Volvo will use Epic’s Unreal Engine to create ‘photorealistic’ graphics in its electric cars

Volvo will be the latest automaker to tap into the graphical prowess of Epic Games’ Unreal Engine. The Swedish automaker said it will partner with the Fortnite creator to bring “photorealistic visualization” into its next generation of electric vehicles.

The crux of the Volvo / Epic partnership will be the “human-machine interface” (HMI), which, in the context of vehicle ownership, is another way to describe the way car owners interact with their vehicle’s software. Volvo says that Epic will help build a platform on which the automaker’s engineers can design software that will improve the HMI while also maintaining levels of safety that Volvo has staked much of its reputation on.

“This technology gives us the capability to create...

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Porsche strengthens ties with electric supercar startup Rimac in new funding round

Image: Rimac

Porsche is strengthening its ties with Rimac, an electric supercar company, by participating in a $500 million investment round for the Croatia-based startup. Porsche didn’t disclose the exact amount it invested in Rimac, except to say it was “eight figures.” And Porsche won’t have a controlling interest in Rimac, retaining its previously disclosed 20 percent equity stake in the company.

Over the years, Porsche has grown closer to Rimac, buying shares in the company and setting up a joint venture to run Bugatti after Volkswagen transferred ownership to the startup. Today’s investment news is the latest indication that Porsche has a positive perception of Rimac’s future. Porsche also owns a controlling stake in Greyp, an electric...

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Garmin launches two Forerunner watches with new racing features

The Forerunner 255 family adds a host of new racing features and multi-band GPS. | Image: Garmin

Just in time for Global Running Day, Garmin is introducing two new running watches to its Forerunner lineup: the $349.99 Forerunner 255 and the $499.99 Forerunner 955. Both GPS watches sport multi-band GPS and new racing features, including a race widget. The Forerunner 955 will also come in a Solar version, which, as the name suggests, adds solar charging for even longer battery life.

The Forerunner 255 is a lightweight, midrange running watch that builds on the Forerunner 245. It’ll come in two sizes. The standard Forerunner 255 will measure 46mm and weigh 49 grams, while the smaller 255S will measure 41mm and weigh 32 grams. There’ll also be a Forerunner 255 Music and 255S Music variants, which will be able to store up to 500 songs on...

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Facebook and Instagram’s parent company will change its stock ticker to META on June 9th

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

When the company formerly known as Facebook announced its plan to rebrand last October, it also announced a new stock ticker. At the time, execs said that after ten years as FB, its NASDAQ listing would transition to MVRS for the metaverse. However, after the investment fund listed under META vacated the symbol in January, Meta Platforms quickly confirmed that it would use META instead, while at the same time announcing its first drop in daily active users, ever. Now it has filed paperwork saying the shift will become official before the market opens on June 9th (via CNBC).

Right now, people still think of Meta as the home of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, but the plan is to make it into much more than those social media mainstays....

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Netflix’s anti-password sharing experiment in Peru reportedly leaves users confused

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Netflix’s test to crack down on password sharing has reportedly left some users confused, according to a report from Rest of World. The streaming service started experimenting with password-sharing solutions in Peru, Chile, and Costa Rica in March, prompting subscribers in these markets to pay an additional fee to enable streaming for others outside their household who use the same account.

When speaking to over a dozen Netflix subscribers in Peru, Rest of World found that most users weren’t formally made aware of the policy change through an email or notification sent by Netflix — not even two months out from Netflix’s initial announcement. The outlet also learned that Netflix’s level of enforcement varied from user to user, with some...

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The push-button ignition was a luxurious way to start your car until it wasn’t

Press-n-go. | Image: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The first time I started a car by pressing a button, it felt too easy and convenient — like I had somehow stumbled into a tax bracket I don’t belong in. “You’re telling me,” I thought, “that I can just leave my keys in my pocket, and the car will let me get in and drive around?”

The push-button ignition is one of those buttons that doesn’t really add any new functionality over the thing it’s replacing (in this case, the ignition system that has you insert and turn a key). It exists solely for the sake of convenience, a job that it excels at. You get in the car, press down on the brake pedal and a button, and you’re ready to drive. It’s barely more difficult than unlocking your phone.

It’s also, for most of us, anyway, the most raw...

