The iPod is dead, but the podcast lives on

The back of a seventh-generation iPod Nano. | Photo: Sean O’Kane

Pour one out for the iPod, the beautiful little gadget of my teenage dreams. While Apple finally discontinued the last iPod model this week, the “pod” lives on in the digital audio medium we all love and obsess over.

The iPod was never really the format where the podcast flourished (that would be the smartphone), but at the time podcasts were getting started, the iPod was pretty much the only game in town. In 2004, the iPod controlled 60 percent of the total MP3 player market. It was the default option for listening to audio shows on the go, if an inelegant one.

In 2004, the iPod dominated the MP3 market

“It was a terrible experience,” says Leo Laporte, founder of early digital audio outlet This Week in Tech (TwiT) and host of radio...

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The Aya Neo 2 and Aya Neo Slide have specs that could challenge the Steam Deck

The Aya Neo 2 is the successor to the Aya Neo. | Image: Aya Neo

Handheld maker Aya Neo is adding the Aya Neo 2 and Aya Neo Slide to its lineup of portable PC gaming devices, both of which are set to come with an upgraded Ryzen 7 6800U chip and a Radeon 680M integrated GPU with RDNA 2 graphics, according to a report from Liliputing. The Radeon 680M iGPU is capable of pushing 3.38 teraflops, more than double the 1.6 teraflops delivered by the Steam Deck.

As pointed out by Tom’s Hardware, the Ryzen 7 6800 APU (accelerated processing unit) comes with eight cores and runs on the faster Zen 3 plus architecture. It also comes with the integrated Radeon 680M iGPU, which has 12 compute units (CUs). For comparison, the Steam Deck has a quad-core AMD APU that runs on the older Zen 2 architecture and an iGPU...

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Former eBay executive pleads guilty to harassment campaign involving live insects

David Harville was eBay’s former director of global resiliency.

eBay’s former director of global resiliency, David Harville, pleaded guilty to taking part in a bizarre harassment campaign, which involved sending live cockroaches, spiders, a bloody pig face mask, and other strange items to a Massachusetts couple (via The Guardian). Harville is the last of seven eBay employees to plead guilty to harassing and stalking the pair.

In 2020, the Department of Justice (DOJ) charged former eBay employees Harville, James Baugh, Stephanie Popp, Brian Gilbert, Stephanie Stockwell, Veronica Zea, and Philip Cooke with devising a harassment campaign targeting Ina and David Steiner, the publishers behind the EcommerceBytes newsletter. The group’s scheme was meant to intimidate the Steiners over their publication’s...

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SteelSeries is offering up to 40 percent off gaming headsets and mice today

The SteelSeries Arctis 7P Plus works with almost everything... except Xbox consoles. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

SteelSeries is running a spring sale promotion that takes up to 40 percent off some of its gaming headsets, mice, and mousepads through Monday, May 23rd. While the discounts on individual items may range, there are some great deals to be had — including some that are available at new all-time lows.

The Arctis 7P Plus, for instance, is our pick for the best wireless gaming headset for PlayStation consoles, but it also works with Windows PCs, the Nintendo Switch, smartphones, and the Oculus / Meta Quest 2. While it’s on the premium side and usually retails for about $70 more than Sony’s own Pulse 3D headset, it offers great battery life, USB-C charging, an easy-to-use audio dial, rotatable ear cups that allow for easier storage, and...

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Netflix is reportedly looking into livestreaming

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Netflix may be expanding into livestreaming. According to a report from Deadline, Netflix is currently working on a livestreaming option for stand-up specials and other live content.

As pointed out by Deadline, support for livestreams could open up the possibility for Netflix to air live reunions, like the one recently held by the real estate reality show Selling Sunset, as well as enable live voting for competition shows.

Netflix could also use the feature to air live comedy specials. This year, Netflix held its first-ever live and in-person comedy festival, called the Netflix Is a Joke Fest. The Los Angeles-based event spanned several days and featured over 130 popular comedians, including Ali Wong, Bill Burr, Jerry Seinfeld, John...

