Google parent Alphabet’s Q1 profits dropped by more than $1 billion compared to 2021

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

After a record-breaking 2021 with annual revenue of $257 billion — the first time it has gone over $200 billion for a year — Google’s parent company reports in a filing (pdf) that it has started off 2022 with Q1 revenue that’s up 23 percent from the same period last year, reaching $68 billion.

However, with expenses up compared to 2021, its net profit actually dropped to $16.4 billion compared to last year’s $17.9 billion.

Google’s search business brought in $39 billion, up significantly over the Q1 2021 result of $31 billion. The overall advertising business, including Search, YouTube, and its various ad networks, managed to pull in $54 billion in the first quarter alone.

YouTube advertising revenue was also up, reaching $6.86 billion,...

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Sega is pulling the vast majority of classic Sonic games from digital stores

Sonic 3 & Knuckles will be among the games dropped from stores. | Image: Steam

Sega is going to “delist the digital versions of” Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and Sonic CD starting on May 20th, according to a press release posted to multiple sites (via The Gamer). The announcement is extremely light on details. (You could read it faster than a speedrunner could do Green Hill Zone 1), but it does mention that the games being pulled will be featured in the upcoming Sonic Origins collection.

Currently, this mostly seems like an issue for PC players. The games aren’t available individually on the PlayStation Store, and only 2 and CD are available to purchase separately on the Xbox. All the games, however, are available on Steam. Sega says you’ll be able to buy the Sega Ages versions of Sonic 1 and 2 on...

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Watch SpaceX launch its latest crew of astronauts to the space station for NASA

In the early morning hours, SpaceX is set to launch its seventh crewed mission to orbit, this time sending three NASA astronauts and an Italian astronaut to the International Space Station. Their launch will spark the beginning of a six-month stay on board the ISS, part of SpaceX’s commitment to NASA to periodically fly astronauts to and from the orbiting lab.

The mission, called Crew-4, is SpaceX’s fourth operational human spaceflight mission to the ISS for NASA. The company has been flying NASA astronauts to the space station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, an initiative to use privately made spacecraft to ferry crews to low Earth orbit. SpaceX launched its first crew to the ISS on the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft...

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How to type special characters on a Windows 11 PC

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge

Here’s the situation: you’re typing a report for work, and you suddenly have to write the phrase “Jones née Berkowitz.” Or you are adding a phrase in Spanish and need to use the word “años.” How do you add the special characters to the letters with your Windows 11 PC?

Special characters (also known as diacritical marks) may be more common in certain languages, but there are plenty of circumstances in which English speakers may need to use them. But because they are so rare in English, native English speakers may not have learned how to add those marks to documents, emails, or other writings. It’s not difficult to add them to your Windows document, although it’s not quite as smooth an operation as on a Mac, where all you have to do is...

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Microsoft rides the cloud, Office and Windows to sustained growth in Q3 2022

Microsoft’s third quarter 2022 financial results are here, and the company’s posting double-digit growth yet again: revenue of $49.4 billion and net income of $16.7 billion. Revenue is up 18 percent, and the profit represents an 8 percent jump year over year. Microsoft is crediting a chunk of this quarter’s growth to the cloud, with server and cloud services revenue up 29 percent specifically, and Microsoft Cloud up 32 percent to $23.4 billion.

There was plenty of reason to suspect Microsoft would still sport a smile this quarter. While the PC industry has started to decline from its pandemic highs, it was flagging Chromebook sales — not Microsoft Windows machines — that were responsible for the entirety of the recent dip. Meanwhile, the...

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Wearables are too expensive for groups underrepresented in medical research

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Most people who use smartwatches and other wearable devices that can track health are white, well-educated, and wealthy. That’s not because other groups aren’t interested in using the devices to keep tabs on their fitness, heart rate, or other metrics, according to a new study. It’s just that the cost of these devices is too high. That leaves lower-income groups and racial minority groups excludedfrom research studies that use wearable data.

The study was conducted by researchers at the All of Us Research Program, an initiative at the National Institutes of Health aiming to build a health database that’s representative of the United States. The team is purposefully seeking to include groups historically underrepresented in medical...

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Subaru’s Solterra EV starts at $44,995

Subaru is sticking to its outdoorsy roots when marketing the Solterra. | Image: Subaru

Subaru has announced the pricing of its first all-electric vehicle, the Solterra SUV. The vehicle, which comes standard with all-wheel drive like most Subarus, will start at $44,995, with the “Limited” and “Touring” trims starting at $48,495 and $51,995, respectively. All models will have an extra $1,225 destination and delivery charge, bumping their cost out the door up a bit more.

