Telecoms blackout hits northeast Ukraine, large power outages also reported

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge

A telecoms blackout has reportedly hit Sumy Oblast in northeastern Ukraine, marking one of the most serious communications disruptions of the conflict so far.

The blackout was reported by the internet shutdown tracker NetBlocks on March 3rd at 8:23PM local time (1:23PM ET).

NetBlocks said that residents had reported massive blasts at a thermal power plant and electrical substation. A power outage tracker monitoring the region also said that it was no longer receiving data for Sumy Oblast.

Sumy Oblast is one of 24 administrative regions, known as “oblasts,” that make up Ukraine, and has a population of roughly one million people.

⚠️ Confirmed: A telecoms blackout has just been registered across #Sumy Oblast, north-eastern #Ukraine, as...

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The US government finally realizes that cars kill people outside the vehicle, too

Joe Cavaretta/Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

The US government’s New Car Assessment Program (NCAP), also known as the five-star safety rating, is getting a major update. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced Thursday a set of new proposals for the federal program aimed at curbing the surge in pedestrian deaths.

For the first time, NHTSA will consider the inclusion of advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS — sorry for all the acronyms!) features, like automatic emergency braking, blind-spot detection, and lane-keep assistance. These ADAS features, which are quickly becoming standard in most vehicles today, could become essential criteria for a five-star safety rating from the government.

Traditionally, NHTSA assigns safety ratings to new cars and...

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Twitch has a new policy that will ban ‘harmful misinformation superspreaders’

New Twitch policy will ban accounts that spread misinformation | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitch said Thursday it will ban users who repeatedly spread harmful misinformation on its platform. The streaming site said the new rules won’t apply to users based on “individual statements or discussions” on a channel but to users “whose online presence is dedicated to (1) persistently sharing (2) widely disproven and broadly shared (3) harmful misinformation topics,” the new policy states. Twitch considers such users “harmful misinformation superspreaders.”

The company chose those three criteria because, when grouped together, they “create the highest risk of harm including inciting real world harm,” according to a blog post outlining the new policy.

Twitch stressed in the blog post that the update “will likely not impact you or...

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Peloton is extending its free home trial from 30 to 100 days

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Coming off a fraught month, Peloton is now extending free at-home trials for its Bike, Bike Plus, and Tread from 30 to 100 days.

According to Peloton’s website, this is a limited-time offer for new customers who buy a Peloton machine between March 3rd, 2022, 5PM ET and March 22nd, 2022, 2:59AM ET. Essentially, the program allows customers to buy a new Peloton device, try it for a little over three months, and then return the machine for a full refund if it’s not to their liking. Returns will get free pickups, and Peloton says it’ll also cover shipping fees. While the trial starts once the machines are delivered, Peloton says that buyers will get immediate access to the Peloton app once their orders are confirmed.

That said, there’s...

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The best noise-canceling headphone deals

Bose’s terrific QuietComfort 45 headphones are currently on sale for $279, their best price to date. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

With more people working from home than they used to, owning a good pair of noise-canceling headphones has become more appealing than ever. However, they can be expensive and difficult to shop for due to the range of available models, many of which cater to different lifestyles and priorities. Some are better suited for long-haul flights, while others are ideal for multitasking and marathon listening sessions.

That’s why we’ve curated this list of the best deals on noise-canceling headphones. Here, you’ll find sales on all kinds of on-ear and over-ear headphones, all of which are designed to eliminate outside noise but come with their own strengths and weaknesses. And if you want to do even more research before making a buying decision,...

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Reddit sides with Ukraine, bans all links to Russia’s state-sponsored RT and Sputnik

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Reddit is now categorically banning its users, globally, from posting links to Russian state-sponsored media outlets, including RT and Sputnik.

It’s possibly the most concrete deplatforming of those channels yet — because while Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Twitter, YouTube, and many others have paused their ads or removed content or restricted discoverability or stopped actively promoting content, and both Facebook and YouTube have blocked content in the EU specifically, none of those is the same thing as a blanket site-wide global ban on all links.

