After ‘protestware’ attacks, a Russian bank has advised clients to stop updating software

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine draws on, consequences are being felt by many parts of the technology sector, including open-source software development.

In a recent announcement, the Russian bank Sber advised its customers to temporarily stop installing software updates to any applications out of concern that they could contain malicious code specifically targeted at Russian users, labeled by some as “protestware.”

As quoted in Russian-language news sites, Sber’s announcement reads:

Currently, cases of provocative media content being introduced into freely distributed software have become more frequent. In addition, various content and malicious code can be embedded in freely distributed libraries used for software development. The...

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The Xbox Series X is currently available at Walmart

You can buy the Xbox Series X for $499.99 today at Walmart. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Walmart is once again selling the $499.99 Xbox Series X, so if you’ve not yet managed to land the next-gen console, now is your chance. Unlike previous restocks, this one isn’t just exclusive to members of the retailer’s premium subscription service, Walmart Plus, so everybody gets a shot.

To maximize your chances of nabbing an Xbox Series X today, make sure to first log into your Walmart account and double-check your shipping and billing details are correct. Know that Walmart often releases stock in 10-minute intervals, so don’t give up trying to add the console to your cart if you can’t at first. To increase the odds even more in your favor, try adding the Xbox Series X to your cart using the mobile app on your phone or through...

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Vizio’s M7-Series Quantum TV is on sale today for its lowest price ever

The Vizio M7 Series has a bunch of gamer-friendly features, including support for AMD FreeSync and a variable refresh rate. | Image: Vizio

Kicking off our deals this week, we have the 55-inch model of the Vizio M7-Series Quantum TV, which is on sale for its lowest price to date. Usually, this TV sells for $750, but it’s currently available for just $478 at Walmart and Amazon. This is an excellent value for a TV that touts a host of great features, including support for Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HDMI 2.1, and AMD FreeSync compatibility. While it only has a 60Hz refresh rate, this collection of features makes the M7 Series a great choice for gamers looking for a panel with excellent visual fidelity and a smooth image. Similar discounts on the M7 Series also extend to larger sizes, including the 75-inch model, which is available for $998 instead of $1,299.99.

For today only, a...

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SEC asks companies to divulge pollution and climate risks

Gary Gensler, Chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, testifies before a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee oversight hearing on the SEC on September 14, 2021 in Washington, DC. | Photo by Evelyn Hockstein-Pool/Getty Images

The US Securities and Exchange Commission proposed new rules today that could require companies to update investors annually on how much planet-heating pollution they’re pumping out and how that pollution could ultimately affect their earnings.

A slew of companies from Apple to Amazon have pledged to become carbon neutral in coming decades. Consistent updates on how much pollution they generate help ensure that climate pledges aren’t just greenwashing or making false promises. The proposed rules are also supposed to protect investors as companies copewith disasters linked to climate change, like more extreme weather.

“We are concerned that the existing disclosures of climate-related risks do not provide investors with the detailed and...

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Google’s Pixel 6 and 6 Pro phones start to get the delayed March feature drop

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are finally getting this month’s sizeable feature drop, as Google spokesperson Matt Flegal confirmed to The Verge that the rollout will begin today. Google previously rolled out the update to the Pixel 3A and 5A on March 7th but decided to push back the update for Pixel 6 devices to address bug fixes, according to Android Police.

March’s feature drop brings improved night photography in Snapchat, custom stickers, support for YouTube watch parties in Google Duo, as well as a new Live Caption feature you can use to communicate without even talking during phone calls. We go over these features in greater detail in our post about the update’s initial rollout.

The update also brings a number of bug fixes, including...

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Apple Maps’ EV routing is finally coming to the Ford Mustang Mach-E

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge

Ford Mustang Mach-E owners will seemingly soon have another option for planning out a route: Apple Maps’ long-awaited EV routing (via 9to5Mac). It’s understandable if that feature doesn’t ring a bell — Apple announced it at WWDC 2020, saying that it’d be coming to BMW and Ford cars with iOS 14, but it’s mostly been silent about it since. According to the Apple Maps site, the feature assesses “your charge level, elevation, and compatible charging stops along your route.”

