Wyze’s new $40 smart garage door opener uses a camera and QR code

The Wyze Garage Door Controller uses a Wyze Cam v3 and QR code to watch over your garage door. | Image: Wyze

Hot on the heels of its latest smart door lock release, Wyze is launching a garage door controller to manage access for that other way into your home. The Wyze Garage Door Controller launches today and costs $39.99 plus shipping. This gadget lets you control and view your garage door from anywhere using a Wyze Cam v3 and a controller box, so you can see the door while you open or close it remotely using the Wyze app. Instead of using a contact sensor to monitor the state of your door as similar products do, Wyze is deploying some AI tech to its integrated camera to watch your door.

A smart garage door controller is a retrofit device that connects to your existing motorized door opener to let you control it remotely over a Wi-Fi...

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Fiture has a new fitness mirror to compete with Mirror

Image: Fiture

When Mirror debuted its fitness mirror in 2018, it was a unique, space-efficient take on at-home fitness. Since then, several competitors including NordicTrack and Echelon have launched their own versions. Today, another challenger has appeared in the form of the Fiture — a $1,495 interactive connected mirror that offers real-time form feedback, gestures, voice control, and the ability to build custom workouts.

I got the chance to check out the Fiture in person recently, and the device looks, well, like a mirror. It measures 43 inches long and, at 1.3 inches thick, is relatively slim. Aside from a plug in the back, speakers on the sides, and button controls, it looks like any other full-length mirror you’d buy at a furniture store.

L...

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Dell’s Latitude 9330 has a touchpad with Stream Deck buttons

Touchpad! | Image: Dell

Asus is no longer the only big laptop manufacturer doing funky touchpad things: Dell has thrown its Latitude business line into the mix. The new Latitude 9330 has a new “collaboration touchpad” that I’m having trouble seeing as anything other than the trackpad version of a Stream Deck. Simply put, there appears to be a row of LED buttons across the top of the touchpad that access controls for the microphone, camera, chat, and screen-sharing function.

Also of interest is that this laptop is the first 13-inch device of the Latitude 9000 series. The 9000 line, while generally outside of many consumers’ price ranges, is the high-end segment of the Latitude line known for being thin and feature-packed. Business customers looking for flagship...

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The F-150 Lightning is finally shipping — is Ford ready?

Ford CEO Jim Farley and the F-150 Lightning | Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images

Ford CEO Jim Farley knows there’s lots to improve as Ford turns into an EV company

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Jack Dorsey says ‘Elon is the singular solution I trust’ for Twitter’s future

Photo by MARCO BELLO/AFP via Getty Images

You know what, I’m into it. Let’s go full, unkempt beard for this one. The Gen-Xers are online and they are posting Radiohead on main.

https://t.co/jeNtFyRrpR

— jack⚡️ (@jack) April 26, 2022

It did fill me with nostalgia to see Twitter co-founder, former CEO, and newly-minted “Block Head” Jack Dorsey post Radiohead’s “Everything In Its Right Place” (he linked to niche music service Tidal, which is owned by Block) like he was setting an early-2000s AIM status about soon-to-be-Twitter-owner Elon Musk, who is one of the site’s more prolific users. Musk is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, which make cars and rockets, respectively. He also founded a company, Neuralink, to implant devices in people’s heads.

The idea and service is all...

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Nintendo’s animated Super Mario Bros. movie is delayed until next spring, still stars Chris Pratt

Image: Nintendo

During a Nintendo Direct event last fall, the company revealed a release date for the animated Super Mario Bros. movie that it’s making with Minions animation studio Illumination. Now the company has revealed that the movie will not hit theaters on December 21st as planned and instead will be released in the spring of 2023.

A tweet credited to Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto says that after consulting with co-producer Chris Meledandri, the new release dates for the Super Mario Bros. film are April 28th in Japan and April 7th in North America. The tweet did not offer an explanation of how Chris Pratt will portray Mario, a title, or answer any of the other questions we’ve had since this project was announced in 2018.

