Apple’s working on a new Metropolis series from Sam Esmail

UFA

Just in time for the US copyright on Fritz Lang’s Metropolisto expire this December, Apple’s gearing up to produce a new streaming series inspired by the original 1927 classic.

Today, Apple announced that it’s brought on Mr. Robotcreator Sam Esmail to write, direct, executive produce, and showrun a new _Metropolis_show for Apple TV plus as part of Esmail’s overall deal with Universal Content Productions. Word of a new _Metropolis_first broke back in 2016 when it was not yet clear which network or streamer might want to move ahead with the adaptation.

In Lang’s original _Metropolis —_adapted from author Thea von Harbou’s novel of the same name — a futuristic and highly stratified megacity becomes the epicenter of a revolution when Freder,...

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Here are the best Apple Watch deals right now

Apple’s latest Apple Watch, the Series 7, currently starts at $349 instead of $399. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Thinking about picking up a new Apple Watch? It might be tempting to order one of the Series 7 models, but new hardware always comes at a premium. Apple’s latest wearable offers a slightly larger display and some improvements to durability but is largely the same Apple Watch we’re familiar with.

Thankfully, each Apple Watch model offers ample functionality and has seen its fair share of discounts over the last year. So which ones should you consider if you’re in the market for Apple’s popular smartwatch while trying to shop smarter?

There are currently four Apple Watch models to choose from, all of which support watchOS 8. The highest-end is the Apple Watch Series 7, which starts at $399. Last year's model, the Series 6, has received a...

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Android 101: how to organize your homescreen

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

If you’ve had an Android phone for any length of time, it’s easy to get used to living with, well, chaos. If you’re anything like me, you’re constantly adding new apps, deciding they’re okay but not great, adding another, and so on. Then, a few months later, as you’re scrolling through your app drawer, you’re surprised to see several apps that you forgot about and perhaps don’t even remember what they’re used for.

In a very short time, it can become a mess. And if you’re really an app enthusiast, it can start taking up more space than you can spare. (Here, we can take as written the obligatory KonMari reference.)

There are essentially two steps to making sense of all of those Android apps: find a way to organize them (and there are a...

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Apple halts product sales in Russia

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple has paused sales of its physical products in Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, according to a statement from the company. This is Apple’s latest step after it imposed limitations for Apple Pay in Russia in accordance with sanctions, and it pulled some Russian news apps from the App Store outside of the country.

In its statement, which you can read in full below, Apple says that it “stopped all exports into our sales channel in the country” last week in response to the violence. The company says that it will “continue to evaluate the situation” and that it’s communicating with the governments of affected countries.

A Ukrainian official called on Tim Cook to cut Russia off last week

Last week, Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister...

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Chromebooks are about to get better stylus options for drawing

HP’s Chromebook x2 11 supported wireless charging of its stylus in a similar way to how USI 2.0 stylii will work. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

The Universal Stylus Initiative (USI) announced this week that it’s established a new USI 2.0 open stylus standard, which includes new features that will make way for better writing experiences on Chromebooks.

A big new feature for USI 2.0 is wireless charging that’s compatible with the newest NFC spec, capable of 1-watt charging from compatible smartphones and other devices. “The simplicity and ease of use of wireless charging means that consumer adoption will be rapid,” said Mike McCamon, executive director of NFC Forum. NFC charging within the USI 2.0 standard means more devices can host wireless charging for attached styli, like how the Apple Pencil 2 charges against an iPad.

USI technology is available on many Chromebook devices...

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The Steam Deck just launched, but a few owners are already reporting stick drift

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

The first batch of Steam Decks is starting to arrive to the lucky few who could order them on Friday, but a handful of the handheld gaming PCs already appear to be showing signs of joystick drift.