A page posted to Ford’s website, but now seemingly removed (you can see an archived version here) says that Mach-E owners with either a 2022 model year vehicle or certain versions of the ’21 model will be able to access the route planning while using CarPlay (though it...

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Citizen reportedly plans to test a private security partnership in Chicago

The interface for Citizen’s Protect subscription service. | Citizen

Crime reporting app Citizen has reportedly planned a partnership with private security outfit Securitas in Chicago. A report from Motherboard_,_citing multiple anonymous sources, suggests Citizen remains interested in offering security services despite ongoing concerns about its app.

According to Motherboard, the Chicago Securitas partnership would “function as a check-in service” for users. Securitas could follow up after someone reported a break-in to make sure they’re all right, for instance, or a user could schedule a Securitas visit through Citizen. Citizen already offers a subscription emergency response service called Protect, but it consists of voice or video calls with an agent who can contact traditional emergency services, not...

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Mario Kart 8’s new tracks are a basic addition to one of Nintendo’s all-time greats

Paris Promenade, one of the eight new courses for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. | Image: Nintendo

They’re riding on the coattails of an amazing kart racer

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An Apple outage is affecting iMessage, Apple Music, iCloud, and other services

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Many Apple services appear to be experiencing outages and problems right now. On Downdetector, Apple Music, Apple Maps, iCloud, the App Store, iMessage, and Apple TV are all among the services that people are reporting problems with. Among _The Verge_staff, we’re experiencing scattered problems with iMessage and other key services, although the problems aren’t impacting everyone equally.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman is also reporting that Apple’s corporate and retail systems are down as well, and on the r/sysadmin subreddit, some are reporting that they can’t get into Apple’s business manager portal. A tweet from WhatsAppBetaInfo reveals that the problems can even affect other apps (for example, trying to back up your chat history to iCloud).

...

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Ford F-150 Lightning gets an EPA-confirmed range of up to 320 miles

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The official range estimates for the Ford F-150 Lightning pickup truck are in, and they’re looking pretty good. The base model, which starts at $39,974, will get around 230 miles of range, while the extended range versions start in the mid-$50,000s and can go about 320 miles — or about 20 additional miles than originally expected.

These numbers come courtesy of the US Environmental Protection Agency, which tested the seven variations of the F-150 Lightning and F-150 Lightning Pro. The tests revealed that the extended range versions of the truck — the Pro ER, XLT ER, Lariat ER, and Platinum editions — were able to get around 20 more miles than Ford’s original estimates.

_“_We are laser focused on continually improving our energy...

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CD Projekt Red announces a new Witcher game is in development

CD Projekt Red has announced that it’s working on a brand-new _Witcher_game, which will “kick off a new saga for the franchise,” and the first new mainstream title in the series since The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was released all the way back in 2015.

The biggest news, however, is that the upcoming Witcher game will see CD Projekt Red switch over from its existing in-house REDengine engine — which the company has used for over a decade — to Unreal Engine 5, as part of a “multi-year strategic partnership” between CDPR and Epic Games.

Despite that partnership, the next Witcher game won’t be exclusive to the Epic Games Stores, and CDPR will continue to use REDengine for some current projects, like the upcoming _Cyberpunk 2077_expansion, too.

T...

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LG announces 2022 OLED TV pricing: new 42-inch size costs $1,399

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Just as Samsung did last week, LG is today sharing its official pricing for the company’s 2022 lineup of TVs. First up is the OLED family, which is comprised of several different series lines, including the G2 Gallery Edition, C2, B2, and A2 series. The G2 is the flagship and includes the brightest OLED TV panel that LG has produced yet, though the C2’s display is also getting a brightness boost over last year’s model. Both are being achieved with the help of increased processing power and “Brightness Booster” features.