In a blog post (via Engadget), Reddit says it’s already been rejecting ads “that target Russia or originate from any Russia-based entity, government or private,” notes that the moderators...

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Anonymous-linked group hacks Russian space research site, claims to leak mission files

Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

In the latest salvo from hacktivists working in support of Ukraine, an Anonymous-linked group has defaced a website belonging to Russia’s Space Research Institute (IKI) and leaked files that allegedly belong to the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

As reported by Vice, hackers appear to have breached one subdomain of the IKI website, although other subdomains remain online. The compromised part of the site relates to the World Space Observatory Ultraviolet project (WSO-UV), a project similar to the Hubble Space Telescope and planned for launch in 2025.

A popular Twitter account tied to the loosely organized Anonymous movement shared details Thursday morning and attributed the action to a group known as v0g3lSec.

Russian Space Agency...

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Netflix is launching a daily trivia series called Trivia Quest

Image: Netflix

Netflix’s foray into trivia continues with its newly announced series Trivia Quest, an interactive experience that will launch April 1st.

Much like its other interactive series like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch or Netflix’s similarly trivia-centered Cat Burglar — which launched last month — Trivia Quest is a narrative interactive experience, meaning each “win” will help move the story along. For Trivia Quest, correctly answering the game’s questions will also help free the friends of the protagonist, Willy, who vows to save hostage citizens of Trivia Land captured by a knowledge-hungry villain named Evil Rocky.

_Trivia Quest_is the latest show to join Netflix’s growing slate of interactive titles. It’s the second game, after Cat Burglar, to...

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Verizon Plus Play will bundle customer subscriptions for Netflix, Peloton, Disney Plus, and more

Verizon announced a new Plus Play streaming hub | Verizon

Verizon announced Thursday that it’s launching a new platform in partnership with Netflix, Peloton, Disney Plus, and other streamers as a hub for customers to “discover, purchase and manage some of their favorite subscriptions.” Called Plus Play, the platform will launch with a select group of customers and brands at the end of the month, with a wider launch later this year, the company said in a news release.

Plus Play will centralize streaming subscription services with no additional cost to Verizon subscribers. Plus Play will let Verizon customers manage subscriptions across devices and provide information about deals on content services, like its discount for access to the Disney Plus / Hulu / ESPN Plus bundle and other promotional...

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Pure Paste aims to fix the pain of formatted text for good

One of my biggest computer pet peeves is copying and pasting text. Not the actual mechanism of getting words from one document to another, but the way that modern computers insist on trying to be overly helpful and copying not just the text I want, but all the formatting that comes with it, mucking up my emails and my documents.

Pure Paste is a neat new menubar app for macOS that aims to fix that: when it’s open, it automatically strips out any formatting on text you copy, allowing you to paste clean, unformatted text every time. There’s also an option to only clear formatting when you ask Pure Paste to (either through clicking on the menubar icon or through a keyboard shortcut).

For those worried about security concerns, the developer...

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Wikimedia says it ‘will not back down’ after Russia threatens Wikipedia block

The Wikimedia Foundation has issued a statement supporting Russian Wikipedia volunteers after a censorship demand from internet regulators. On Tuesday, tech and communications regulator Roskomnadzor threatened to block Wikipedia over the Russian-language page covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, claiming it contained “false messages” about war casualties and the effects of economic sanctions, among other things.

“On March 1st 2022 the Wikimedia Foundation received a Russian government demand to remove content related to the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine posted by volunteer contributors to Russian Wikipedia,” reads the statement sent to The Verge via email. “As ever, Wikipedia is an important source of reliable, factual information in...

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Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red cuts off sales in Russia and Belarus

Image: CD Projekt Red

CD Projekt Red, the Poland-based developer of popular games like Cyberpunk 2077 and the operator of the GOG store, is cutting off sales of its products to Russia and Belarus.