This is Miyamoto....

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Biden wants to give state and local police access to drone-tracking tech

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge

President Biden’s administration called for Congress’s help in letting more law enforcement agencies access drone tracking systems on Monday. In recent months, government use of counter-drone systems has become more controversial after a Ukrainian government official asked drone-maker DJI to cut off Russia’s access to its AeroScope drone location system.

The White House’s outline of what it calls the “Domestic Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems National Action Plan” called for Congress to “reauthorize” the authority to track drones given to organizations like the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Defense, and State. (The plan also notes that the CIA and NASA also have limited authorities.) The statement also asks Congress to give...

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What Twitter employees are saying about Elon Musk

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

In the moments before Elon Musk bought Twitter, the company’s Slack channels were lit up with nervous anticipation. It had been days since Twitter leadership had shared anything with them, and after a weekend’s worth of reports that a sale was imminent, employees were looking for answers.

For the first few hours of the morning, none came. Work all but came to a halt, employees told me. Like a classroom where the teacher is late and students are attempting to self-govern, one said. A “hellhole,” said another. One thread, in which an employee asked good-naturedly whether anyone was excited about the prospect of working for Musk, drew dozens of responses, many of them quite ugly.

Then, just before the markets closed, the news arrived: the...

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You can now set a lock screen for your Steam Deck

Here’s what a Steam Deck lock screen looks like. | Image: Valve

Valve’s newest Steam Deck update adds a lock screen to the handheld gaming PC, the company announced Monday. The change means you can now set a PIN when you wake the device from sleep, which could prevent people from accessing your device who shouldn’t be. After you’ve installed the update, you can turn on the lock screen and set a PIN in the Steam Deck’s settings menu from a new Security tab.

The update also adds a handful of other welcome changes. The achievements page has gotten a “refresh,” and Valve says it’s now “faster to load and easier to navigate.” There are localized keyboards for 21 languages and layouts, and you can enable multiple keyboards at the same time, though Valve notes that it’s “currently working” on keyboards for...

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Jeff Bezos is already testing Elon Musk’s commitment to free speech by trolling

Blue Origin

Just before Twitter announced it’s accepting Elon Musk’s $44 buyout bid, the world’s richest man tweeted, “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.”

His commitment is getting a mild test thanks to a fellow tech billionaire / rocket enthusiast / media mogul. Jeff Bezos quoted a New York Times reporter’s tweet pointing out that Tesla’s business interests in China could give the government leverage over Twitter via its new owner, saying, “Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?.”

Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square? https://t.co/jTiEnabP6T

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) A...

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China announces plans for a new asteroid-deflecting mission

An illustration of NASA’s DART spacecraft just before it hits Dimorphos | NASA

China’s space agency plans to send a spacecraft to slam into an asteroid, knocking it into a new — and hopefully safer — orbit. The prospective new mission will launch within the next four years, and was announced on Sunday by Wu Yanhua, deputy director of the China National Space Administration, according to Global Times, a state-run news outlet.

The country hasn’t yet determined which asteroid to target. The mission was announced as one part of a larger new planetary defense effort, which will seek to catalog and monitor near-Earth asteroids, especially those that might pose a threat to our planet. The effort would include a new warning system as well. Eventually, the plan is to identify an asteroid that might threaten Earth, and send...

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BioWare might be the next game studio with unionized workers in its midst

The workers are employed by Keywords Studios. | Image: BioWare

A group of staffers working for a company that supports BioWare, the studio behind hits like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, are taking the first steps toward possible unionization.

The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Canada Union, Local No. 401 has applied to become the “certified bargaining agent” for a group of staffers at Keywords Studios, which offers game development support services for things like making art and doing localization and QA testing. On its website, Keywords Studios lists many recognizable video gaming companies as clients, including BioWare owner EA, Microsoft, Nintendo, Ubisoft, Square Enix, and Sega.

According to a notice from the Alberta Labour Relations Board that was shared on Reddit, the group seeking...