LG says 2022’s 4K OLED lineup includes its widest range of screen sizes ever. At the smallest end is a new 42-inch C2, which has been priced at $1,399. LG envisions this being a popular choice for desktop gaming in...

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Russian government bars its scientists from international conferences

Russian government’s office building. | Photo credit should read KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images

Russian scientists will not participate in international conferences this year, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation said via its Telegram channel. The decision comes as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has strained the relationships between Russian scientists and the international research community.

Minister Valery Falkov also said during a meeting with universities that scientific schools should no longer emphasize when publications are indexed through the two major international scientific databases, according to a recap sent through the Ministry’s Telegram channel.

Scientists aren’t banned from publishing research in international journals indexed in the two databases, Web of Science and Scopus, but...

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Sony is buying Jade Raymond’s Haven Studios as part of its live service push

Sony announced Monday that it has entered an agreement to acquire Montreal-based Haven Studios, which is founded and led by veteran game designer Jade Raymond. Haven and Sony originally announced a partnership just over a year ago, but now Sony is bringing Haven into the fold as one of its first-party PlayStation studios. The price of the deal wasn’t disclosed.

The first title from Haven will be a new AAA multiplayer game, Raymond said in a blog post, though it’s unclear when we might be able to play it. Here’s her description of the game:

Our first new IP for PlayStation is on track to deliver a AAA multiplayer experience with a vision to build a systemic and evolving world focused on freedom, thrill, and playfulness that will keep...

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Cadillac Lyriq, the brand’s first electric vehicle, starts production ahead of schedule

Images: Cadillac

The 2023 Cadillac Lyriq electric crossover is now in production at General Motors’ Spring Hill, Tennessee factory, the automaker announced Monday. The EV is the luxury brand’s first electric vehicle.

The Lyriq is officially ahead of schedule after GM initially said that production was not slated to begin until late 2022. Facing criticism that its new EVs were taking too long to reach customers, the automaker put the Lyriq on an accelerated development schedule that resulted in an early 2022 start date.

“This is bringing Cadillac back to leadership, back to tier one luxury, and really getting an American luxury brand recognized and highly desirable, both from a design technology and engineering standpoint,” said Mark Reuss, president...

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T-Mobile’s new prepaid $10 per month Connect plan is its cheapest yet

T-Mobile has refreshed its prepaid Connect plan offerings, including a new $10 per month plan that the company says is its “lowest price smartphone plan ever,” offering customers 1,000 minutes of talk, 1,000 texts, and 1GB of data each month.

The company’s prepaid Connect plans launched in 2020 and were part of T-Mobile’s efforts to butter up regulators to allow its massive merger with Sprint to go through. The original Connect plans included a $15 per month offering for unlimited talk, text, and 2GB of data and a $25 per month option that bumped up data to 5GB a month.

More data for T-Mobile’s prepaid plans

Those tiers are still available today, although the company is bumping up the total data included by 1GB each (for 3GB per month...

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Foxconn’s Shenzhen factories resume operations after lockdown

Photo by Nora Tam/South China Morning Post via Getty Images

Foxconn, the world’s biggest contract manufacturer of electronics, says it’s “basically” resumed normal operations in Shenzhen after a partial lockdown forced its factories offline, Reuters reports. In a statement, the company said it has “basically resumed normal work order and production operations” at its Longhua and Guanlan factories, although it added it will be “strictly implementing epidemic prevention and control” policies and that some staff will live and work in a bubble. Reuters notes that employees in Futian, a district of Shenzhen, are still being advised to work from home.

The re-opening comes a little over a week after the company announced it was suspending operations in the city after a spike of 60 new infections were...

