AOC partnered with Porsche Design on this pricey 32-inch Mini LED monitor

The aluminum stand was inspired by Porsche steering wheels.

Gadgets with any attachment to Porsche Design tend to have a lousytrackrecord, but its latest collaboration is tough to knock. It partnered with AOC (the accessory company, not the US representative) to Porsche-fy this high-end Agon Pro PD32M gaming monitor that’s available for preorder now and shipping in June for $1,799. Beyond the frameless 32-inch panel, which has Mini LED backlighting for better contrast and light control, its minimalist, sturdy-looking aluminum stand mimics the style of Porsche steering wheels.

After looking up what Porsche steering wheels look like, I’m not exactly sold on this homage. But even so, it certainly makes for a more elegant-looking gaming monitor than most — at least from the front. Its rear is...

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Asus ROG Strix Scar 17: powerful, brash, derivative

Unique in ways both good and not-so-good

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Thrustmaster’s T248 racing wheel for PlayStation and PC is $100 off

Thrustmaster’s T248 racing wheel is selling for $299.99 on Amazon today. | Image: Sam Byford / The Verge

If you’re a fan of racing games, Thrustmaster’s T248 steering wheel and pedal setup is a nice way to make the experience feel more immersive. Designed for both PlayStation consoles and PC, it’s a great all-in-one package that can help beginners get started with a racing setup, one that requires little in the way of preparation. It’s an even better buy today given it’s currently on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and B&H Photo for $299.99 instead of $399.99, a new all-time low.

Thrustmaster’s T248 is an excellent force feedback wheel, which means it offers a strong level of resistance while duplicating the effects of the track on your car in great detail. As an added perk, the wheel also comes with a handy LCD screen, which can display your...

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No Man’s Sky’s new free update turns you into a space outlaw

Hello Games

Hello Games has released yet another large free update to No Man’s Sky. This one’s called Outlaws, and it delivers a set of missions where the player can acquire black market tech and other essential goods from other ships in a less-than-savory manner — and then smuggle it for a profit. There are also bounty missions and planetary raids. There will be high-conflict zones in areas where outlaws have captured space stations where you’ll have plenty of chances to engage in dogfights. Oh, and there are now capes and hoods that you can unlock for your character.

The studio says that combat has been improved with “speed and excitement” being the focus. Ships should handle better, but for those who want more accessibility during fights, there’s...

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Russian Doll levels up in season 2 by catching a new existential train of thought

Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov. | Netflix

The ‘M’ in MTA stands for ‘metaphysical’

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E-bike injuries on the rise even on well protected Dutch roads

You’re 1.6 times more likely to end up in the emergency room on an e-bike, compared to a regular bike, says report (translated by The Verge). | Image: VeiligheidNL

A new study from VeiligheidNL, a Dutch organization focused on the prevention of injuries, concludes that e-bike riders have a greater risk of injury than riders on ordinary bicycles. It concedes, however, that more research is needed to identify the underlying causes.

The Netherlands is perhaps one of the safest countries to ride a bicycle due to a preponderance of infrastructure designed to keep riders separated from other vehicle traffic. Bicycle safety is also taught to children in school, and many cities have enjoyed bicycle-first cultures for decades.

Nevertheless, the report says that e-bike riders in the Netherlands were 1.6 times more likely than an ordinary bicyclist to end up in the emergency room, compared to twice as likely...

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Polar’s new smartwatches aim to help runners pace themselves

The Polar Pacer Pro is available today for $299.90 | Image: Polar

The pandemic sparked a running boom, with one study finding that roughly 28 percent of current runners got their start during quarantine. To cater to this new crowd, Polar announced today that it’s launching two new GPS watches designed to help runners get better at the sport. The $199.90 Pacer is aimed at novices, while the $299.90 Pacer Pro is meant to help serious runners up their game.

Polar says that both smartwatches will feature faster processors than their predecessors, with 5MB of RAM. It’s an upgrade that’s meant to improve performance and deliver a better user experience. That’s been sorely needed in Polar watches, which sometimes lag during syncing and occasionally struggle with menu transitions. Both watches also have...