The Solterra will have an “up to a 228-mile” range, according to Subaru, and will be able to charge 80 percent of its battery in under an hour. While the Limited and Touring models add features like roof rails, wireless charging, and a glass roof, there’s currently not an option to add more range to the vehicle — something that many other manufacturers offer.

...

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Go read this report about the virtual doctors at an NFT clinic who can’t legally give medical advice

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

If combining NFTs with the medical industry doesn’t sound the most logical, this report from BuzzFeed News will likely confirm your skepticism. An NFT project called MetaDocs assigns doctors / influencers, like Dr. Pimple Popper, to (somewhat unsightly) cartoon personifications of themselves, which users can then purchase to gain access to one-on-one conversations, question-and-answer sessions, or DMs.

But despite MetaDocs’ goal of cutting the “red tape” that comes with gaining access to doctors, the MetaDocs themselves aren’t legally able to give medical advice to NFT holders. As BuzzFeed points out, MetaDocs doesn’t have a license to practice telemedicine, barring its doctors from giving medical advice, writing prescriptions, or...

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The future is increasingly a disaster zone, new report warns

HUNGA TONGA-HUNGA HA’APAI, TONGA – DECEMBER 24, 2021: In this image 2. of a series created on January 19, 2022, Maxar overview satellite imagery shows the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano on December 24, 2021, | Photo by Maxar via Getty Images

Catastrophe has become more commonplace, according to data from a new United Nations report. Not only that, but humans are largely responsible for the increasing number of disasters, which are only going to become even more frequent, the report warns.

Looking back, from 1970 to 2000, the world averaged between 90 and 100 disasters reported per year, according to the report published today by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). That grew tremendously from 2001 to 2020, to between 350 to 500 disasters a year.

That includesdisasters caused by hazards like earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, extreme weather, crop plagues, epidemics, and more (the UN counted biological, geophysical, and weather...

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How to get into the Overwatch 2 beta

Blizzard Entertainment

Happy Overwatch 2 Beta Day! As many players awake to find the golden beta ticket in their inboxes, there will inevitably be those who are left without one. But take heart, heroes, for Blizzard has designed a way by which you can earn an invite to what is, essentially, Overwatch 2’s soft-launch day.

For today only, anyone who connects their Battle.net account to their Twitch profile and watches at least four hours of Overwatch 2 from a list of streamers can earn access to the OW2 beta. You can find the list of approved streamers here.

In the beta, players will be able to check out the 33rd hero Sojourn, all the new hero updates, the brand-new Push game mode, and the five vs. five rework. Unfortunately, the beta is limited to PC players...

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Apple releases fix for Studio Display webcam in latest macOS beta

The Studio Display’s camera quality was a mess upon release. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

When we reviewed Apple’s $1,599 Studio Display one thing immediately jumped out: its built-in webcam is bad. At the time, Apple told us that an update to improve the camera would be forthcoming, and now it appears to be here. Apple spokesperson Jennie Orphanopoulos tells The Verge that “an update to the Studio Display firmware is now available with today’s beta release of macOS Monterey 12.4. This beta update has refinements to the Studio Display camera tuning, including improved noise reduction, contrast, and framing.”

Developers are able to install the Monterey 12.4 beta now; everyone else will be able to install it from Apple’s public beta program later today.

Will the improvements to the camera be enough to make your average Zoom...

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The tough-as-nails game Sifu is getting difficulty modes

Sifu, the tough martial arts game released earlier this year, will be getting difficulty modes on May 3rd as part of a major content update, developer Sloclap announced Tuesday. The game had received some criticism for its challenging difficulty, so, hopefully, the new modes will make the game more approachable.

As part of the May 3rd update, the game will get “student,” “disciple,” and “master” difficulties, though it’s unclear exactly how the modes will be tuned in comparison to one another. If I had to guess, though, they translate to “easy,” “medium,” and “hard” modes.

I was a big fan of the game’s difficulty at launch. It was hard, but I loved going through the game’s levels multiple times to improve. When I defeated the game’s...

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Android 13’s beta is no longer just for developers

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

The first public beta of Android 13 is now available for anyone with a compatible Pixel device to download and try out, the search giant announced today. Its release comes ahead of Google’s annual developer conference next month when the company is expected to fully detail its plans for the update — due for release later this year.

For end users, the most interesting features are those that have already appeared in Android 13’s initial two developer previews. There’s support for Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) Audio, a new photo picker that lets you restrict which of your photos an app is able to access, new app icon theming options, and a new permission that could cut down on notification spam.

Image: Google

Apps will...

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Instagram is testing pinned grid posts

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Instagram is testing a feature that would let users pin posts to their profile grid, according to TechCrunch.