“In light of the Russian military invasion in our neighboring country of Ukraine, until further notice the CD PROJEKT Group has made the decision to halt all sales of our games to Russia and Belarus,” the company said on Twitter. “Today, we begin working with our partners to suspend digital sales and cease physical stock deliveries of CD PROJEKT Group products, as well as all games distributed on the GOG platform, to the territories of Russia and Belarus.”

In a report to investors, the company estimated that “the approximate cumulative share of Russia and Belarus in...

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Russia says it will no longer sell rocket engines to the United States

ULA’s Atlas V rocket flies on Russia’s RD-180 engine. | Image: ULA

Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos has issued its latest round of threats in response to global sanctions, this time claiming Russia will no longer sell rocket engines to the United States. Most rocket launches in the US should not be affected, but the decision could changehow cargo is sent to the International Space Station.

The head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, announced the new policy in an interview with the Russia 24 TV channel. “Today we have made a decision to halt the deliveries of rocket engines produced by NPO Energomash to the United States,” Rogozin said in the interview, according to Russia’s state press site Tass. “Let me remind you that these deliveries had been quite intensive somewhere since the mid-1990s.”...

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Bowers & Wilkins announces its first Dolby Atmos soundbar

Image: Bowers & Wilkins

Bowers & Wilkins is today announcing its first Dolby Atmos soundbar. The Panorama 3 is the company’s answer to the Sonos Arc and other high-end Atmos speakers — and it’s priced accordingly at $999.

Bowers & Wilkins says that with the Panorama 3, there’s “no need for an external subwoofer” or other added components. The soundbar measures 2.5 inches high and contains 13 drivers — including twin built-in subwoofers — that can reach up to 400W of amplification. (Sonos does not disclose the wattage of its Arc speaker.) As this is an Atmos soundbar, there are also up-firing speakers. Bowers & Wilkins says the Panorama 3 was tuned by the same engineering team as the loudspeakers at the iconic Abbey Road Studios.

Image: Bowers...

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Azio Cascade review: a surprisingly solid wireless mechanical keyboard

This hot-swappable keyboard ticks a lot of boxes

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HTC pivots from blockchain to the metaverse for its next smartphone gimmick

HTC’s slow-motion fall from smartphone grace is reportedly set to continue in 2022, with the company said to be working on a new “metaverse”-focused phone in April as the remnants of the once-flagship smartphone company continues to desperately cling to whatever zeitgeist term it can to stay afloat, according to DigiTimes.

The news comes from Charles Huang, HTC’s general manager for the Asia-Pacific region, who reportedly commented at MWC 2022 that the company would be introducing a new high-end smartphone next month with unspecified “metaverse” features. Details are slim, including any specs, markets it’ll be released in, or even what kind of AR or VR features the new device will offer.

The news sounds a lot like HTC’s last major...

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Twitter will start showing crowd-sourced fact checks to some users

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A small group of US Twitter users will now see crowdsourced notes under tweets flagged as misleading. The user-generated notes are part of a program called Birdwatch, launched in 2021 by Twitter to address misinformation on the platform.

Birdwatch allows contributors to write context notes and sources under tweets and rate whether existing notes are helpful. A pilot program with 10,000 contributors has been underway since last year, but only visible on a separate Birdwatch site — now, some Twitter users will see notes with high ratings directly under tweets and be able to rate their usefulness.

Image: Twitter

“By empowering people to do this together, they can add helpful and informative context for people from...

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Five years on, Breath of the Wild’s open world is still unmatched

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

When Breath of the Wild was released five years ago today, its rapturous reception didn’t just happen because of how it represented a long-overdue revamp of the Legend of Zelda series’ stale formula. That certainly helped. But what really made it resonate was its revolutionary approach to open-world game design.

Unlike typical open-world games that overwhelm you with endless quests and icons on the map, Breath of the Wild told you the endpoint right from the start and trusted the player to make their own way there. You get more powerful in Breath of the Wild by exploring the freely traversable world for yourself and mastering its emergent systems. Once you feel ready, you can take on the final boss — or put it off forever because, hey,...

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How to play music on your smartwatch

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

For a lot of people, music is an integral part of working out. But not everyone wants to schlep their phone around while hitting the trails or working up a sweat. That’s where smartwatches can come in pretty handy. While nearly every smartwatch lets you control music on your phone, a good number can also play music on-device.

