor. | Image: Crestron

The pro-install home automation company Crestron Home is adding circadian rhythm lighting to its high-end residential platform. This week the company announced its new full-color, tunable downlight LED light fixtures with circadian rhythm capabilities will be available in August. Smart lighting isn’t a new feature for home automation, but lighting that automatically adjusts throughout the day in tandem with the natural changes of the sun is taking it up a notch.

Circadian lighting is an option with some off-the-shelf smart lighting, such as Philips Hue light bulbs working with Apple HomeKit’s Adaptive Lighting. Crestron’s competitors in the pro-install space, including Savant and Control4, also offer various wellness-lighting-focused...

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Spotify’s Car Thing goes on general sale for $90

Car Thing being used alongside a car’s infotainment system. | Image: Spotify

Spotify’s Car Thing, the dashboard accessory that controls Spotify on your phone, is now widely available to buy in the US, the company announced today. The accessory was first made available free of charge as part of an invite-only limited release last April, and in October Spotify opened up a waitlist for people to get their hands on the device. Now, Car Thing is going on general sale for $89.99 — a $10 increase over the advertised price in October.

Car Thing is designed to offer a more convenient way to control Spotify while driving. It doesn’t have a speaker, and it doesn’t have its own data connection, so it’s essentially a Spotify remote that can output to your car’s speakers. It offers a combination of physical controls, a...

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Sony finally reveals the PlayStation VR2’s design

Sony has finally revealed the design of its next-generation PlayStation VR2 headset, after it announced it in February 2021, showed off the controllers last March, and confirmed it would be called PlayStation VR2 in January.

The new design features a similar white-and-black color scheme as the PlayStation 5 (the company says the two products were designed with each other in mind), and while it features the same broad design as the original PS VR, the new model also brings a few enhancements, including a lens adjustment dial, a new vent design, and a slight reduction in weight. And similar to the PlayStation 5 and its DualSense controller, the PS VR2 has tiny textured PlayStation icons hidden on the front and back bands of the headset.

I...

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Startup’s planned 5G Blackberry revival is officially dead

A close up of 2015’s Blackberry Priv. | Image: The Verge

OnwardMobility, the startup hoping to revive Blackberry phones with a 5G keyboard-equipped Android device, is ending its work on the phone and shutting down as a company. “It is with great sadness that we announce that OnwardMobility will be shutting down, and we will no longer be proceeding with the development of an ultra-secure smartphone with a physical keyboard,” the company wrote in a statement on its website.

The announcement doesn’t come as much of a surprise given reports that OnwardMobility’s 5G Blackberry had been cancelled earlier this month. But at the time there was speculation that the company might live on and attempt to produce a 5G keyboard-equipped Android phone without the Blackberry name. Now, however, we know it’s...

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Virgin Hyperloop switches focus from passengers to cargo as it lays off half its staff

An experimental Virgin Hyperloop passenger transport pod on display in Washington, DC in 2021. | Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Virgin Hyperloop has laid off almost half its staff as the company switches its focus from transporting passengers to shifting freight. Cuts totaling 111 jobs were confirmed by Virgin Hyperloop to The Financial Times, which spoke to former employees at the company. They described the scale of the redundancies as “definitely not expected.”

The US-based Virgin Hyperloop is one of the leading firms developing the eponymous technology — an updated version of a centuries-old idea to reduce the energy demands of trains by placing them in vacuum-sealed tubes where air resistance is minimal. The concept was resurrected in 2013 when Elon Musk published a whitepaper on the subject, incorporating magnetic levitation used by bullet trains and...

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Microsoft is testing a Windows 11 desktop watermark for unsupported hardware

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Microsoft is currently experimenting with two new methods to warn Windows 11 users that they have installed the operating system on unsupported hardware. In the latest test builds of Windows 11, a new watermark has appeared on the desktop wallpaper, alongside a similar warning in the landing page of the settings app.

If the test build is running on unsupported hardware, the desktop watermark simply states “system requirements not met,” and appears alongside the build number that is only shown on evaluation or pre-release versions of Windows. It’s similar, but less prominent, to the semi-transparent watermark that appears in Windows if you haven’t activated the OS. Twitter user Albacore first spotted the settings warning earlier this...

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Panasonic’s Lumix GH6 has the highest-resolution Micro Four Thirds sensor ever

Panasonic has announced its latest video-focused Micro Four Thirds camera, the Lumix GH6, after a delay. The new numbered entry in the popular GH line was teased almost a year ago alongside the launch of the GH5 Mark II; Panasonic confirmed at the time that it would shoot up to 10-bit 4:2:0 4K at 120fps, 10-bit 4:2:2 4K at 60fps, and 10-bit 5.7K at 60fps.

Now the camera has been revealed in full, and while it looks similar to its predecessor and features the same 3-inch articulating screen, the internals are all new. There’s a new 25.2-megapixel Micro Four Thirds sensor and a new Venus Engine image processor, which together let you shoot photos at 14 frames per second with autofocus locked. It’s the highest resolution sensor ever found...

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OnePlus 10 Pro snaps in half in durability test

The OnePlus 10 Pro is out in China, and while it has some flagship specs, including a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor and a 5,000mAh battery, it turns out it might not be the most durable phone on the market. YouTuber Zack Nelson, creator of the popular JerryRigEverything channel, put the OnePlus 10 Pro through his usual durability test, and when he pushed on the middle of the phone to try and bend it, it snapped nearly in half.

See for yourself — the bend test for the portion of the video starts at 6:57 (and that’s where the embedded video below should begin).

When Nelson first pushes on the OnePlus 10 Pro, the back glass begins to crack, and many of the cracks appear under the phone’s stovetop-like camera bump. When he pushes again,...

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Amazon’s ‘Play on Luna’ button on Twitch is more potential than practical

Amazon is tying two of its big gaming efforts, the Twitch streaming platform and its Luna cloud gaming service, a bit closer together. If you’re looking at a game’s page on Twitch and that game is available on Luna, you might now see a “Play on Luna” button that takes you to the title on the cloud gaming service (via 9to5Google).

While the button could be a handy way to hop directly into an interesting game you found on Twitch, there are still a lot of limitations to Luna that make the process of just jumping in and playing a game harder than it should be.

Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

We need more people playing_Sonic Mania_on Twitch.

First of all, to see the button at all, it appears you need to be...

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Instagram is reportedly removing shorter daily time limit options from its app

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Instagram is discontinuing some app time limit options and encouraging users to update their settings, according to a report from TechCrunch. Originally, users were able to select a time limit as low as five minutes a day, while the new options begin at 30 minutes and go up to three hours.

In screenshots sent to TechCrunch by an Instagram user who had previously set a 10-minute daily limit, a popup now appears at the top of their feed urging them to set a new daily limit value in accordance with an app update. Though the popup says the user can keep their existing limit if they want, clicking the edit button directs them to select a preset option, the lowest of which is 30 minutes. An additional popup on the activity page in the app says...

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