Apple explains why the M1 Ultra-equipped Mac Studio is two pounds heavier

Apple confirms the weight isn’t the extra cores. | Image: Apple

When Apple published the spec sheets for its new Mac Studio computer, people were quick to voice their confusion about why on earth the version with the new M1 Ultra chip weighed a whole two pounds (almost a kilogram) more than the version with the M1 Max. While the M1 Ultra is basically two M1 Maxes stuck together, that’s not the reason for the weight difference, according to Apple. It turns out, it comes down to the metal used in the computer’s thermal systems.

Here’s what the company said in an email to The Verge:

They have the same 370W power supply. The additional weight is due to M1 Ultra having a larger copper thermal module, where as M1 Max has an aluminum heatsink.

Image: Apple

The M1 Max-equiped Studio...

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How the M1-powered iPad Air compares to other iPad models

The latest iPad Pro, iPad Air, iPad, and iPad Mini (from left to right). | Image: Apple

Apple announced a new iPad Air during its “Peek Performance” event on March 8th. While the design is similar to that of the last-gen Air, Apple did introduce a few iterative changes.

For one, the iPad Air now shares the same blazing-fast M1 processor found in the most recent iPad Pro. The new Air also touts a 12MP front camera (updated from the last gen’s 7MP) equipped with Apple’s Center Stage feature, which can automatically follow you in the frame during video calls. There’s also 5G connectivity on the cellular models, a USB-C port that’s up to twice as fast as the last gen’s port, and 10Gbps of data transfer speeds.

Like the last-gen model did, the new 10.9-inch iPad Air starts at $599 — although note that the LTE models cost $20...

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Substack launches an iOS app for reading newsletters

Image: Substack

Loyal Substack readers now have a way to keep all of their subscriptions in a dedicated place: the new Substack reader app. The app is only available on iOS for now; Android users can sign up for a waitlist.

The standalone app pulls all of a user’s newsletter subscriptions into one inbox, placed alongside a discovery tab for readers to find new publications. Podcast and video subscriptions are accessible in the app, as are comment sections. Users can also add RSS feeds to the app.

Introducing the Substack app.

It’s like your email inbox, but better.

Get it now for iPhone and iPad: https://t.co/vBEtWDEW8s

Learn more pic.twitter.com/lhqVqhkikX

— Substack (@SubstackInc) March 9, 2022

“The app helps bring together Substack as an...

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Ethereum Name Service director is still in control despite uproar over his tweets

Brantly Millegan remains a director of Ethereum Name Service following DAO vote. | Photo Illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Ethereum Name Service (ENS) director Brantly Millegan remains in his position following a vote to remove him over a number of controversial tweets. A snapshot of the vote shows 1.6 million governance tokens pledged against his removal, with 1.4 million for it, a margin of 5.88 percent.

If Millegan abstained from voting, he would have been removed as director

ENS is a blockchain protocol used by over 300,000 people. It converts convoluted crypto wallet addresses into a single username of the user’s choosing. The addresses are formatted as “username.eth” and have become widely used across the Web3 community.

One of Millegan’s old tweets resurfaced last month, in which he said, “Homosexual acts are evil. Transgenderism doesn’t exist....

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Google hints at Windows games running on Stadia

Image: Google

Google appears to have built its own solution for running Windows games on Stadia. Google is planning to detail its Windows “emulator” for Linux next week at the company’s Google for Games Developer Summit on March 15th. Reddit users have spotted a session at the summit that will detail “how to write a Windows emulator for Linux from scratch.”

The session will be led by Marcin Undak, on Google’s Stadia porting platform team, and promises a “detailed overview of the technology behind Google’s solution for running unmodified Windows games on Stadia.” It appears that Google has built its own Windows emulator for Linux to help developers port games to the service without having to modify titles for Linux.

Image: Google ...

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Shipwreck Endurance is still ‘bold and beautiful’ after a century in Antarctic waters

The stern of the Endurance | Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust and National Geographic

The historic site will be left in peace on the sea floor

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Congress asks DOJ to investigate Amazon for obstructing inquiry

Congress wants the DOJ to investigate Amazon over antitrust violations | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Several members of the US House Judiciary Committee have sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland raising concerns that the e-commerce giant is obstructing an antitrust investigation into its practices. The lawmakers claim that Amazon did not provide the information requested as part of the investigation and want the Department of Justice to investigate “whether Amazon and its executives obstructed Congress in violation of applicable federal law.”