Whether it’s an Apple Watch, Samsung Galaxy Watch 4, Garmin, Fitbit or Wear OS watch, you’ve got a lot of options for listening to music. Much of it will depend on which service is supported and what OS your watch runs on. Some will have options for offline playback, either through downloadable playlists or onboard music storage. If your smartwatch has LTE, you may also be able to stream music directly to your...

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The world’s largest airline ticket-booking service cuts ties with Russia’s Aeroflot

Russia’s Aeroflot is losing its ticket-booking software provider. | Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

Sabre, one of the largest airline ticket booking companies in the world, is terminating its distribution agreement with Russian air carrier Aeroflot, the company announced Thursday. The move could further restrict Russian air travel, which has already seen its planes banned from most Western countries’ airspace.

State-owned Aeroflot is the flag carrier and the largest airline in the Russian Federation. The airline has about 200 aircraft in its fleet and travels to 146 destinations around the world. Being shut out of online booking software could make it difficult for the airline to operate domestically.

Sabre said it is taking “immediate steps” to remove Aeroflot from its global distribution system, which is used by travel agencies,...

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Rivian apologizes for ‘broken trust’ and axes preorder price increases that hit as much as $20K

Photo by Mitchell Clark / The Verge

This week, Rivian updated the price estimates for its R1T electric pickup and R1S electric SUV, informing people that they could cost as much as $20,000 more than the original quotes, depending on the package they’d ordered. Fans who put down $1,000 to get in line for trucks years before they were built were outraged by the change, which Rivian attributed to inflationary pressure and supply chain problems.

Today, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe wrote customers, admitting that “we wrongly decided to make these changes apply to all future deliveries, including pre-existing configured preorders” and says that instead, Rivian will honor the “original configured price” for all preorders placed prior to March 1st.

We failed to appreciate how you...

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CNN Plus will cost $2.99 per month for early subscribers

CNN Plus has announced its subscription prices | CNN/Warner Media

CNN has finally revealed details about pricing for its forthcoming CNN Plus streaming service. Those who subscribe in the first four weeks of CNN Plus launch will pay $2.99 a month, a 50 percent discount off the regular $5.99 per month / $59.99 per year subscription price. Early subscribers will lock in that $2.99 / month price for as long as they keep their subscriptions, the company said in a news release Thursday.

The service will reportedly launch later this month, according to the Los Angeles Times — CNN only says that it will launch “later this spring.”

CNN announced its streaming service last July and, over the past several months, has announced several shows that will be part of CNN Plus. In addition to daily versions of weekly...

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The Nintendo Switch changed what I want from video games

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

For most of my life, there were two kinds of video games: those you played at home and those you played on a handheld. There was a clear distinction. Even when a powerful device came along, like the PlayStation Vita with its “console-quality” graphics, you could still pretty much always tell the difference; games had their own feel based on the platform. Metroid on the GameCube was very different from Metroid on the Game Boy Advance. But that all changed when the Nintendo Switch launched five years ago.

I stumbled upon the power of Nintendo’s tablet in a unique way. Back in 2017, I was tasked with reviewing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a gigantic open-world game that upended the classic Zelda formula. I started out playing it...

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Apple’s 512GB M1 Mac Mini is back down to its lowest price yet

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

There have been rumors of a new, higher-end Mac Mini swirling for a while now. And with Apple’s upcoming March 8th event, we’ll find out one way or another soon. In the meantime, the current M1 Mac Mini with 512GB of storage costs $749.99 at Amazon. The discounted price (totaling about $149 off its original cost) is reflected at checkout. This model comes with 512GB of storage and 8GB of RAM, and it matches its all-time low price that was last seen during Cyber Monday.

This M1 Mac Mini has been around since late 2020, but it’s still an excellent, low-cost desktop PC that over-performs its price tag. Its excellent capabilities are only slightly hindered by its limited offering of USB-C ports, of which there are only two. There’s a pair of...