The feature, which is currently live only for some as part of the test, allows users to highlight specific posts at the top of their profile grid. Similar to pinned tweets on Twitter or pinned videos on TikTok, highlighting individual Instagram posts at the top of a profile would allow creators to draw attention to content without asking followers to scroll down through past posts to look for it.

Meta confirmed to TechCrunch that it’s testing a new feature that lets users “feature posts on their profile.” It appears the feature has been in the works for a few months, having been spotted in January by reverse engineer Alessandro...

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Save up to $200 on the Samsung S22 lineup at Best Buy and Amazon

Every color and configuration of Samsung’s S22 is currently on sale. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

If you’re looking to upgrade your smartphone, you’re in luck. Both Best Buy and Amazon have discounted the entire Samsung Galaxy S22 lineup, with some models getting up to $200 knocked off their original price. This offer applies to all unlocked models of Samsung’s latest smartphone, regardless of the configuration. This either matches or beats the best prices we’ve seen for the S22 line, and we consider this an excellent deal on what we consider the default Android phones to buy. Read our reviews of the S22 and S22 Plus.

Kicking things off with the standard model of the S22, the 128GB model is currently available at Amazon and Best Buy for $699.99, as opposed to its usual retail price of $799.99. The base model of this 6.1-inch phone...

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Elon Musk’s Twitter plans are a huge can of worms

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Let’s break it down

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Here are some great games to sideload onto your Playdate

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

If you’ve managed to get your hands on a Playdate or have one on the way, you’re guaranteed a full “season” of 24 games delivered to your device over the span of 12 weeks. And there are some great ones included — check out my full Playdate review for a round-up of my favorites. But there’s also more to the device than just those games, thanks to sideloading. Playdate maker Panic has made it very easy to get games onto your device. You can check out the process here, but essentially, you just need to download a file — usually from somewhere like Itch.io — and then either load it onto your device via USB or load them wirelessly by adding them to your account on the Playdate website.

It’s a pretty painless process, and there are already...

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Drop’s new mechanical keyboard keycaps are a different take on a familiar design

Drop’s new white-on-black DCX keycaps. | Image: Drop

There’s a new keycap style in town: DCX

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YouTube’s tipping feature is now available to more creators

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube is expanding its Super Thanks tipping program, giving more creators another way to monetize their presence on the platform.

Super Thanks, which allows fans to send creators tips directly on videos, was previously in beta since being announced last year. Tip amounts vary between $2 and $50, and fans can include a custom comment when they send creators money. The program is now open to all eligible YouTube Partner creators in 68 countries, the company announced in a blog post.

YouTube has introduced a variety of ways creators can monetize interactions with fans and viewers. In addition to Super Thanks, a feature called Super Chat allows livestream audience members to pay to have their comment pinned in the accompanying chat. With...

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Reddit is spending $1 million to fund its users’ best ideas and competitions

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Reddit is expanding its Community Funds program, the company announced this week, and it plans to spend $1 million funding various projects across the platform. “We will invite communities to submit ideas for projects, events, contests, giving, almost anything you can think of to bring people together for inspiration and delight,” the company said in its announcement. Projects can ask for between $1,000 and $50,000, and Reddit will start issuing grants in June.

In a way, this is Reddit’s version of the creator funds that Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Spotify, and, well, pretty much everybody has been offering to people using their platforms. And, in that sense, Reddit’s commitment here is pretty small: Facebook pledged to spend...

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Google Play Store’s app privacy labels start appearing

Google Play’s new safety section. | Image: Google

Google is rolling out a new safety section in the Play Store designed to show users more detail about the data apps collect and how it is used, the company has announced. The section will be gradually rolling out for users over the coming weeks, and app developers have until July 20th to add the information to their listings — so the section may not immediately appear for everyone. The initiative was first announced last year.

According to Google, the section is an attempt to give users more information and context. It’ll list the data each developer is collecting, if they share it, and their security practices (such as whether they encrypt the data while in transit). There will also be information on whether a developer follows Google...

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Panic isn’t sure if people will like the Playdate’s seasonal model

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Panic has just begun shipping the Playdate, its unusual new gaming handheld. Part of the Playdate’s appeal is its quirky hardware: in an era where new handhelds have glorious OLED screens or are powerful enough to play your library of Steam games, the Playdate is a tiny device that has a crank and can only display games in black and white. But the Playdate is also interesting because of its “season” release model for games.

Everyone who purchases a Playdate will get access to a full season of 24 games, though you won’t be able to play all of them right away. Instead, you’ll get two games when you first set up the device, and after that, Panic will send you two new games on Mondays in an almost TV show-like release cadence.