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Google’s not being very subtle with its wearables push

2022 is a big year for Google’s wearable efforts | Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge

After a massive Pixel Watch leak this past weekend, you’d think that maybe Google would relax on the wearables front. Nope. With Google I/O just weeks away, a video teasing Google Assistant on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 has popped up on YouTube, and Google-owned Fitbit has officially started rolling out passive atrial fibrillation alerts on its suite of devices.

We’ve known that Google Assistant was coming to the Galaxy Watch 4 (and therefore Wear OS 3) for months. The only thing we haven’t really known is when, but it seems like the wait is coming to an end. There was a false alarm last week when Verizon jumped the gun with an update log that suggested Google Assistant support had been included in the latest round of Galaxy Watch 4...

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Pony.ai is the first autonomous car company with a taxi license in China

Image: Pony.ai

Pony.ai has received a license to operate its autonomous taxi service in China, making it the first company to win the country’s approval (via Reuters). Starting in May, the Toyota-backed robotaxi service will operate 100 autonomous vehicles in the Nansha district of Guangzhou, and will later expand to serve other portions of the city.

Pony.ai says riders can hail and pay for rides from the company’s app between 8:30AM to 10:30PM, and that its fares will align with the “standard taxi pricing” in Guangzhou. The autonomous vehicles will also have a driver present in the car for safety purposes, but plans to remove them over a “short to intermediate time frame.”

In November, the Chinese startup gained approval — but not a license — to...

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Sennheiser’s Momentum True Wireless 3 earbuds have a fresh design and better ANC

Image: Sennheiser

Ever since the original pair’s debut back in 2018, Sennheiser’s Momentum True Wireless earbuds have received heaps of praise for their sound quality. After releasing a sequel in 2020, Sennheiser is announcing the third product in the series today — and this time, they’ve been given a substantial redesign. They’ll be available starting May 10th in black, graphite, and white for $249.95.

The Momentum True Wireless 3 buds look closer to the CX and CX Plus True Wireless than they do their direct predecessors. Clearly, Sennheiser has settled on a universal design language of sorts for its earbud lineup, and that’s reflected here. The Momentums do give off a sleeker and more premium impression than the company’s cheaper buds.

...

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Twitter CEO tells employees no layoffs planned ‘at this time’ following Elon Musk buyout

Photo Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal didn’t have many concrete answers for staff about what will happen once Elon Musk takes over the company later this year. During a virtual all-hands call Monday, hours after the company announced it had agreed to be bought by Musk for $44 billion, Agrawal fielded questions on the future of his job, the company’s board, and possible layoffs.

Layoffs aren’t planned “at this time,” Agrawal said, according to a person who heard the remarks and who asked to remain anonymous. Agrawal also said that he’d remain as CEO until the deal’s close, but he didn’t comment about what would happen after that. The company’s board will dissolve once the deal closes, said Brett Taylor, the board’s independent chair.

“We don’t have...

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The latest version of color E Ink brings us closer to the perfect tablet

E Ink / The Verge

E Ink has a new version of color electronic paper, and while it isn’t as pretty as an OLED or possessing the new tech sheen of stuff like mini- and microLED, E Ink Gallery 3 sure is easy on the eyes. Gallery 3 isn’t quite as fast as the E Ink found in your Kindle, but it has some absolutely stellar upgrades compared to previous versions of the Gallery technology and brings us a whole lot closer to a color E Ink screen that big companies like Amazon might actually risk putting in a tablet.

Currently, a handful of companies are making color E Ink tablets based on E Ink’s other color technology, Kaleido. Those include the PocketBook Color (really neat!) and the Boox Nova3 Color (cooler in theory than in practice). Kaleido was E Ink’s...

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How Elon Musk and Twitter can really fix free speech: act like a messaging app

Illustration by Alex Castro

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated” is how Elon Musk explained why he spent $44 billion to acquire Twitter.