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Supreme Court blocks Texas social media moderation ban

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

A Texas law that would have banned much social media moderation is once again on hold. In a 5-4 ruling handed down today, the Supreme Court vacated an earlier decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, meaning that HB 20 — which forbids banning, demonetizing, or downranking Texas users’ posts based on “viewpoint” — will be blocked while a lawsuit over its constitutionality proceeds. A lower court had already blocked the law in 2021 before the Fifth Circuit unblocked it this May.

NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), who filed suit to stop HB 20, petitioned the Supreme Court for a ruling earlier this month — responding to a surprising and unexplained ruling from the Fifth Circuit. Justice Samuel...

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TikTok is giving some users a less cluttered viewing experience

TikTok’s testing a “clear mode.”

Some TikTok users have started noticing a “Clear Mode” option, which lets them watch a video without the UI overlay that usually shows things like the favorite and comment buttons and other info about the video. TikTok confirmed to TechCrunchthat it’s currently testing the feature, but it’s unclear how many people have access to it.

Those that are in the test group (which includes at least two Verge staffers) can access clear mode by pressing and holding on a video, then tapping the Clear Mode button on the menu that pops up. The same method can be used to exit clear mode, and there’s also a button in the bottom right corner that will return you to the standard UI.

Activating clear mode is a two-step process....

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Dell’s 32-inch 4K videoconferencing monitor costs just as much as a Studio Display

Dell’s 32-inch display comes with a focus on video calls. | Image: Dell

Dell has finally revealed the $1,599.99 price attached to the UltraSharp 32-inch 4K video conferencing monitor it previewed at CES (via 9to5Mac). If that price sounds familiar, it’s because Apple’s 27-inch Studio Display costs almost the exact same amount — only Dell justifies the price with the monitor’s size and its camera sensor, while Apple’s sales pitch leans on that still-rare 5K resolution.

The Dell monitor (U3223QZ) comes with a focus on videoconferencing, made clear by Dell’s built-in UltraSharp webcam with a 4K HDR Sony Starvis sensor that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help keep you in the frame during a call. This is a bit like Apple’s Center Stage feature used in the Studio Display and other Apple devices, a similar...

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The Verge’s 2022 Graduation Gift Guide

Illustration by Carolina Moscoso / The Verge

Congratulate your graduate with one of these great gifts

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Star Wars stands with Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Moses Ingram amid racist fan backlash

Moses Ingram as Reva Sevander / the Third Sister. | Image: Disney Plus/Lucasfilm

In response to a swift and all too predictable wave of racist backlash from Star Wars“fans” dismayed by the idea of Black people existing in space, Disney has issued a statement supporting Obi-Wan Kenobiactor Moses Ingram.

Though Obi-Wan Kenobi’s first two episodes premiered only just last week, that was all the time it took for Star Wars obsessives to fixate on Ingram’s character Reva Sevander, one of the Galactic Empire’s Inquisitors tasked with exterminating the galaxy’s Jedi. On the Monday following this year’s Star Wars Celebration event, Ingram took to her personal Instagram account to share a selection from the “hundreds” of anti-Black, misogynist messages she’s received for portraying a fictional villain who does evil things....

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Nomad’s leather Siri Remote case comes with a discreet AirTag pocket

Image: Nomad

There are Apple TV Siri Remote cases of all shapes and colors, with the vast majority of them providing a silicone grip and protection against those inevitable plunges from your couch cushions. But if those are a little too tacky for your taste (and remind you too much of those squishy Wii remote covers), Nomad has developed a sleek alternative: a Siri Remote case made out of American leather and — best of all — comes with a hidden AirTag pocket.

The case leaves the front of the remote totally open, so it may not be the best option if you’re looking for something to protect the device from spills or falls. It makes up for that in style, though — removing the solid brown backing reveals a discreet pocket where you can place an AirTag. If...

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Massive podcast outage caused by Spotify’s failure to renew security certificate

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Podcast listeners could not access many of their favorite shows for more than eight hours on Monday night and early Tuesday morning due to an outage on Megaphone, a podcast hosting platform owned by Spotify. The outage stemmed from the company’s failure to renew Megaphone’s security certificate.

“Megaphone experienced a platform outage due to an issue related to our SSL certificate,” Spotify spokesperson Erin Styles said in a statement. “During the outage, clients were unable to access the Megaphone CMS and podcast listeners were unable to download podcast episodes from Megaphone-hosted publishers. Megaphone service has since been restored.”