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HP has a Center Stage clone in one of its monitors

The Z24m comes with a 5MP tiltable webcam. | Image: HP

HP’s upcoming 23.8-inch Z24m monitor is geared toward creative professionals and comes with a webcam that tracks your movement to keep you in the frame during video calls, much like Apple’s Center stage feature in its Studio Display and some iPads (via Ars Technica). The Z24m’s 5MP tiltable webcam sits at the top of the monitor, which, as Ars Technica points out, is supposed to put its focus on you even if other people are in the background of the shot.

An HP spokesperson also told Ars Technica that you can adjust the webcam’s settings to make it track you quicker. And while you can’t remove the webcam from the monitor, you can push it down to hide it from view. The Z24m also has dual noise-canceling microphones and dual speakers that...

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Alexa Together review: keeping tabs on Dad

For $20 a month, the service provides peace of mind, but many of its features should be free

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Our memories of the iPod

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge; Getty Images

It’s official: the iPod is over. After 20 years, Apple announced this week that it was discontinuing the final product in the brand that defined music players in the mid-2000s and helped catapult Apple to mainstream success.

A lot of us at The Verge have fond memories of our days spent using the music players over that two-decade run, so we decided to write some of them down to reflect not just on what a great music player it was but also what an important device it was in our lives at the time. Plus, we’ve got a lot of scars from these things getting destroyed or “going missing.”

Here are our memories of buying iPods, rediscovering them, nurturing them back to life, and sometimes just losing them.

I have two iPod stories: one about the...

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Tech industry appeals the bad Texas social media law to the Supreme Court

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Tech industry trade organizations NetChoice and the Computer Communications Industry Association have appealed directly to the Supreme Court for an emergency stay of the Texas social media law known as HB 20. The law, which creates liability for content moderation decisions that are based on “the viewpoint of the user or another person,” could make it impossible to enforce bans on hate speech — or to even moderate platforms at all. HB 20 was successfully blocked in court late last year, and then unblocked by an appeals court on Wednesday without explanation.

“Texas HB 20 strips private online businesses of their speech rights, forbids them from making constitutionally protected editorial decisions, and forces them to publish and promote...

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The best Chromebook deals you can get right now

Samsung’s colorful Galaxy Chromebook 2 currently starts at $399 instead of $549. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

If you’re looking for an affordable laptop alternative, Chromebooks are a great option to consider. Yet there are several kinds on the market these days, and it can be overwhelming to pick the right for you and your needs. Some are better suited for basic work tasks, for example, while some of the higher-end models can even rival some of the best laptops you can buy. Moreover, just because one Chromebook has more features than the other doesn’t mean it’s the right one for you or the best value for your money.

That’s why we’ve curated this comprehensive list of the best Chromebook deals. Each varies in price and comes with its own strengths and weaknesses, but all of them come recommended for one reason or another. And if you’d like to do...

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Halo Infinite’s next update will bring back the campaign’s secret ultrapowered gun

It’s not this sniper rifle, but it can shoot pretty dang far. | Image: Microsoft

Halo Infinite’s glitched and overpowered “tank gun” will be added back to the game’s campaign in a forthcoming update, developer 343 Industries announced Friday.

The tank gun is an extremely powerful weapon — essentially a portable version of a Scorpion tank’s cannon that has unlimited ammo — and it’s been popular with speedrunners and as a way to make the game a lot easier. But even though you need to know exactly where to look to find the gun (which is invisible, by the way), Halo senior community manager John Junyszek said in April that 343 would be removing the “tank gun glitch” alongside the game’s second season, which launched May 3rd. That decision wasn’t a very popular one with the community, and it seems there’s been enough...

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Phishing attack pop-up targets MetaMask users visiting popular crypto sites

The malicious pop-up ad that appeared on several crypto sites Friday | Image: CoinGecko

As if this week weren’t bad enough for many cryptocurrency owners, with stablecoins crashing and Coinbase suffering an outage at a particularly bad time, now they’ve reportedly been targeted by a new phishing attack. As reported by CoinDesk and The Block Crypto, sites including Etherscan, CoinGecko, and DexTools all warned users that they were aware of suspicious popups appearing for visitors, and advised them not to confirm any transactions based on popups.

Like many recent phishing attacks, this one appeared to promise a link to the Bored Ape Yacht Club project, with an ape skull logo and a (now-disabled) nftapes.win domain. It prompted users to connect their MetaMask wallets (a software cryptocurrency wallet that enables access on...