Joystick drift is an issue that causes your character or cursor in a game to continue moving even when you aren’t actually pushing the joystick in a direction. It’s a problem many have experienced with the Nintendo Switch’s Joy-Con controllers. While Nintendo itself has suggested the issue will never be fully addressed because Joy-Cons will wear down over time, it does repair drifting Joy-Con controllers for free. Drift doesn’t just appear on Joy-Cons, though; some have reported drift issues with the PS5’s DualSense controllers, and now it...

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Uninvited generational trauma comes knocking in Umma’s first trailer

Amanda’s Umma coming back to haunt her. | Sony

In Sony’s upcoming supernatural horror thriller _Umma_from director Iris K. Shim, the simple, quiet lives of a beekeeper and her teenage daughter are upended by the unexpected arrival of the woman’s mother — not as a living, breathing person, but as an urn full of remains following her cremation.

Though Amanda (Sandra Oh) is clearly shaken by the news of her mother’s death in Umma’s first trailer, her daughter (Fivel Stewart) can’t help but wonder why she’d never been properly introduced to her maternal grandmother. Amanda’s loath to tell her why, specifically, she’s worked so hard to keep her daughter seemingly cut off from other people out in the wilderness and somewhat in the dark about their family in South Korea. But after Amanda...

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You can now play Valve’s free 30-minute Portal spinoff, even if you don’t have a Steam Deck

Did Valve just gift us a new _Portal_game? Not exactly. But I can confirm that Aperture Desk Job, a free gamelet designed to show off the Steam Deck’s controls, is worth checking out if you’re a huge Portal fan like me. It’s quick, cute, reveals the answer to one of Portal 2’s biggest unanswered questions, and you can download and play it right now for free even if you never plan to touch a Steam Deck.

Not only does the 30-minute, 3.1GB experience work on a standard Windows PC (as long as you’ve got a gamepad; almost any gamepad will do), but you won’t have to jump through hoops to make it run properly. It supports desktop resolutions, high refresh rate monitors, windowed modes, and comes with a readymade control scheme for gamepads like...

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Jeep’s first electric SUV is coming in 2023

Jeep, the iconic American brand owned by Stellantis, revealed the first images of its upcoming electric SUV. The company isn’t sharing any other details or even the vehicle’s name, but it did confirm that the new EV will launch in 2023.

Jeep has been slower to embrace electrification as compared to many of its rivals. The automaker has released plug-in hybrid versions of its Wrangler and Grand Cherokee SUVs and plans an off-roading version of the Grand Cherokee, the Trailhawk, which also comes with a hybrid motor.

But the unnamed SUV coming out next year will be Jeep’s first purely battery-electric vehicle. The automaker recently announced that it would release “zero-emission” versions of all of its vehicles by 2025, along with...

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Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen to join Jill Biden at State of the Union address

Frances Haugen will join the first lady at Tuesday’s State of the Union address | Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

The White House announced Tuesday that Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen will be among the guests of first lady Jill Biden at President Biden’s first official State of the Union address.

Haugen, a former product manager in Facebook’s civic integrity group, leaked a trove of internal Facebook documents to The Wall Street Journal last year that showed widespread problems within the company.She testified before Congress that Facebook “repeatedly” misled the public about “what its own research reveals about the safety of children and the efficacy of its artificial intelligence systems as a role in spreading divisive and extreme messages.”

The White House release calls Haugen a “specialist in algorithmic product management” and an...

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New and returning customers can get 80 percent off Paramount Plus for three months

Good news: in a rare discount, Paramount Plus is celebrating its first birthday by offering an 80 percent discount to new and returning customers.

Through March 7th, eligible subscribers can use the code BIRTHDAYtoreceive three months of the Essential Plan for $1 instead of $4.99 per month when they purchase their subscription from the company’s site. These customers can also get three months of the Premium Plan for $2 instead of $9.99 per month as well.

Both plans offer access to thousands of episodes and films from Paramount Pictures, CBS, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, MTV, and more, as well as previous and new originals like Star Trek: Discovery and _PAW Patrol: The Movie._However, unlike the cheaper subscription, the Premium Plan...