The letter claims that Amazon “engaged in a pattern and practice of misleading conduct that suggests it was acting with an improper purpose to influence, obstruct, or impede the Committee’s investigation and inquiries,” the letter states.

“a pattern and practice of misleading conduct“

...

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Alienware’s new QD-OLED gaming monitor is already 10 percent off

The Alienware AW3423DW is the first to market with a QD-OLED panel. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Yesterday’s big announcements from Apple included a hot, new monitor to get excited about, but we all know there are already many great displays worth your hard-earned money. Enter, today’s deal.

The new Alienware AW3423DW 34-inch QD-OLED curved ultrawide gaming monitor just landed, and while Dell has it listed for $1,307.49 (normally advertised around $1,295) there’s already a way for you to knock a cool 10 percent off and buy it for $1,165.94. Getting this deal takes a little more legwork than most of our deals, but if our initial hands-on with this new monitor is any indication, it should be worth it.

According to Slickdeals, and confirmed by the Verge Deals team, you can subscribe to Dell’s email updates at this link and after about...

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Here’s why Apple put a powerful iPhone chip in its new Studio Display

Image: Apple

Apple’s $1,599 Studio Display will be available on March 18th, and there’s a lot more to the company’s new external monitor than just its 27-inch, 5K panel. For one, Apple crammed six speakers into the thing. And if the 16-inch MacBook Pro and 24-inch iMac are anything to go by, the Studio Display is likely going to sound much better than most competing screens. But maybe you already have speakers hooked up at your desk and are nonplussed about the integrated audio system. There’s also a 12-megapixel webcam that Apple says should produce similar video call quality to what you’d get from an iPad. In other words, it has the potential to make you look even nicer than the 1080p webcam on recent Macs.

To get the most out of the Studio...

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Twitter Shops will let sellers showcase more products on their profiles

Image: Twitter

Twitter is rolling out a new shopping beta today: Twitter Shops, which lets sellers add a virtual storefront to their profiles for customers to browse. Notably, Twitter Shops won’t actually let you purchase things directly — instead, the shop listings will link you out to the company’s website in an in-app browser to actually complete your purchase.

The feature is effectively a more substantial version of the existing Shop Module that Twitter has already been testing, but instead of a rolling carousel of products, it’s a larger list with a dedicated profile link.

Put your store on Twitter

With Twitter Shops, your Twitter profile will get a new “view shop” button on the top of your profile, where companies will be able to list up to 50...

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Patient who received pig heart transplant dies

Photo by Sina Schuldt/picture alliance via Getty Images

The first patient to have a heart transplant with an organ from a genetically modified pig died Tuesday, The New York Times reported. David Bennett Sr., who had severe heart disease, received the heart in early January. He was 57.

It’s not clear exactly why Bennett died, a spokesperson from the University of Maryland Medical Center, where the procedure was performed, told The New York Times. Physicians will do a full evaluation and publish their results.

Bennett’s death shows the challenges of animal-to-human transplants, called xenotransplantation. Advocates of the technique imagine a steady supply of animal organs could help treat the thousands of people on waitlists for organ transplants. Researchers and surgeons have shared a wave...

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New Xbox update lets you pin Quick Resume games and remap the Share button

Pin games to Quick Resume. | Image: Microsoft

Microsoft is rolling out a new Xbox dashboard update that includes Quick Resume improvements, Xbox Share button remapping, and a new audio wizard. The March Xbox dashboard update now includes the ability to pin games to Quick Resume, so Xbox Series S / X owners can ensure up to two games will never drop out of the Quick Resume feature.

Pinned games will only disappear from Quick Resume if they’re manually removed or there’s an update to the game. Quick Resume can support multiple games otherwise, and typically, games only fall out of the ability to resume instantly when you’ve launched more than 10. This can vary depending on how big each game is.

Image: Microsoft

Quick Resume now has pinned games support.

M...

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GM teases an electric Chevy Blazer SS for more plug-in performance

Image: General Motors

General Motors teased an electric Chevrolet Blazer SS, which will make its debut later this year. The Blazer EV will be the first electric vehicle from Chevy to feature a performance SS model.

There’s not much to go on here except an image of the charging port illuminated by a LED ring. An accompanying video shows the charging port closing in a pretty cool fashion. And then we see the SS badge on a hubcap, which tells us that this is going to be a high performance version of the Chevy Blazer.

There’s not much to go on here except an image of the charging port

Chevy’s gas-powered SS variants feature V8 engines, dynamic handling capabilities, and adjustable suspensions. The electric Blazer SS will lack the former thanks to its electric...