♥️ Yesss!!! ♥️ pic.twitter.com/0T9HzUHuh6

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022

That phrase — “digital town square” — has a long and messy history in social networking. Facebook and others have proven that throwing millions or billions of people into a single unfettered space is a mostly impossible and mostly terrible idea. But maybe we’ve just been defining it wrong. In reality, a town square isn’t a place where everyone stands in a crowd and yells at each other while advertisers throw things at them....

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Microsoft is finally adding Teams to its own store

Image: Microsoft

You’ll soon be able to download Microsoft Teams from the Microsoft Store that comes built into Windows, according to a roadmap update from the company, as spotted by Neowin. Yes, you read that right. Microsoft’s work communications app hasn’t been available on its own store up to this point; it either had to be downloaded from the web or installed alongside the rest of Office 365. (Though, as ZDNet notes, it was available at one point on the store exclusively for people using Windows 10 in S mode, which restricted where you could install software from.)

According to the roadmap, Teams will be available on the store sometime next month for both Windows 10 and 11. The version for Windows 10 will be usable with personal, work, and school...

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Warner Bros. and J.J. Abrams are working on a live-action Hot Wheels movie

Image: Mattel

J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot is partnering up with Warner Bros. for a live-action Hot Wheelsmovie, yet another sign that Mattel is getting quite serious about the filmmaking business.

Today, Warner Bros. and Mattel Films announced that Bad Robot has signed on to produce a live-action Hot Wheels feature film described in a press release as a showcase of “some of the world’s hottest and sleekest cars, monster trucks and motorcycles.” Speaking about the collaboration, Mattel Films’ executive producer Robbie Brenner did not provide any plot details but did allude to the new project being aimed at a broad swath of the Hot Wheels fanbase.

“As the global leader in car culture, Hot Wheels has been igniting the challenger spirit in auto enthusiasts...

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The most advanced mobile hotspot yet has C-band 5G, Wi-Fi 6E, and 2.5Gbps ethernet

Netgear and AT&T are introducing the most impressive mobile hotspot I’ve ever seen: a four-inch puck that promises to turn the newest, fastest flavors of 5G and Wi-Fi into speedy internet for your laptops, tablets, and even wired PCs.

It’s called the Netgear Nighthawk M6 Pro, and at $459.99, it ain’t cheap. But it’s a leap over its predecessors in practically every way. Not only is it one of the first hotspots with both actually useful C-band 5G frequencies and speedy-but-spotty mmWave but also AT&T says it’s the first with Wi-Fi 6E for 3.6Gbps wireless transfer speeds. It’s also got a 2.5Gbps ethernet jack for wired gadgets where its predecessor maxed out at gigabit wired speeds.

Oh, and it’s got a USB 3.2 Type-C port for charging and...

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Trump says he won’t leave Truth Social, despite Musk’s Twitter takeover

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Even if Elon Musk could reinstate former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, Trump will not be returning to the platform — at least that’s what he told Fox Newson Monday.

Rather than tweeting from his formerly favored platform, Trump assured Foxthat he would officially start posting “truths” to his new social media app, Truth Social, over the next few days.

“I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on TRUTH,” Trump told Fox News on Monday. “I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on TRUTH.”

Trump’s announcement comes moments after Musk won a bid to take Twitter private at $54.20 a share. For nearly two weeks, Musk has been maneuvering to purchase the...

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The PlayStation 5 will be available directly through Sony at 4:30PM ET

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Sony’s storefront will have the PlayStation 5 console available for purchase starting at 4:30PM ET today, so time is running out before the waiting room flips into a queue for the hotly in-demand console. We expect that the store will stock both the $499.99 version of the PlayStation 5 that features a disc drive, as well as the $399.99 digital version that lacks one. We also expect that this restock will sell out just as quickly as the others.

PS5 restocks, while popping up here and there, have been a rarity compared to purchase opportunities for other tech products that were hard to find as little as a few months ago. Things like Nvidia and AMD GPUs have slowly become easier to find in-stock, as have Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and the N...