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The Duovox Mate Pro is a tiny camera that truly sees in the dark

If you have a relatively recent phone, you probably have a dedicated night mode in your camera app. These features have transformed the possibilities for night-time photography, blending multiple images together to create a single bright exposure. But there are limitations to this approach — you have to stay still, for example, and it doesn’t work with video.

The makers of a new camera called the Duovox Mate Pro, which just launched on Kickstarter, are betting that there’s still a place for dedicated low-light hardware. The Mate Pro is a compact camera with a Sony STARVIS 2 CMOS sensor that Duovox claims is a thousand times more sensitive than the sensor in an iPhone 13 Pro and has 148 percent more dynamic range than a Sony A7S III.

S...

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FIFA Plus launches with over 40,000 free soccer matches to watch live

FIFA Plus launches globally today. | Image: FIFA

FIFA launched its free streaming service — named FIFA Plus, of course — that includes a mix of live soccer matches, archived content, original features, and much more. It’s available globally on the web and mobile devices, in five languages (English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish) with more to follow.

The service will stream over 40,000 live matches per year from 100 Member Associations across all six confederations, including 29,000 men’s games and 11,000 women’s matches. FIFA promises to cover a wide range of games from “Europe’s top-flight leagues to previously unserved competitions.” Today, for example, you can stream matches from the Mongolian 2nd League, Nepal Women’s Football League, and 3F Superliga. FIFA says 1,400...

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Thanks, Gwenyth! MoonPay rides celebrity interest to $3.4 billion valuation

UKRAINE - 2021/11/22: In this photo illustration, the MoonPay logo is seen on a smartphone screen and in the background. (Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) | Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

MoonPay, the company that lets consumers pay for digital assets with credit cards, has raised $86.7 million from a who’s who list of celebrities, including Justin Bieber, Jason Derulo, Bruce Willis, Paris Hilton, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Matthew McConaughey. The new round of investment is meant to help propel the company toward its goal of being the PayPal of cryptocurrency. The new investment brings MoonPay’s valuation to $3.4 billion, the company says.

“I realized that the creator economy was going to be a really important part of our business.”

MoonPay is probably best known for its concierge service. To put it simply: MoonPay streamlined the process of buying an NFT ape. Stars who want a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT will often go to MoonPay...

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PlayStation Network experienced an outage on Tuesday

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

PlayStation Network had a bit of a rough patch Tuesday evening. For about 45 minutes, Sony’s PlayStation Network status page showed that all of its services were experiencing issues in some way, which affected things like signing into your account and connecting to PlayStation Now and the PlayStation Store. Now, however, the site is showing that everything is “up and running.”

It’s unclear exactly how widespread the issues were. I personally was able to connect online in Bloodborne and send a message to a colleague, but the PS5’s PlayStation Store was having trouble loading a lot of content. Some others were having more serious issues connecting online, including “error code WS-37469-9,” as shown in this thread on the r/PS5 subreddit. D...

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Yelp will reimburse employees who need to travel to access abortion services

Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Starting next month, Yelp says it will cover the costs of travel if an employee or their dependent needs to leave the state to access abortion services, as first reported by The New York Times. The company employs around 200 people in Texas, where legislators passed the strictest abortion law in the country last September.

The law, called SB 8, outlaws abortions after six weeks, and provides no exception for rape or incest. It also allows private citizens to sue abortion providers, as well as anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion. In line with the new law, a Texas woman was charged with murder over a self-induced abortion earlier this week, although charges have since been dropped.

Yelp says its health insurance already supports...

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Lucid brings a Performance upgrade to its most expensive electric car

Lucid Air Grant Touring Performance with “Aero Sport” rims. | Image: Lucid

Lucid has a new high-performance version of its luxury all-electric sedan. The new Lucid Air Grand Touring Performance announced today (via CNBC) can be selected as a variant via the company’s online configurator, which tops the standard Grand Touring’s 819 horsepower with 1,050.