It’s a simple mistake with big ramifications. Megaphone, which inserts dynamic ads into episodes,...

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Sonic Frontier’s first trailer channels Zelda and Horizon franchises

Sega / Sonic Team

Ahead of Geoff Keighley’s not-E3 but also sorta kinda E3 Summer Games Fest next week, Sonic Team has released an extremely short teaser for Sonic Frontiers.

I know there’s a vocal subset of the gaming community that hates when a new, vaguely open world-looking game gets shown and the gaming press calls it “Breath of the Wild meets X,” so I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m going to say it looks like Breath of the Wild and Horizon Zero Dawn had a baby with Sonic. (Please don’t Google “X has a baby with Sonic.”)

In it, Sonic freeruns across a light-drenched, flower-strewn landscape dotted with futuristic-looking ruins. Even though several games have featured Sonic roaming in a boundary-less world, the aesthetic in Frontiers is so...

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Bo Burnham’s new hour-long video goes behind Inside (and has new songs)

While we were(n’t) outside touching grass, Bo Burnham has pieced together an entire hour’s worth of outtakes and cut content from his 2021... movie / musical / comedy special / existential crisis, Inside. While a majority of The Inside Outtakes is exactly what it says on the tin (flubs, different takes, and behind-the-scenes clips from the original), there are also some new songs throughout — within the first minute, we hear a new musical piece about Jeffery Bezos, which leads into an absolute earworm of a new song that musically sounds like a downtempo version of “Problematic” and revisits the themes of depression and being stuck inside for days on end. In other words, it strikes just as much of a chord with me as the original, which...

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The US has fallen way behind on climate goals

Background: US President Joe Biden presents his national statement as part of the World Leaders’ Summit of the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow on November 1, 2021. | Photo by EVAN VUCCI/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

The US is doing a pretty horrible job of following through on promises it’s made to tackle climate change, according to two separate new studies. A global ranking of countries completed by Yale and Columbia found that the US now ranks 43rd among 180 nations that Columbia and Yale evaluated in their most recent Environmental Performance Index (EPI). That’s a major plummet since the last time the researchers ranked countries in 2020, when the US was in 24th place.

A major plummet

When it comes to climate indicators alone (the evaluation also considers countries’ progress on other kinds of pollution and efforts to protect ecosystems), the US fell all the way to 101 from its previous spot at 15th place. The US’s ranking was reported by The...

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After Uvalde, social media monitoring apps struggle to justify surveillance

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

With the country still reeling from the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, officials are scrambling for more ways to stop mass shootings — and facing hard truths about how ineffective many of our existing tools really are. Digital monitoring technology has come under particular scrutiny after reporting revealed that the Uvalde school district had experimented with a service called Social Sentinel, which claims to identify and alert schools to threats based on social media conversations.

It’s an increasingly common service as schools grapple with the chaos of social media, often raising serious privacy and speech concerns along the way. Systems like Social Sentinel promise to give genuine insight into the huge volume of information posted on...

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Monument Valley’s puzzles will reach PC gamers on July 12th

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Monument Valley, the picturesque puzzle game series where players must navigate maps full of optical illusions, will no longer be exclusive to mobile devices. The complete Monument Valley Panoramic Collection is set to arrive on Steam on July 12th and gives players a broader point of view that isn’t limited by the vertical orientation of phones and tablets.

Ustwo, the developer behind Monument Valley,says it had to make some adjustments to account for a wider perspective, as well as for the transition from touch to mouse controls. Kirsty Keatch, a programmer at Ustwo, said in a behind-the-scenes interview that while they designed the mobile version’s touch controls for “large fingers that might occlude the rotators and draggers,” the PC...

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The N64 controller for Switch is back in stock at the Nintendo store

Image: Nintendo

The official N64 controller for the Nintendo Switch has just been restocked at the Nintendo eShop. This $49.99 controller allows you to experience N64 games the way they were meant to be played — with a big gray controller with an awkwardly placed central analog stick. This offer is exclusive to the Nintendo store and is only available to purchase if you’re a current Nintendo Switch Online subscriber (Note: you can only access the N64 games with the purchase of the Switch Online Expansion Pack).