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Apple hires anti-union lawyers in escalating union fight

Apple is working with anti-union lawyers at Littler Mendelson in an escalating fight with retail workers in Atlanta who have filed for a union election. Though the company has not publicly stated its stance on Apple Stores unionizing, the move sends a strong signal that it plans to oppose workers organizing for better pay and working conditions.

Littler is currently representing Starbucks in its efforts to fight off worker organizing. It previously helped McDonald’s avoid responsibility in a 2014 case that alleged the company, as a joint employer, violated labor laws by retaliating against workers who participated in the Fight for $15 campaign.

“From the start I’ve thought unionization was a good thing,” said one current retail...

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Brooklyn Public Library is offering free digital library cards to young adults in the US

The Brooklyn Public Library just announced its “Books Unbanned” initiative. | Photo by Sergi Reboredo / VW PICS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

The Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) is counteracting a ban on certain books by letting anyone in the US aged 13 to 21 apply for a digital library card. This gives teens and young adults, regardless of their location in the United States, access to the library’s entire ebook collection.

The initiative, called Books Unbanned, is fighting what the BPL describes as an “increasingly coordinated and effective effort to remove books tackling a wide range of topics from library shelves.” According to the American Library Association (ALA), a total of 729 books were challenged in 2021, meaning a person or group attempted to ban these titles from public libraries.

BPL is combating the negative impact of increased censorship and book bans in...

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Sony’s PS5 variable refresh rate feature begins rolling out this week

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Sony will begin rolling out support for the Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) feature for the PS5 via an update released this week, the company announced Monday.

“On HDMI 2.1 VRR-compatible TVs and PC monitors, VRR dynamically syncs the refresh rate of the display to the PS5 console’s graphical output,” Sony’s Hideaki Nishino said in a blog post. “This enhances visual performance for PS5 games by minimizing or eliminating visual artifacts, such as frame pacing issues and screen tearing.” The feature will be available globally.

A handful of games will get VRR support “in the coming weeks,” according to Nishino’s blog:

• Astro’s Playroom
• Call of Duty: Vanguard
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
• Destiny 2
• Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition
• Dirt 5
• G...

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Elon Musk and the $43 billion bid: all of the updates about his takeover of Twitter

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

What’s next for Twitter and Elon Musk?

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Knotwords mashes Wordle with crossword puzzles

For years, designer Zach Gage has been enamored with the works of famed Japanese game publisher Nikoli. The company is best known for popularizing sudoku, and is renowned for its minimalist takes on puzzles like nonograms (which Nintendo fans might recognize as Picross). For Gage, creating that kind of clean, straightforward, and accessible puzzle was a long sought-after goal. He describes it as a “kind of obsession,” one that “feels like a really great design challenge because it’s so hard to do.” He tried plenty of ideas but eventually landed on a solution: the humble crossword.

This week Gage and partner Jack Schlesinger are releasing Knotwords on iOS, Android, Mac, and PC. It’s a game built on the premise that the most interesting...

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How to opt out of Venmo’s new arbitration clause

Image: Venmo

If you use the Venmo app, you probably recently received an email explaining that the company is making changes to its user agreement — including a fairly onerous arbitration clause that, among other things, has you agree that you will not become part of any kind of class action suit. You can opt out of it, but it’s not easy.

We’ll tell you how you can opt out — but first, a little info about arbitration clauses.

Arbitration clauses have become extremely popular in agreements between companies and consumers. (For example, here’s a 2019 article explaining how to opt out of the arbitration clause that emerged when Apple added a credit card.) It’s not surprising. When you agree to arbitration, you are basically putting most of the...

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Twitter accepts buyout, giving Elon Musk total control of the company

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Twitter has accepted Elon Musk’s offer to purchase the company for $44 billion, the company announced in a press release today. Musk purchased the company at $54.20 a share, the same price named in his initial offer on April 14th.

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” said Musk in a statement included with the release. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy”

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal also applauded the deal in...

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