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Inside the fight to save video game history

Alex Castro / The Verge

Publishers and preservationists are fighting over how old video games can be saved from digital obsolescence

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Apple TV app on Android TV no longer allows rentals, purchases, or subscriptions

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Apple has abruptly removed the option to rent or purchase movies through its Apple TV app on Android TV devices. This also affects devices running Google TV, like the 2020 Chromecast and recent TVs from Sony, TCL, and others. As noted by FlatPanelsHD and 9to5Mac, the previous ability to directly rent or buy content has been removed. And _The Verge_has found that on-device Apple TV Plus subscriptions are also no longer permitted.

Instead, there’s now a “how to watch” button that directs people to Apple products “or other streaming devices” for rentals, purchases, and Apple TV Plus subscriptions. These changes are not yet reflected on Apple’s Android TV support page, which still lists direct transactions as being supported. Nvidia Shield...

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OneWeb turns to SpaceX for help after Russia refused to launch company’s satellites

A model of a OneWeb satellite on display | Photo by Hugh Hastings/Getty Images

Internet-from-space provider OneWeb says it will resume launching its satellites on the rockets of its competitor SpaceX, with the first launch expected sometime this year. The deal was struck after OneWeb’s original launch provider, Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos, refused to continue launching the company’s satellites unless OneWeb cowed to a list of significant demands.

The British company OneWeb is currently building out a mega-constellation of 648 satellites in low Earth orbit to provide broadband Internet coverage to customers all over the planet. It’s similar to SpaceX’s Starlink initiative, which aims to launch tens of thousands of satellites to also provide global broadband Internet coverage.

So far, OneWeb has...

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Russian court upholds ban on ‘extremist’ Facebook and Instagram

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A judge in the Tverskoy Court of Moscow has ruled to ban Meta based on Facebook and Instagram for engaging in “extremist activities,” as initially reported by Russian state-owned media outlet TASS. Judge Olga Solopova said “The court has ruled to grant the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office’s lawsuit,” according to Interfax. The ban will block Meta from doing business or opening new branches in the country and will take effect “immediately.” It doesn’t include WhatsApp.

Last week, Facebook and Instagram outlined a moderation policy allowing users in Ukraine and other eastern European countries to call for violence against Russian soldiers. The platforms initially told moderators to allow posts with calls for the death of Russian...

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Fortnite has already raised $36 million for Ukraine relief

On Sunday, Epic Games released a new season of Fortnite and, with it, a promise that for two weeks, all of its proceeds from the game would go towards humanitarian relief for Ukraine. One day later, the developer revealed that it has already raised $36 million as part of the effort. The money is being donated to a handful of different aid groups, including Direct Relief, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and the World Food Programme. Epic says that Xbox is also donating its net proceeds from the game during the same period.

The launch of a new Fortnite season is likely one of the most lucrative periods for the game, with players buying into the new battle pass in order to get exclusive...

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DJI’s newest drone can fly in heavy rain — and has its own robotic dock

You wouldn’t want to fly most drones in a serious downpour, even most industrial-grade ones from DJI. Until today, DJI’s state-of-the-art was the M300 RTK, a drone that took a barrage of water in marketing videos but where the fine print (PDF) says that snow and heavy rain are not OK for flying. But DJI’s weather sealing and confidence rating have improved — the new DJI M30 Enterprise, announced today, is explicitly ready for “heavy rain, high winds, high altitudes, even in icy and snowy conditions from -20° C to 50° C,” according to the company.

Image: DJI

The M30 has an IP55 rating for dust and water protection, compared to the IP45 rating of the M300 RTK. That’s not a higher water rating, technically.

The...

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Ghostwire: Tokyo is creepy, thrilling, and a game that respects your time

An eerie mix of white knuckle action and quiet exploration

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Windows 11 gets a new desktop watermark on unsupported hardware

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Microsoft is pushing ahead with plans to warn Windows 11 users that have installed the operating system on unsupported hardware. In a new update to Windows 11, a watermark has appeared on the desktop wallpaper for unsupported systems, alongside a similar warning in the landing page of the settings app.