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PUBG: Battlegrounds is earning a lot more money after going free-to-play

Somebody at Krafton is probably doing these poses after the company’s latest earnings report. | Image: Krafton

PUBG: Battlegrounds, the PC and console version of the battle royale shooter series, is making a lot of money following its switch to free-to-play in January, as revealed by developer Krafton’s latest earnings report published Friday.

According to the report, on PC, sales were up 61 percent year over year to $82.3 million. On console, the sales jump was even bigger, increasing 124 percent from the previous quarter and 274 percent year over year, though Krafton didn’t put a dollar figure behind those increases. The game also saw a “nearly tripled” increase in average monthly active users from Q4 2021.

PUBG: Battlegrounds was originally a paid title when it launched on Steam in early access in 2017, but the outsized financial success of...

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SIDS study shows the risks of science hype

Photo by: BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, is a devastating condition that’s still very poorly understood, so when new research comes out, it can feel like a very big deal — especially if that research seems to offer a way to save children’s lives. Posts on social media cheered one such new study this week, heralding the research as identifying the reason hundreds of babies die unexpectedly each year.

But even though the study points in a promising direction for future research, it isn’t a panacea, experts say. “There is nothing definitive about this at all,” said Rachel Moon, a researcher studying sudden infant death syndrome at the University of Virginia, in an email to The Verge. The surge in interest around the study is understandable,...

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The Steam Deck finally has Windows audio drivers

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Two and a half months after our Steam Deck review, Valve has finally provided the drivers you’ll need for audio if you choose to install Windows on the gaming portable. Before today, you would have had to pair Bluetooth headphones or plug in USB-C earbuds or a dongle to get any kind of audio on Windows at all. Both the speakers and 3.5mm jack did nothing on Windows before today, and it blamed AMD for the delay.

But now, this pair of new drivers should enable both of the missing audio features. It took a while for AMD and Valve to bring out the initial set of graphics, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and SD card drivers for Windows, too.

Is it time to install Windows on your Deck? Nope, I definitely wouldn’t say that. While Valve keeps squashing bugs...

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Lego’s next batch of official unofficial sets go on sale May 17th, and you’ll want to be quick

If you consider yourself a Lego fan, you’re going to want to read this story and visit this website before Tuesday, May 17th, at 10AM PT / 1PM ET. That’s because Lego is about to put its third and possibly final batch of officially unofficial sets on sale, and you can vote with your dollars for the five fan-made creations that will become a reality.

These Lego sets were designed by fans, not the Danish brickmaker itself, and Lego originally rejected each and every one. But, now, Lego’s Bricklink Designer Program will give a gorgeous 1950s diner, a working waterfall, a huge train station, a steampunk science lab, and more a second chance at official Lego stardom.

The sets are built and shipped by Lego itself, with 10 percent of the...

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Twitter CEO: ‘We need to be prepared for all scenarios’

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal acknowledged the possibility that Elon Musk’s deal to purchase the company could fall through in a series of tweets this afternoon that sought to explain why he’s shaking up Twitter’s leadership. Agrawal said that he’s still “accountable for leading and operating” Twitter for the time being and that his recent changes are meant to “build a stronger Twitter” and help manage costs.

“While I expect the deal to close, we need to be prepared for all scenarios and always do what’s right for Twitter,” Agrawal said.

His remarks come after Musk tweeted this morning that his $44 billion purchase of Twitter is “temporarily on hold” over concerns about spam and fake accounts. While it is entirely unclear whether Musk can...

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Anonymous bulletin board app Yik Yak is revealing its users’ exact locations

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Yik Yak, an app that acts as a local anonymous message board, makes it possible to find users’ precise locations and unique IDs, Motherboard reports. A researcher who analyzed Yik Yak data was able to access precise GPS coordinates of where posts and comments came from, accurate within 10 to 15 feet, and says he brought his findings to the company in April.

First launched in 2013, Yik Yak was popular on college campuses, where it was often used to gossip, post updates, and cyberbully other students. After waning relevance and failed attempts at content moderation, the app shut down in 2017, only to rise from the dead last year. In November, the company said it had passed 2 million users.