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DeepMind’s new AI model helps decipher, date, and locate ancient inscriptions

Inscriptions like this provide first-hand evidence of the thoughts, language, and society of ancient Greece. | Photo by: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Machine learning techniques are providing new tools that could help archaeologists understand the past — particularly when it comes to deciphering ancient texts. The latest example is an AI model created by Alphabet-subsidiary DeepMind that helps not only restore text that is missing from ancient Greek inscriptions but offers suggestions for when the text was written (within a 30-year period) and its possible geographic origins.

“Inscriptions are really important because they are direct sources of evidence ... written directly by ancient people themselves,” Thea Sommerschield, a historian and machine learning expert who helped created the model, told journalists in a press briefing.

“It’s really difficult for a human to harness all...

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The many escapes of Justin Sun

Justin Sun, a budding Chinese cryptocurrency mogul, walked through the shiny lofted atrium of the departure terminal at South Korea’s Incheon International Airport. It was September 2017, an early height of the crypto craze, and Sun had every reason to be nervous after his first ICO. An ICO, or initial coin offering, is like an initial public offering for a new stock. It’s the first time cryptocurrency traders have the opportunity to buy a brand-new token. But Sun wasn’t anxious about the money he stood to gain if it took off or what he’d lose if the token flopped. In fact, his company, Tron, introduced a coin called TRX — a huge success, selling out quickly for $70 million. The problem for Sun was that the Chinese government, just...

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After Yang director Kogonada on crafting

US director Kogonada arrives for the screening of the film “Flag Day” at the 74th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on July 10, 2021. (Photo by John MACDOUGALL / AFP) | Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge, Photo courtesy Getty Images

After Yang’s director discusses the film’s wider unseen world

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How to control your robot vacuum with Google Assistant

Robot vacuums like this Roomba i3 can respond to voice commands from Google Assistant. | Image: iRobot

Robot vacuums are great for getting the dirty work done for you (admit it, you never cleaned under the couch before you got one, right?). And while these busy little bots can be set on a schedule in their accompanying smartphone apps, or sent on a run with a push of their button, connecting them to Google Home gives you more ways to command them to do your bidding, including just with your voice.

The majority of robot vacuums with smartphone apps will work with Google Home for voice control through the Google Assistant, although some have more capabilities than others. All of them can be ordered to start and stop, some can be sent home to their dock, and others can be commanded to clean a specific room.

You can also use your voice...

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Adobe is taking another step into NFTs

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Adobe’s social network Behance is adding support for the Polygon cryptocurrency platform, letting users more easily showcase Polygon-based non-fungible tokens or NFTs. The company is touting Polygon integration as a more environmentally conscious way for artists to create NFTs, which Behance began supporting late last year. While that eco-friendliness is debatable, it’s part of Adobe’s ongoing expansion into crypto — as well as an attempt to placate artists that are worried about its potential negative effects.

Polygon works on top of the popular Ethereum blockchain, and it’s got a smaller energy footprint for individual crypto transactions; it also avoids the massive transaction costs associated with Ethereum. (On the other hand,...

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The iPhone SE’s $30 price bump looks like a pure 5G tax

Apple’s new iPhone SE was a predictable upgrade in almost every way except one: for the first time in the SE’s history, Apple has raised the price of its cheapest iPhone from $399 to $429, a $30 increase.

And it’s almost definitely 5G’s fault.

Price increases for 5G phones are common, even for Apple. When the company jumped from the iPhone 11 to the iPhone 12, it raised the price of the “standard” model from $699 to $829. But an estimate from Counterpoint Research shows where most of that cost increase came from, and it’s not the pricey OLED screen: 5G added $34 to the bill of materials compared to the 4G-only iPhone 11. In fact, a report from Fomalhaut Techno Solutions and Nikkei estimates Qualcomm’s 5G modem was the single most...

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Nintendo delays Advance Wars reboot citing ‘recent world events’

Image: Nintendo

Citing “recent world events”, Nintendo has announced it will delay the release of Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp.

In light of recent world events, we have made the decision to delay Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp, which was originally scheduled to release on Nintendo Switch on April 8th. Please stay tuned for updates on a new release date.

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) March 9, 2022

Originally set for April 8th, Nintendo did not announce a new launch date for the _Advance Wars_reboot. This is the second time the game has been delayed. Nintendo originally moved the game from December 2021 to Spring 2022 reasoning that “the game just needs a little more time for fine tuning.”

The military tactics game is a reboot of Advance...