This new model is actually not the most powerful of Lucid’s Air vehicles — that crown goes to the company’s 1,111 horsepower “Dream Edition” performance model, which is now sold out after a limited edition run. That performance Dream Edition model was touted as the only production electric vehicle to achieve a quarter-mile time under 10 seconds in 2020, which bested Tesla’s quickest Model S available at the time.

This performance model can’t quite beat the Tesla...

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The $750 self-transforming Optimus Prime just got a $750 transforming trailer too

If you’re a ultimate Transformers fan with deep pockets and the willingness to forgive a few big flaws, your dream toy has arrived. One year after introducing a 19-inch tall Optimus Prime robot that can transform itself, pose and even drive thanks to 27 servo motors, its makers at Hasbro and Robosen have made their vision complete — with a brand-new trailer that can also open up, transform, and reveal its own miniature vehicle that rolls right down the ramp.

Image: Robosen

The trailer, all buttoned up.

Let me be clear: it costs $750 for the robotand$750 for the trailer. This is a $1,500 toy all told, and while I greatly enjoyed playing with a walking, talking, posing Optimus Prime with the voice of Peter...

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Here are the best Apple Watch deals right now

Apple’s latest Apple Watch, the Series 7, currently starts at $313 instead of $399, a new all-time low. | 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. And while Apple’s latest wearable offers a slightly larger display and some improvements to durability, it 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. The last-gen model, the Series 6, has...

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YouTube outage blanks out the sidebar, causes problems on TVs and game consoles

If you’ve logged onto YouTube today, you may have noticed that something was off with the homepage: the sidebar that lets you access things like your subscriptions feed, trending videos, and “Library” that keeps your Watch Later list and video history, is missing (though you can access some of the pages by clicking on the links we’ve included). Other problems are cutting off people when trying to cast videos to a smart TV or watch streams from a game console.

The account menu, which lets you switch accounts, manage settings, and view your channel, is also broken. You can still watch videos from your homepage or search, but for people who like to carefully manage their YouTube experience or creators who aren’t logged into the correct...

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Stripe, Alphabet, Meta, Shopify, and McKinsey launch new carbon removal initiative

Climeworks factory with it’s fans in front of the collector, drawing in ambient air and release it, as largely purified CO2 through ventilators at the back is seen at the Hellisheidi power plant near Reykjavik on October 11, 2021. | Photo by HALLDOR KOLBEINS/AFP via Getty Images

Big names in tech and consulting just made a $925 million commitment to purchase captured carbon between now and 2030. The pledge — made byStripe, Alphabet, Meta, Shopify, and McKinsey — marks a big investment in carbon removal technologies.

Their new initiative, called Frontier, is supposed to scale up deployment of the still-emerging tech, while making it more affordable for other companies who are also looking to purchase captured carbon as a way to make up for some of the planet-heating pollution they produce.

The technology is still prohibitively expensive

There are already facilities that can filter that CO2 out of the air, as well as efforts to store CO2 in rock formations or in the ocean once it’s been captured. But the...

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iPhone maker Pegatron halts production at plants in Shanghai and Kunshan due to COVID restrictions

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Pegatron, a Taiwanese company that is one of a few companies that assemble the iPhone, has halted production at two plants in Shanghai and one in Kunshan to comply with the Chinese government’s stringent COVID-19 regulations, according to Nikkei Asia. China has put strict policies in place in response to a recent resurgence of COVID-19 in the country.

The shutdown could have a significant impact on both Pegatron and Apple. Nikkei Asia reports that those Pegatron plants are its only iPhone manufacturing hubs, and Pegatron is responsible for making “roughly” 20 to 30 percent of all iPhones. Pegatron “hopes to resume production soon,” the publication said, though it’s unclear exactly when that might happen.

Apple didn’t immediately reply...