Unlike some restocks for the Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5, the method for purchasing this controller is very straightforward. Just sign in to your Nintendo account ahead of time, click “add to cart” and hope for the best. Stocks of this...

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Apple Arcade is getting new Cooking Mama and Frogger games in June

Cooking Mama: Cuisine. | Image: Apple

Apple has lined up a trio of notable Japanese developers for its June additions to Apple Arcade. Today the company announced four games coming to the subscription service next month, led by Konami’s Frogger and the Rumbling Ruins (a sequel to early Arcade game Frogger in Toy Town) which launches on June 3rd. That will be followed by Cooking Mama: Cuisine on June 17th, which mixes up the cooking formula by tasking players with figuring out ingredients instead of just picking a premade recipe.

Rounding out the list is Air Twister, from legendary designer Yu Suzuki best known for titles like Shenmue and Out Run, which comes out on June 24th. Here’s the official description:

Players will assume the role of Princess Arch fighting back against...

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Quick fixes: Google Assistant doesn’t respond to specific commands

The Google Nest WiFi router needs your home address | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Issue

Google Assistant didn’t respond to “Hey, Google, set a timer.”

Quick fix

Reset home address in the Home app

The full story

Over the weekend, my partner and I decided it was finally time to upgrade our Wi-Fi router. We had been contently operating on a relatively ancient OnHub router until we got the warning from Google that it was turning off the controls for the OnHub as of this coming December. We bitched a bit and then bit that bullet and used a Google-offered discount to purchase a Nest WiFi router and point.

Having decided on a lazy Memorial Day weekend, we thought that Monday would be the perfect day to finally get around to switching from the old router to the new — and it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, right?

Y...

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Iogear’s latest capture card offers an affordable way to record 4K gameplay

Iogear’s Upstream 4K Game Capture Card with Party Chat. | Image: Iogear

Iogear’s latest capture card offers up to 30Hz 4K gameplay capture or 120Hz 1080p capture for $129.99. That makes it significantly cheaper than Elgato’s equivalent card, the recently announced HD60 X, which has an MSRP of $199.99 and offers similar recording specs. Other features of the so-called UpStream 4K Game Capture Card with Party Chat include the ability to pass through (but not capture) 4K HDR footage at 60Hz, 1440p footage at 144Hz, and 1080p at 240Hz.

Capture cards like these are aimed at content creators like Twitch streamers and YouTubers, giving them a quick and easy way to retrieve their gameplay footage ready to be broadcast online. The UpStream 4K Game Capture Card is an external device, so it connects to the broadcast...

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Blood oxygen monitors miss concerning COVID-19 symptoms more often in patients of color

Photo by Jon Akira Yamamoto/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

Blood oxygen monitors said that hospitalized Asian, Black, and Hispanic COVID-19 patients had higher blood oxygen levels than they actually did, according to a new study. Oxygen levels are an important indicator of how serious someone’s case of COVID-19 is and what medications they’re eligible for — and that overestimation meant that it took longer for Black and Hispanic patients to get necessary treatment.

Pulse oximeters, the standard way clinics and hospitals measure blood oxygen, work by sending red and infrared light through the fingertip and measuring the amount that’s reflected back. (Hemoglobin, the protein in blood that carries oxygen, absorbs more infrared light when it’s carrying oxygen). For years, studies have shown that...

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Razer’s Barracuda Pro is its latest do-it-all gaming headset

The Barracuda Pro look gargantuan on this person’s head. | Image: Razer

Building on the Barracuda X gaming headset it released in 2021, Razer has added two options to the lineup with the new Barracuda and the Barracuda Pro that focus both on dual wireless connectivity (2.4GHz via a USB-C dongle and Bluetooth) and providing excellent sound quality. The Pro sit at the top of the lineup, available starting today for $249.99, and what sets them apart from the midrange $159.99 Barracuda (along with the $99.99 Barracuda X) are a few things: active noise cancellation, plush leatherette ear pads (compared to a more breathable woven fabric), and a built-in THX Achromatic audio amplifier to deliver more powerful, accurate sound.

Both of these new models feature bigger 50mm drivers (the Barracuda X and several other...

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France’s linguistic watchdog issues edict: it’s not esports, it’s ‘jeu video de competition’

Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games via Getty Images

France’s national linguistic watchdog, the Académie Française, has banned the official usage of a number of phrases borrowed from English to describe the world of gaming.