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The Steam Deck’s FSR vividly shows why a Nintendo Switch Pro would rule

Image: Nintendo

The Nintendo Switch turns five years old today — five years without ever addressing the fact some of its biggest games tend to chug and don’t look great on a big screen TV.

I’m here to tell you that not only does Nintendo have a solution for that, Valve’s rival Steam Deck proves beyond a doubt that it would work phenomenally.

The rumored Switch Pro makes even more sense now

Let’s catch you up real fast. Last March, Bloomberg reported that a new Switch would finally throw power-hungry gamers a bone. It’d come with a new Nvidia chip and embrace Nvidia’s DLSS deep learning temporal upscaling technology for 4K-quality gaming when docked to your big screen TV. While it never materialized (reportedly due to the chip shortage) it got a bunch...

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How to use Expert RAW on your Samsung Galaxy phone

The Galaxy S22 Ultra is one of the first phones to fully support Samsung’s new Expert RAW app. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Samsung introduced its Expert Raw app in beta at the end of 2021; currently, it is only available for the S21 Ultra. The app allows you to control manual exposure settings for all four of the rear cameras, which is nice, but the more interesting thing it allows you to do is shoot multi-frame RAW files. Here’s what you need to know about Expert RAW – what it is, why it’s useful, and how to use it.

What is multi-frame RAW?

The short answer is that it’s RAW but better. In general, RAW shooting saves more data than a JPEG image file, which is a huge benefit if you prefer to fine-tune things like white balance and exposure photo editing software. JPEGs are smaller and more easily shareable, but those kinds of settings are “baked in” to save...

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Level Keypad is the $79 entry companion for Level’s hidden smart locks

Level Keypad has a minimalist and compact design and can be installed anywhere within 20 feet of the door. | Image: Level

Level announced today it’s releasing the Level Keypad, a smart entry panel that can unlock doors equipped with the company’s smart lock products. The Level Keypad can be installed anywhere within 30 feet of the door it will be used with, can be programmed with multiple access codes, and is completely wireless.

Level Keypad connects via Bluetooth to the company’s sleekly designed Level Lock and Level Lock Touch Edition and the completely invisible Level Bolt (formerly Level Lock). Level is known for its discreet product designs, so it was surprising when the company teased the very visible lighted keypad late last year that didn’t really aesthetically match the Level locks it works with. But since the device is wireless, it can be mounted...

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Dell XPS 15 review: too hot to handle

Dell is pushing the limits of the XPS 15’s slim chassis

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Dynabook’s new Portégé will be one of the lightest laptops you can buy

Here’s the keyboard/ | Image: Dynabook

Dynabook has announced its newest 14-inch flagship, the Portégé X40L-K. The device will start at $1,799.99 and hits shelves in April. I haven’t seen a full breakdown of the configurations that will be offered, but I’m certainly curious how expensive it will go.

Dynabook is known for making mindblowingly light laptops. Its Portégé line regularly includes some of the lightest models in the world. At 2.3 pounds, the X40L-K won’t quite be the lightest 14-inch laptop on the market, but it’ll likely be close. Currently, there are a handful of 14-inchers that weigh less than 2.2 pounds — off the top of my head, the list includes the Asus ExpertBook B9 and the LG Gram 14 — but that’s such a smidge of a difference I doubt it will impact anyone’s...

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A closer look at the other stars of Gran Turismo 7 — the people

Gran Turismo 7 is full of gorgeous, true-to-life re-creations of cars, both new and classic. Having an obsessive eye for the details of automobiles has always been a hallmark feature of Polyphony Digital’s storied racing sim since its debut on the original PlayStation. (My colleague Sam Byford has a full review of the game here.)

The latest iteration — which launches on March 4th on the PS4 and PS5 — includes an even more deeply satisfying photo mode than before, offering countless ways to make your ride look even more phenomenal. But I can’t stop turning the camera to look at the low-poly people.

Sure, you can pause any second of any race replay, walk around your car, angle the camera just right, and adjust numerous other nerdy settings...

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