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CNN Plus is reportedly drawing fewer than 10,000 viewers a day

CNN/Warner Media

CNN Plus is reportedly struggling to gain viewers just two weeks out from its launch, according to a report from CNBC. People familiar with the matter told the outlet the platform is only raking in fewer than 10,000 viewers per day.

As CNBC notes, this is a huge dip from the daily viewership of CNN’s cable network, which saw an average of 773,000 viewers per day last year. But, obviously, CNN Plus is still new — CNN’s TV channel has been around for many years, plus it’s (usually) free for anyone with cable or satellite service.

A recent report from Insider doesn’t make these numbers look any better, though. Using data compiled by SensorTower, Insider discovered that the CNN app, which users must download to use CNN Plus, gained just...

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Toyota’s bZ4X all-electric SUV will start at $42,000

Toyota announced that its bZ4X electric SUV will have an MSRP of $42,000 for the base, front-wheel-drive version, with the “Limited” all-wheel-drive version starting at $48,780. The memorably named vehicle is Toyota’s first full EV and will go on sale in “spring, 2022” — though the company’s site notes that availability will be “_extremely_limited” (emphasis Toyota’s) as Toyota struggles to keep up production amidst supply chain constraints.

Toyota says the base model bZ4X has an estimated EPA range of 252 miles — around the same mileage as the $33,500 Chevy Bolt EUV, around 60 miles less than the $40,900 Kia EV6, and about 30 miles more than the $39,700 Hyundai Ioniq 5. It is worth noting that these prices aren’t including destination...

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Anker’s biggest battery pack ever is a 43-pound power station with impressive specs

When the power goes out or you’re visiting the great outdoors with gadgets in tow, you might carry a portable power station — and Anker might have just released the most advanced one yet. The new $1,400 Anker 757 Powerhouse offers 1500W of power and 1229Wh of capacity from a Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) battery, which it promises is faster to charge, longer-lasting, and might even be safer than the lithium-ion battery packs you’ll typically find in the market.

LiFePO4 FTW?

LiFePO4 batteries aren’t anything new in the battery space. You’ll find them in some electric cars because they don’t need to be replaced as often and because they don’t turn into a raging inferno when hundreds or thousands of them are badly damaged in an...

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Persona 5’s incredible soundtrack gets the tribute it deserves in a new EP

The Memento Sessions digital album art, by artist Stephanie Sybydlo. | Image: Scarlet Moon Productions

If there’s one thing fans of Atlus’ RPG series Persona always want, it’s more Persona. Thankfully for them, Arizona-based musician and video game music producer Sean Scharfianski is today releasing a five-song EP of Persona 5 songs to celebrate the five-year anniversary of the game’s worldwide launch.

The collection of songs from Shoji Meguro’s soundtrack is titled The Mementos Sessions: Music from Persona 5, and it features around 19 minutes of 1970s-inspired funk arrangements performed by a variety of session players and vocalists. The tracklist is bookended by “Last Surprise” and “Beneath the Mask,” some of the most beloved songs from the game. Scharfianski also chose some lesser-known tracks that he felt could use more attention and...

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Unlimited Google Photos storage is back... for $15 per month at T-Mobile

A new 2TB Google One plan from T-Mobile includes unlimited original resolution photo and video backup. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

T-Mobile is introducing a new Google One membership option for its customers that revives Google’s unlimited photo storage backup service... for a price, of course. For $15 per month, it includes 2TB of cloud storage, all of the benefits of Google One membership, and unlimited original resolution photo and video backups to Google Photos.

When Google brought its gravy train of free photo storage to a halt in 2021, a weary world sighed and looked for new storage options. Sure, the included 15GB of free storage would be enough for many people, but those of us who take a lot of photos and liked the “set it and forget it” nature of unlimited Google Photos backup would need to pony up for a paid Google One membership sooner or later.

For a...

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Amazon workers made up almost half of all warehouse injuries last year

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon workers only make up a third of US warehouse employees, but in 2021, they suffered 49 percent of the injuries for the entire warehouse industry, according to a report by advocacy group Strategic Organizing Center (or SOC). After analyzing data from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the union coalition found that Amazon workers are twice as likely to be seriously injured than people who work in warehouses for other companies.