Instead of “esports,” government workers should refer to “jeu video de competition.” Instead of talk of “pro-gamers,” they must discuss the activity of the “joueur professionnel.” And instead of “streamers,” they must refer to the “joueur-animateur en direct” — and so on.

The changes, reported by AFP, were made in coordination with the French Ministry of Culture and published in the government’s official legal almanac, the Journal officiel. This makes the changes binding for government employees, though not for the public at large.

The Académie Française is tasked...

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Disney’s Pinocchio is full of hope in its first teaser trailer

Tom Hanks as Geppetto. | Disney

Out of all the modern Pinocchio projects in the pipeline, Disney’s upcoming feature from director Robert Zemeckis has always been one of the odds-on favorites to capture people’s imaginations if only because of the studio’s history with the iconic fairytale. While Pinocchio’s first teaser trailer only gives you the slightest taste of what Zemeckis has in store for audiences, it’s a strong sign that the movie will be able to recreate at least some of the original animated feature’s magic.

Pinocchio’s first trailer only features a small look at the titular living toy (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) as his puppet-making father Geppetto (Tom Hanks) first carves him from a block of wood. What you do see, though, is the time, attention, and love...

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Sony’s XM4 noise-canceling headphones are almost $100 off at Woot

Sony WH-1000XM4

While Sony’s WH-1000XM5 recently debuted with a higher price and just a couple of improvements, you can pick up the still very good XM4 model for a low price at Woot. Normally $348, the silver model is available new for $259.99. It’s been about six months since we’ve seen a price beat this one. (Amazon sold them for $248 around Black Friday.)

This XM4’s color scheme is called “silver” by Sony, but I consider it to be a creamy off-white with gold accents. This model touted features that we were happy to see return in the latest version, like the 30-hour battery life and the ability to pair to two Bluetooth sources simultaneously as well as its automatic play / pause function that occurs when you put on or take off the headphones.

You can...

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Fujifilm’s new X-H2S mirrorless camera is all about speed and video

Fujifilm’s X-H2S camera with the upcoming 18-120mm powered zoom lens. | Image: Fujifilm

Fujifilm’s latest X-Summit event is happening today in Omiya, Japan, and it brings several new announcements for its X-series of APS-C mirrorless cameras, including two cameras and two lenses. The headliner is the 26-megapixel X-H2S camera, which Fujifilm calls its new high-speed flagship model. It is the successor to 2018’s X-H1 and will launch on July 7th for $2,499 (without a lens).

Joining this camera at release is a new XF 150-600mm super-telephoto zoom lens costing $1,999, with an XF 18-120mm powered zoom due out later in mid-September for $899. Fujifilm also teased another camera, the X-H2, with a new 40-megapixel non-stacked sensor that’s also coming in September.

These new cameras are more pro DSLR-like than anything else in...

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A once-in-a-lifetime bird

Danica Novgordoff

It was a beach date that would transform Chris Michaud, though the memorable parts were neither the beach nor the date but what he saw that day. Both in their early 30s, summer of 2017, Chris had met Gemma recently, swiping on Bumble. They decided to head to the New Hampshire coast, not far from where they both lived in Portsmouth. Before arriving at the beach, Gemma suggested they do a little birding.

In a marsh, they spotted egrets, a glossy ibis, and “some other cool stuff.” Later, they went to the beach, as promised, but Chris just kept thinking about the birds. This moment, in birding lingo, is called the “spark,” when a person sees something that inspires them to be a birder for life. (Nearly everyone I talked to for this story...

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The best Memorial Day deals you can still get

Save on drones, phones, and other fun tech this Memorial Day weekend | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Memorial Day marks the unofficial start to summer in the US. In addition to using the long weekend of the national holiday for travel and taking some well-earned rest and relaxation, it usually kick-starts lots of outdoor activities — like backyard cookouts, road trips to the beach, and camping trips. It’s also another shopping holiday, with discounts on offer for all kinds of home goods and some great tech, gadgets, and gear.

There are plenty of deals on cool outdoorsy gear to take advantage even now, after the holiday — like a DJI Mini 2 drone kit. But there are also still great sales happening on indoor toys as well, like a range of Hisense TVs that are now available for up to $350 off. And let’s not forget travel essentials like Z...

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