“I think I...

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Something sinister is lurking in The Essex Serpent’s first trailer

Claire Danes as Cora Seaborne and Tom Hiddleston as Will Ransome. | Apple

Author Sarah Perry’s 2016 novel The Essex Serpentis a story about a fictional village descending into madness as more and more people become convinced that there’s a mythical beast lurking in the nearby waters. But The Essex Serpent also revolved around a complicated romance that Apple seems keen on exploring in its upcoming adaptation of the book — at least judging from the first trailer.

The Essex Serpent follows as Cora Seaborne (Claire Danes) and her companion Martha (Hayley Squires) journey to the fictional village of Aldwinter in pursuit of Cora’s dream to become a paleontologist following the sudden death of her abusive husband. While local tales of a massive primordial serpent capable of causing earthquakes are cause for alarm...

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How to reset your Apple Watch passcode

You can reset your Apple Watch passcode from the wrist or on your phone. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

When you set up a passcode on your Apple Watch, you’ll ideally pick one that you can easily remember. However, mishaps happen to the best of us. Maybe you needed to change up your usual passcode for security reasons and plumb forgot the new one. Perhaps you’re booting it up for the first time in a while and didn’t remember setting one up to begin with. In my case, I wore my Apple Watch to bed and vaguely remember taking it off in the middle of the night. When I tried to unlock it this morning, I was instead greeted by a message saying I had entered in one too many wrong passcodes.

Regardless of the reason, getting locked out of your Apple Watch is no fun. Thankfully, this is an easy problem to fix.

Photo by Victoria...

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Roku Channel deal with Lionsgate will bring John Wick 4, Borderlands to free streaming

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Roku has signed a multiyear deal with Lionsgate to exclusively offer the studio’s theatrical releases for free on its ad-supported Roku Channel immediately after their showing on Starz, starting with its 2022 release slate. It includes films like John Wick: Chapter 4, The Expendables 4, Borderlands, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, and more, which will be available on the channel in two separate windows. The second window will be nonexclusive, however, so the Roku Channel will be the first place viewers can see the films for free.

“This agreement affirms the great demand for first-run studio movies across a broad array of platforms,” said Jim Packer, the president of worldwide television distribution at Lionsgate. “This partnership...

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Government surveillance, Elon Musk, and free speech, with EFF executive director Cindy Cohn

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

On the frontier of fighting the NSA

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Samsung’s T7 Shield is a more durable version of its portable USB-C SSD

Samsung

Samsung has announced the T7 Shield USB-C portable SSD, which, by all accounts, has the same internal hardware as the T7 but with a more rugged design that endows it with IP65 water and dust resistance. The grippy rubber coating inherently makes it better at deflecting scuffs and scratches than the metal design of the T7, and it boasts better drop resistance of up to 9.8 feet. And, thanks to that rubber, Samsung says it can maintain high performance, transferring up to 2TB of data without triggering its Dynamic Thermal Guard feature that throttles data transfer speeds to safeguard the hardware.

The T7 Shield is available starting today in 1TB and 2TB configurations, priced at $143.99 and $260.99, respectively. It has the same transfer...

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The Black Shark 4 Pro is all-in on gamer stereotypes

Gaming phones have resorted to babes

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How to use a Google Nest Hub as a digital picture frame

Display your photos on your Google Nest Hub. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Google’s family of Nest Hub smart displays can do a lot of things: control your smart home devices; show you a feed of your video doorbell; play YouTube videos; double as a digital cookbook; and even track your sleep for you. But they also make excellent digital photo displays.

There are many digital picture frames out there, but what sets Google’s apart is the auto-adjustment feature that makes your digital pictures look like a printed image in a frame rather than a digital image on a computer screen. The Nest Hubs are also really easy to use — all you need is a free Google Photos account. And, starting at $100, they’re some of the least expensive options out there.

Google also has a feature called Live Albums that will automatically...

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Joe Rogan says he got a subscriber bump from all the controversy

Photo by Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images

Well hi, everyone, I hope we’re all relaxed and ready for a very calm, very normal week. I know I’m certainly ready to stay focused on my own projects and not get wildly distracted by the whims of billionaires with money to burn. Wish me luck.

Joe Rogan “gained two million subscribers” from recent controversy

From the department of any press is good press: Joe Rogan says the recent firestorm around his ongoing vaccine misinformation and past use of a racial slur only added to his fan base. “It’s interesting, my subscriptions went up massively — that’s what’s crazy,” Rogan said on an episode Friday, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “During the height of it all, I gained 2 million subscribers.”

The Reporter adds that, according to...

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