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Slack is struggling this morning

Some people are back in the office while others are operating remotely, but for many workers, no matter where they are, Slack is still a default method of communication, and on this Wednesday morning, it is not working very well.

Complaints in The Verge Slack channels mention messages failing to send or edits that the app just won’t update, and over the last few hours, the company has confirmed it’s working to fix problems affecting “calls, huddles, email processing, file uploads, emoji reactions retention, new DM groups retention in sidebar, Search, Workflow builder, Workflow pop out windows, Channel creation, API errors, webhooks and Slack Connect invites.”

Some customers may be experiencing intermittent issues using Slack. We...

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Nvidia’s RTX 3090 Ti will reportedly launch on March 29th

Nvidia’s RTX 3090 Ti. | Image: Nvidia

Nvidia announced its RTX 3090 Ti at CES earlier this year, promising more information by the end of January. Nvidia has since remained silent about pricing or a release date for the RTX 3090 Ti after rumors suggested the card had been delayed due to hardware issues.

_VideoCardz_now reports that Nvidia is planning to launch the RTX 3090 Ti on March 29th. The site has obtained what appears to be RTX 3090 Ti embargo details for the launch of the card, with the March 29th date and 6AM PT timing for GPUs at retailers. Reviews of the RTX 3090 Ti are also reportedly scheduled for March 29th, too.

Nvidia has only provided basic specs for the RTX 3090 Ti so far, and we have no idea on pricing yet. Nvidia previously revealed that the RTX 3090 Ti...

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Gotham Knights gets a new October 25th release date

Gotham Knights_,_Warner Bros. Games Montreal’s next open-world Batman-themed RPG, has gotten a new release date: October 25th.

Originally announced in August 2020 for a 2021 release, the game was delayed to an unspecified 2022 date early last year, with the developers explaining that they needed “more time to deliver the best possible experience for players.”

Gotham Knights lets players suit up Nightwing, Batgirl, Robin, and Red Hood (either solo or with a second player) as they try to bring order to Gotham City following the death of Batman (although if you think for a second that the Caped Crusader is actually dead here, I’ve got a bridge in ~~Brooklyn~~ Gotham to sell you).

Gotham will always need its heroes. Suit up for an all-new...

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Tin Man: photography using an old-fashioned tintype process

Joseph Wyman Brown uses tintype photography to make modern photos. The cameras he uses to make tintypes are slightly bigger than the one he’s holding. | Photo by Mitchell Clark / The Verge

Joseph Wyman Brown captures modern people with 19th-century photography

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Apple’s new M1 Ultra aims to beat Nvidia’s RTX 3090

Image: Apple

Apple’s M1 Pro and M1 Max chips were a GPU-shaped warning to Nvidia and AMD last year, and now Apple has cranked up the heat with its new M1 Ultra. Apple claims it will rival Nvidia’s giant RTX 3090 graphics card, the fastest GPU on the market right now. But how does Apple think it can beat an RTX 3090? It turns out, last year’s M1 Max has some secret sauce inside.

Apple’s new M1 Ultra is a surprising combination of two M1 Max chips, fused together to create a single powerful chip. The M1 Max has a secret high-speed interface that allows Apple to combine two chips into one. The result is an M1 Ultra chip that has double the CPU cores, double the memory, double the memory bandwidth, and most importantly, double the GPU cores.

Apple calls...

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Twitch star Xmiramira is fighting against lackluster Black skin in The Sims

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge, Sim courtesy Xmiramira

Amira Virgil learned to mod The Sims 4 to combat the game’s poor presentation of Black skin

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Carl Pei’s Nothing will announce this year’s product roadmap on March 23rd

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Nothing, the startup lead by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, will announce its product roadmap for the year on March 23rd at 9AM ET, the company announced today. Nothing is calling the event “The Truth” and says attendees can RSVP via its website: nothing.tech. The company is also announcing a new $70 million funding round today, which Pei says will give it “the fuel to realize the next phase of our vision of a seamless digital future.”

The announcement of the event comes as Nothing is reportedly gearing up to launch its first smartphone by next month, according to a recent report from TechCrunch. Then, in an apparently leaked photo, Pei was seen showing off a smartphone to Qualcomm’s CEO Cristiano Amon. It comes a little over a year after...

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HP Envy x360 15 review: premium performance for an enviable price

A solid laptop for a solid grand

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My rapid descent into the world of DIY trackballs

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

How I became a real trackball sicko

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Hands-on with Alienware’s new, curved QD-OLED gaming monitor

Samsung’s new display tech debuts in a gaming monitor

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