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MediaTek beats out Qualcomm to become the new Android processor king in the US

MediaTek now has the biggest market share of any chipmaker for Android phones in the United States, beating out Qualcomm, which has long held the title.

The news comes from IDC’s quarterly mobile phone sales tracker, which reports as of Q4 2021 that MediaTek chips now account for 51 percent of all Android phones in the United States, compared to 47 percent for Qualcomm, as spotted by PCMag. Those numbers are a stark inversion from the previous quarter, where MediaTek had a 41 percent market share to Qualcomm’s 56 percent.

MediaTek isn’t as much of a household name for smartphone processors as Qualcomm (which has long been the dominant force for Android phones in the US, especially for high-end flagships). But the company has been...

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Turtle Beach’s new wireless headset works on PlayStation, Xbox, and more

The Stealth 600 Gen 2 Max will arrive in black, white camo, or red. | Turtle Beach

Turtle Beach has announced the Stealth 600 Gen 2 Max, a new $129.99 wireless headset that’s one of a few models out there that can work with Xbox and a myriad of other platforms. Typically, you get compatibility with Xbox or with other platforms like PlayStation, PC, and the Nintendo Switch’s dock, but not both. This headset’s included USB-A audio transmitter has a switch that can toggle wireless modes, ensuring compatibility no matter which system you’re on. It’s worth noting that SteelSeries offered a similar feature with its Arctis 1 Wireless headset back in early 2020 (albeit with a fancier USB-C dongle), but it’s still generally difficult to find a headset that can accomplish this feat.

Outside of this functionality, the ins and...

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Sony’s 2021 Bravia XR TVs are finally getting a promised VRR software update

The much-anticipated feature is rolling out to TVs like the X90J. | Image: Sony

Sony reportedly started rolling out an update to enable variable refresh rate on its 2021 TVs with the Bravia XR processor almost a year after promising that the feature was coming, according to HDTVTest’s Vincent Teoh and posts on an owners’ forum. Variable refresh rate, or VRR, essentially lets your TV smooth out any stutters or frame rate drops that may happen while gaming, without the annoying screen artifacts or slight input lag that can come with other solutions.

Somewhat ironically, Sony’s own PlayStation 5 doesn’t support VRR yet — the company promised it would add the feature via a software update, but so far there haven’t been any signs of it. The Xbox Series X and S, however, do support it, as will any gaming PC with a...

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Ghostwire: Tokyo has a free visual novel, and you can play it right now

Ahead of its release on March 25th, Ghostwire: Tokyo is getting a free visual novel, available now on PlayStation. Ghostwire: Tokyo - Prelude, will introduce players to KK, the deuteragonist of Ghostwire, and his squad of spirit detectives as they investigate paranormal disturbances throughout Tokyo. Players will be able to make different choices throughout the visual novel to unravel the story of Ghostwire’s world and the spirits who haunt it.

_Ghostwire: Tokyo_is the latest game from The Evil Within developer Tango Gameworks. Its slick and extremely unsettling gameplay trailer showcases a world overrun by apparitions that KK must banish with the help of Akito, the human KK possess and imbues with supernatural ghost-killing power.

G...

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Instagram adds auto-generated captions to videos

Instagram has added auto-generated captions to videos. | Image: Instagram

Instagram head Adam Mosseri said Tuesday the company is adding auto-generated captions to the videos in your feed. He acknowledged the captions have been “a long time coming” — rival TikTok introduced auto-captions last April — and said the captions will be on by default for creators on the platform.

It’s a long time coming, but we’re excited to share a new tool that empowers those in the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities.

Videos on Instagram will now have auto-generated captions, where you have the option to turn them off or on. pic.twitter.com/DNyzcdiPSU

— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) March 1, 2022

Prior to Tuesday’s announcement, creators had to manually add captions to their videos using time-consuming workarounds, but the change...