Motherboard spoke with David Teather, a computer...

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A new bundle of tabletop RPGs is raising money for reproductive rights

itch.io / TTRPGs For Reproductive Rights

With most large gaming companies giving either inadequate or no responses to the potential repeal of Roe v. Wade in the United States, indie tabletop RPG developers are stepping up. Today, Roll for Romance, a Dungeons and Dragons podcast, in collaboration with over 200 TTRPG creators, launched TTRPGs for Reproductive Rights on itch.io.

The TTRPGs for Reproductive Rights bundle is live! 291 creations from over 200 amazing designers worth almost $1400. Grab this incredible collection for just $5!

All proceeds go to @AbortionFunds and @PPFA #ReproductiveRights

— Roll for Romance Thirsty DnD Podcast (@RollForRomance) May 13, 2022

“Reproductive rights are fundamental and non-negotiable human rights that we must fight to protect,”...

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A cheaper Apple TV could be happening

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

An Apple TV that actually competes with Roku and Amazon could be on the market by the end of the year. According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo in a tweet, Apple would launch a new Apple TV “that improves cost structure” in the second half of 2022.

It’s about damn time.

Currently, Apple sells three Apple TV models. Its 4K Apple TV comes in 32GB and 64GB capacities and retails for $179 and $199, respectively. That’s a good deal for what you get from the 4K Apple TV. Apart from Nvidia’s Shield lineup, no set-top box really has the same support for a wide range of home theater standards and formats that the Apple TV 4K does. It’s the gold standard for professional home theater installers and is particularly praised for its EDID capabilities.

EDID,...

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Vergecast: Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Google I/O 2022

Image: The Verge

Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel and editor-at-large David Pierce discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.

On Wednesday, we saw Google announce a whole bunch of products and features from their keynote live stream — from updates to the Nest Hub Max to previewing a 2023 Pixel tablet. So, on The Vergecast, we’re focusing a chunk of the show on Google’s announcements and initiatives for the coming year or so.

And there’s no better way to start that conversation than with an interview with Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. Read the full transcript of that conversation here.

After the interview, Verge deputy...

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Go read this investigation searching for a long-lost female video game pioneer

Image: Apollo / The Verge

Four years ago, Polygon published a feature that asked what happened to video game pioneer Ban Tran, a Vietnamese woman credited with creating Wabbit, the first console game to feature a named playable female human character. After years of digging and numerous “Return To Sender” marked letters, the Video Game History Foundation finally found her.

Today, the Video Game History Foundation is sharing the story of Van Mai neé Tran (who was mistakenly called Ban because of an accidental misspelling of her name in the credits) and her work in the video game industry. Mai recounts her time in the early ‘80s working for Games for Apollo, a short-lived video game company based in Texas. There, she worked on Wabbit, a game for the Atari VCS that...

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Apple is reportedly testing iPhones with USB-C

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Apple is testing iPhones that swap the Lightning port for USB-C, according to a new Bloomberg report from Apple whisperer Mark Gurman. But you shouldn’t expect to see it in this year’s iPhone lineup, as the changeover wouldn’t happen until 2023 “at the earliest,” Gurman says. The report follows reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo’s tweets this week indicating Apple would swap to USB-C in the second half of 2023, which is presumably when that year’s iPhone lineup will be released.

The switch would be a big one, though it’s not a complete surprise. Apple has already moved the iPad Pro, iPad Air, and iPad Mini to USB-C. And the EU revealed a proposal in September that would require many devices, including smartphones, to include USB-C ports...

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The HP Envy x360 2-in-1 is on sale for its lowest price ever at Best Buy

A winning combo between HP and AMD, the Envy x360 15 is available for its lowest price ever at Best Buy today. | Photography by Monica Chin / The Verge

Our collection of deals this Friday includes a variety of sales on laptops and phones. Our first contestant today is the HP Envy x360 15, which typically goes for $1,029.99 but is on sale at Best Buy for $729.99, its lowest price ever. This 2-in-1 is definitely starting to show its age but remains an excellent value for a convertible laptop.