Microsoft had been testing these changes last month, but they’re now rolling out to Release Preview just ahead of a full release to all Windows 11 users in the coming days. While Microsoft doesn’t mention the addition of a watermark in its “improvements” list for this update, testers have noticed it’s included.

The new Windows 11 desktop watermark for unsupported PCs.

If Windows 11 is running on unsupported hardware, a...

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Unity’s impressive new ‘Enemies’ short shows off a remarkably realistic digital human

Unity is releasing an impressive new tech demo called “Enemies” that demonstrates what the popular game development engine can be capable of.

The video opens in an ornate and stunningly realistic room before zooming in on a mysterious woman sitting in front of a chessboard. The woman is rendered in remarkable detail — her hair shifts in subtle ways as she moves her head, her eyes look around the room and then at a chess bishop in a surprisingly natural way, and the final close-up shot of her face looks almost as if it’s one of an actual human being.

“Enemies” builds on the work in Unity’s “The Heretic” videos from 2019 and 2020, which showed off Unity’s efforts to create a realistic digital human, and all the videos demonstrate what...

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Today I learned an iPhone trick to quickly select multiple items

The iPhone 13 Mini and iPhone 13. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

I almost feel silly writing this out but… did anyone else know there’s a built-in gesture to bulk select messages, emails, notes, and more across Apple’s stock apps? Rather than using a sub-menu to put the items in “Select” mode and then ticking the circles that appear in each row, you can just swipe two fingers down the list to select every item in the list that your fingers touch.

If you already knew about this feature then feel free to stop reading here, but I, and several of my Verge colleagues, only learned about it when developer Jordan Morgan tweeted to complain that more third-party apps should make use of it. So although it’s a feature that’s available to all apps on iOS and iPadOS, you’ll mainly find it in Apple’s stock apps....

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Telegram’s ban in Brazil has been lifted

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Brazil has lifted its ban on Telegram after the country’s Supreme Court blocked the messaging app on Friday for failing to comply with court orders, according to a report from The New York Times.

The court walked back on its ban after Telegram made several changes to help keep misinformation at bay

The court walked back on its ban after Telegram made several changes to help keep misinformation at bay in the country, which includes removing classified information shared by President Jair Bolsonaro and deleting the accounts belonging to Allan dos Santos, an activist and Bolsonaro supporter accused of spreading disinformation.

In addition, Telegram made promises to label posts that contain false information and promote those with factual...

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Nintendo Wii and DSi Shop channels have been down for days

The Nintendo Wii and DSi Shop channels have been offline for several days, according to a report from Eurogamer. Both shops may have been down for as long March 16th with no explanation from Nintendo.

A video from GameXplain shows exactly what happens when you select the Wii Shop channel — you’ll see a blank white screen, followed by an error code (209601) indicating network problems. The channel is down on both the Wii itself, as well as on the Wii U, which is what GameXplain uses to access the store. Meanwhile, the DSi Shop spits out error code 290502, also signaling an inability to connect to the shop due to seemingly nonexistent internet issues.

Nintendo stopped allowing players to make purchases on the DSi and Wii Shop channels in 2...

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Chrome OS tests variable refresh rate support

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Google is testing support for variable refresh rates (VRR) in the Chrome OS 101 Dev Channel, as first spotted by Kevin Tofel at About Chromebooks. You have to enable a flag at chrome://flags#enable-variable-refresh-rate to access the feature, which Google says can be used with “capable displays.”

This might signal an upgrade for future Chrome OS tablets

VRR helps prevent screen-tearing by syncing the refresh rate of a display with the frames-per-second (FPS) of whatever’s on the screen. Google’s test of the feature could indicate a smoother gaming experience on Chrome OS, which would make sense considering Google just announced Steam is “coming soon” to Chrome OS. Rumors about the release of three potential gaming-focused Chromebooks...

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