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Namecheap ends service for Russian customers due to government’s ‘war crimes’

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Domain registrar and hosting provider Namecheap is terminating service provision for customers based in Russia in the face of what it describes as “war crimes” committed in Ukraine.

An email sent Monday from Namecheap to customers, and shared online by various customers of the company, reads:

“Unfortunately, due to the Russian regime’s war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine, we will no longer be providing services to users registered in Russia. While we sympathize that this war may not affect your own views or opinion on the matter, the fact is, your authoritarian government is committing human rights abuses and engaging in war crimes so this is a policy decision we have made and will stand by.”

The original email gave...

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Ukraine engineer talks testing SpaceX’s new Starlink service

Oleg Kutkov with his Starlink dish he bought off of eBay | Image: Oleg Kutkov

On Monday night, in between the hourly air alarms that were reverberating outside his home, Oleg Kutkov stuck his SpaceX Starlink dish outside of his window in Kiev, Ukraine and pointed it up at the sky. To his surprise, he got a signal in just 10 seconds from one of SpaceX’s satellites overhead, indicating he was receiving Internet broadband.

“I honestly I didn’t believe that it would work,” Kutkov tells The Verge. “I thought there might be some problems with obstructions, might be some problems with my Dishy. But no, it just connected. I got really good speed, really good connectivity.”

“I honestly I didn’t believe that it would work.”

Kutkov has actually had a Starlink dish for a few months now, but wasn’t able to use it. A software...

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UC Berkeley loses CRISPR patent case

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

MIT and Harvard’s Broad Institute was the first to apply the gene-editing tool CRISPR to human cells, the US Patent and Trademark Office said Monday. The decision stymies years of efforts from the University of California, Berkeley to obtain lucrative patent rights to the technology. UC Berkeley is home to Jennifer Doudna, who won a 2020 Nobel Prize with Emmanuelle Charpentier for discovering the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technique.

It also complicates the work of some biotech companies to develop gene-editing therapies based on CRISPR: many, including companies like Caribou Biosciences (co-founded by Doudna) and Intellia Therapeutics, which licensed the CRISPR tech from the UC Berkeley group.

“This decision once again confirmed Broad’s...

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Facebook has stopped recommending Russian state media globally

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Meta has stopped recommending content by Russian state media to all users of Facebook, and soon Instagram, as the country’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine wages on.

In a call with reporters on Tuesday, Meta executives said Russian media affiliated with the government had been demoted in the main Facebook Feed, and that it was no longer being recommended algorithmically anywhere on the social network. Instagram is also in the process of blocking all recommendations of Russian state media globally, the executives said, adding that links to outlets under the influence of the Russian government will be labeled on both apps.

The moves come after the Russian government last week started throttling internet access to Facebook and Instagram in the...

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Nomad’s new MagSafe charger doesn’t need an external puck, but does cost $130

Image: Nomad

Nomad has finally revealed its first officially licensed MagSafe charger, the Base One (that is to say, one that actually has the Apple MFi-approved MagSafe module built in, and not one with a separate charging cable threaded through). Unfortunately, that convenience doesn’t come cheap: the Base One costs $129.95.

As is typical for a Nomad product, the Base One is a handsome slab of glass and aluminum that promises a more refined experience than simply slapping Apple’s $40 charging puck on your nightstand. And it certainly looks nice enough, with a neat floating glass effect and about a pound of heft to keep it from falling off your nightstand.

Image: Nomad

But the $130 price tag here is definitely rough,...

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Waymo to start charging money for its robotaxi rides in San Francisco

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Waymo, the autonomous vehicle unit of Alphabet, got the green light to start charging for rides in its autonomous taxis in San Francisco. The California Public Utilities Commission awarded the company a permit that allows them to charge for rides as long as there’s a human safety driver behind the wheel.