The report considers “serious injuries” to be ones where workers either have to take time off to recover or have their workloads reduced, following OSHA’s report classification (pdf) of “cases with days away from work” and “cases with job transfer or restriction.” The data shows that,...

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Elden Ring speedruns are now less than 10 minutes long

Image: Bandai Namco

The latest Elden Ring speedrun world record is less than 10 minutes now. It involves a metronome, absolutely no fighting, and, in the final seconds of the run, a player torn apart by one of the game’s final bosses. It is deeply silly, and I love it.

Distortion2, a popular Soulsbornespeedrunner, has claimed the world record in Elden Ring’s any% unrestricted category with a time of 8 minutes and 56 seconds. I’ve been paying decently close attention to Distortion2 and his Elden Ring speedrunner colleagues, fairly certain of what to expect in this nearly 9-minute speedrun. But I started screaming excitedly in the first seconds of the speedrun when Distortion2 shot out of the starting area and bypassed the grafted scion boss, the mandatory...

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The best wired or wireless gaming headsets to buy

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A few options for each platform

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Apple’s latest iMovie update adds new features to help you create videos more quickly

iMovie 3.0 is available now for iPhone and iPad. | Image: Apple

Apple’s new iMovie 3.0 update for iPhone and iPad has a major new Storyboards feature that’s designed to make it easier to create videos in the app with pre-built templates.

The app will offer 20 different templates covering many video types, “including cooking tutorials, Q&As, product reviews, news reports, and more,” Apple says in a press release. Storyboards will have shot lists, an “illustrative thumbnail,” and suggestions on how to shoot a clip, according to the release.

The new update also adds a feature Apple is calling Magic Movie, which can create videos from photos or images on the fly. “To create a Magic Movie, a user simply selects an album, or any group of photos or images from their library, and Magic Movie instantly...

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Collapsed Amazon warehouse had construction defects, says family of slain worker

Photo by TIM VIZER/AFP via Getty Images

The Amazon warehouse that collapsed with employees inside during a December tornado outbreak might have harbored a “grave violation” of building code that made the structure extremely vulnerable, according to an attorney representing the family of a worker who died there.

A tornado outbreak tore through the Amazon distribution center in Edwardsville, Illinois, on December 10th, leveling parts of the building and killing six people. Supporting columns in parts of the warehouse that collapsed might not have been properly secured to the ground, according to a newly unearthed report filed by a structural engineer who was asked by local officials to assess the damage after the tornado.

“A peg coming out of a hole”

“I became concerned when I...

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Twitter’s new acquisition could help alert you about only the tweets that actually matter

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter announced Tuesday that it has acquired OpenBack, a push notifications company. OpenBack offers “device-side control of push notifications,” according to Twitter’s head of consumer product Jay Sullivan, and Twitter could use the team to pull up timely information even when you're away from the app.

“The best push notifications bring people to the conversations they care about on Twitter,” Sullivan said as part of a Twitter thread. “But irrelevant notifications are a distraction. With millions of people visiting Twitter via notifications every day, we want them to be timely, relevant and engaging.”

“OpenBack and their talented team joining Twitter will help us improve our ability to deliver the right notifications at the right...

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How to flip your monitor from landscape to portrait

When you flip your monitor, you don’t want your content to be sideways. | Photo by Kaitlin Hatton / The Verge

Most of us probably use monitors that are placed in a landscape, or horizontal, configuration — in other words, the top and bottom are wider than the sides. This works fine for most people who are using two or more windows side by side or who are watching videos. But if you’re working on a long document or spreadsheet, or want to keep your Twitter or Slack feed running on a secondary screen, then you may want to try using your monitor in a portrait, or vertical, configuration instead.

If you’re lucky enough to have a monitor on a stand or arm that flips from landscape to portrait, you can have the best of both worlds. But when you flip that monitor, you may find that you’re looking at your Twitter feed sideways. Rather than try to twist...

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