The Envy x360 is an amazing application of AMD hardware in HP’s compact and sturdy 2-in-1 form factor. The 15-inch, 1080p touchscreen display is backed up by an AMD Ryzen 5 5700U CPU and 8GB of RAM, lending it more than enough power for most productivity applications. However, even with AMD’s integrated graphics, the Envy 15 is capable of pulling its weight in the gaming space, too.

In addition to a...

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Major exchanges delist Terra stablecoin as price collapse continues

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

As the Terra crisis draws on, some of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world have begun to delist Terra’s UST stablecoin and its linked Luna token, citing a need to protect users from risk.

Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, halted the trading of Luna and Terra on Thursday. The OKX exchange — one of the top 10 by volume — took the same action shortly afterward. The FTX exchange and other smaller exchanges continue to list and trade the Luna and UST tokens.

The delistings come in response to a broader collapse in the economics of the Terra project. After the UST stablecoin fell well below its dollar peg on May 9th, an algorithmic process meant to balance the price at close to $1 triggered...

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The Nintendo Switch has now outsold the PS4 in the US

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

After Xbox Series X / S topped the US sales charts for game consoles in March based solely on how much money they brought in, things turned back to the usual during April, according to stats announced today by the NPD. The PS5 led April in dollar sales, aligning with what we saw as retailers seemed to have more of the consoles in stock last month than for most of 2022. It was followed by the Xbox platform and then Nintendo.

However the Switch did lead the month in unit sales, and the NPD says it has now passed Sony’s PlayStation 4 in terms of lifetime sales in the US, making it the fourth highest-selling console ever, behind the PS2, Xbox 360, and Wii.

The other notable hit continues to be Elden Ring, which sold enough games in April to...

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A court just blew up internet law because it thinks YouTube isn’t a website

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Yesterday the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decided in favor of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a lawsuit over HB 20, a bizarre law effectively banning many apps and websites from moderating posts by Texas residents. The court granted Paxton a stay on an earlier ruling to block the law, letting HB 20 go into effect immediately while the rest of the case proceeds. The decision was handed down without explanation. But court-watchers weren’t necessarily surprised because it followed an equally bizarre hearing earlier this week — one that should alarm almost anyone who runs a website. And without intervention from another court, it’s going to put social networks that operate in Texas at legal risk.

HB 20, to recap a little, bans social...

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With its Pixel Watch and tablet, Google is getting serious about its own ecosystem

The Pixel Watch, Google’s first smartwatch. | Image: Google

This year’s Google I/O keynote was filled with hardware announcements, which is unusual considering it’s typically a software and services-focused affair. Of these, the most exciting was the news that Google plans to return to the Android tablet market next year and that it’s also releasing its first smartwatch — the Pixel Watch — later in 2022.

Google gave a couple of different reasons for its change of heart. But the most interesting of these was a comment from Google’s VP of product management Sameer Samat, who talked about the benefits a tablet device could have for the Pixel ecosystem more generally. “I think consumer expectations have changed as well over time,” Samat said. “Phone is certainly super important, but it’s also...

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Watch the first trailer for Zenless Zone Zero from the creators of Genshin Impact

The studio behind the breakout hit Genshin Impact is back with a new game — and you can watch the first trailer right now. Called Zenless Zone Zero, the game takes place in a post-apocalyptic city called New Eridu, which has been subject to an event known as “the sub-hollow disaster.” Based on the trailer, it appears to be an action-heavy RPG with some killer music and character designs, where players will fight plenty of monsters while looking very cool.

Zenless is notable in particular because it comes from Mihoyo, the Chinese studio best-known for the global smash hit Genshin Impact, which first launched in 2020 and is available across PC, mobile, and PlayStation. The two games look like they share much in common — including an...

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The playful Playdate gets serious as a personal organizer

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

One of the best things about the Playdate, Panic’s quirky gaming handheld, is how it only really does one very specific thing: play video games. It’s not bogged down by other apps or features, so when you’re playing something like Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure, it’s easy to stay focused on the game. It’s refreshing to have a device so single-mindedly focused on fun — which is why I found the idea of using the little yellow console as a personal organizer so intriguing. For the past week, I’ve been doing just that, and while it’s definitely not an option for everyone, much like the Playdate itself, it manages to be both simple and straightforward.

First, a few notes for context. One, it’s important to know that I have yet to find a...

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