California requires that AV companies obtain a series of permits in order to start earning money from their autonomous vehicles. The state’s Department of Motor Vehicles oversees test permits, while the CPUC determines when those companies can start commercial businesses. The permit obtained by Waymo is one of the last steps required before the company can launch a fully fleshed-out robotaxi business. The company will need to obtain a...

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AirTags are dangerous — here’s how Apple could fix them

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge, Shutterstock

Accuracy doesn’t have to trump safety

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State of the Union: How to watch Biden’s first address online

President Joe Biden is scheduled to deliver his first State of the Union address at the US Capitol on Tuesday, March 1st, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to escalate.

This will be Biden’s first State of the Union address, as he had not been in office long enough to officially deliver the address last year. Last year, Biden did give a speech before a joint session of Congress laying out his administration’s plan to invest in infrastructure, including broadband expansion and creating a nationwide electric vehicle charging grid. He also announced plans to address the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

This year, Biden is expected to make similar remarks during his Tuesday address. He is also expected to focus heavily on the ongoing...

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Funimation’s anime library is moving over to Crunchyroll

Screenshot: Crunchyroll via YouTube

Crunchyroll is inheriting a slew of titles from Funimation in a move that’s supposed to unify the two biggest anime streaming services under one subscription. This also consolidates Funimation’s French-language subsidiary, Wakanim, and the Crunchyroll-owned streaming service, VRV, into the sole Crunchyroll platform.

The consolidation of Crunchyroll doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Last August, Sony — which also owns Funimation — completed its acquisition of Crunchyroll for $1.175 billion and announced plans to unify both services under a single subscription.

An FAQ page notes that Crunchyroll subscribers will now have access to simulcast content that was previously only available on Funimation and Wakanim, as well as 80 percent of...

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Disney Plus is getting the Marvel Netflix shows on March 16th

Just days after Disney quietly confirmed that all of Netflix’s Marvel shows are set to migrate over to Disney Plus for Canadian audiences this March, we now know when all six of the series will make a similar jump to Disney’s own streaming service in the US as well.

Today, Disney announced that in mid-March, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders, The Punisher, and ABC’s Agents of SHIELDwill begin streaming on Disney Plus alongside all of Marvel’s other superhero programming, a sign that _may_point to those characters’ futures in the MCU. In a press release shared this morning, Disney’s president of streaming, Michael Paull, framed the impending IP homecoming as a further unification of Marvel’s brand and as a sort...

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Our biggest takeaways from Hot Pod Summit 2022

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Last week, we held Hot Pod Summit 2022, our invite-only event about the future of the podcast industry. It was a day of laughs, gasps, and jabs at all our favorite audio giants.

Ashley helmed nearly all the panels, and at the end of the day, she publicly shared that she’s beginning a new adventure. After more than six years at The Verge and many months in charge of Hot Pod (including weeks spent writing “test runs” before she officially started??), she’s now off to Bloomberg. Hot Pod will be getting someone new soon, but until then, we’re going to take things a little slower to get all our ducks in a row. And also allow our ducks to sleep. I am one of those ducks.

I’m going to be off until next week’s Insider issues, so our editor Jake...

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Inside Sonos’ decision to sue Google — and how it won

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

Protecting your patents against tech giants

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Sonos’ Roam SL drops the mics

Image: Sonos

Last year the Sonos Roam arrived as a portable smart speaker option that not only provided quality sound you could take with you, but also access to assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. It was initially priced at $169, but Sonos cited the global chip shortage as a reason for bumping the price up to $179 last fall. If you were interested in the product but want to save a few bucks, Sonos is now introducing the Roam SL, a mic-less version that costs $159, and mimics the similarly mic-less One SL it released two years ago.

According to the FAQ, losing the microphone doesn’t just cut out support for either voice assistant. It also means no automated Trueplay sound tuning, and living without the Sound Swap feature that lets you...

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Cooking at the end of the world in Final Fantasy XIV

How Endwalker explores the relationship between video game food and tech culture

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