Resident Evil Village is getting an expansion with more story and a third-person mode

Image: Capcom

Capcom has finally shared details on a new expansion for last year’s excellent Resident Evil Village, including a story campaign, more content for the Mercenaries mode, and a third-person mode. The expansion, called the Winters’ Expansion, will be available on October 28th, the company announced at its Capcom Showcase on Monday.

The new story campaign, Shadows of Rose, stars Rose, the daughter of Village protagonist Ethan Winters. “Rosemary Winters, Ethan’s beloved daughter, has grown up and is now struggling with terrifying powers,” Capcom’s Tsuyoshi Kanda wrote in a post on the PlayStation blog. “In search of a way to break free from her curse, Rose enters the consciousness of the Megamycete. Rose’s journey takes her to a mysterious...

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Steam Next Fest is back, with demos, livestreams, and a special badge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The June 2022 edition of Valve’s Steam Next Fest kicked off Monday, and during the weeklong event, you’ll be able to check out hundreds of free demos, according to the company.

There are seriously a lot of demos — as if there weren’t already a ton of games to play right now — but fortunately, Valve has a few tools to help you sort through what’s available. On the Next Fest page, you can look at different genre pages, and the company also highlights popular upcoming games, most wishlisted upcoming games, and games ranked by daily active demo players. One topping the charts that I have my eye on is Metal: Hellsinger, which is apparently a “rhythm FPS” that’s “brimming with diabolical enemies, powerful weapons, and metal music.” That...

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Best gaming laptop in 2022: seven laptops to get your game on

The best gaming laptop is the Asus ROG Zephyrus G15. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales/ The Verge

The best gaming laptop at every size and price

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Google’s changing its calendar invites to be clearer and more modern

A small but nice change in your inbox. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The next time a Google Calendar invitation lands in your inbox, you may notice that it looks a little different. Google announced on Monday that it is making updates to the emails it sends out for calendar events, tweaking them to look more modern and to surface important information quickly.

Google says if an organizer updates an event, the new design will also show you the old information. For example, if an event changes from 1PM to 2PM, you’ll see the 1PM start time crossed out below the new information to give you a better idea of what exactly is happening to your schedule. Google will also tell you what’s changed about an event right up at the top, so you can immediately know what to look for.

Google says this change should roll...

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FCC filing suggests Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 will get fast charging

The Galaxy Watch 5 lineup can’t afford to have lackluster battery life without fast charging. | Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge

While we still don’t know all the nitty-gritty details about Samsung’s next-gen smartwatches, recent FCC filings hint that you can expect at least one big update: faster charging.

FCC filings don’t reveal too much in terms of features, but they are a good indicator that a product is getting close to launch. The filings were first spotted by 9to5Google and indicate there’ll be three models dubbed the SM-R900, the SM-R910, and the SM-R920. They also confirm basic connectivity specs, like the fact that the watches will support Bluetooth, 2.4 and 5Ghz Wi-Fi, and contactless payments. But as far as the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 lineup goes, the most eye-catching thing is that the watches can charge at 10W speeds. For context, the Galaxy Watch 4...

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Google Talk is surprisingly still operational, but that ends on Thursday

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google is shutting down Talk (also known as GChat) for good — its instant-messaging service you probably haven’t used much since 2007 (via Android Police). Although Google migrated Talk users over to Google Hangouts in 2017 — another one of its now-sidelined messaging platforms — it was still accessible by third-party XMPP clients like Pidgin and Gajim.

But Google will cut these last lines of life support on June 16th — three days from now. In a message on Talk’s support page, Google says it’s “winding down Google Talk” and will no longer support third-party apps, citing its initial announcement in 2017. Users who try to sign into GChat after the 16th will see a sign-in error. If you still want to use Pidgin through Google services, P...

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Saving sites: Pocket’s bookmarking app and its alternatives

It’s hard to keep up with all the interesting, important, or just plain fun things you come across on the web. You may come across something you just don’t have time to read right now or want to save because it will come in handy later. But, as most of us have discovered, creating a bookmark on a browser for each article and site that we want to read later can result in a huge bookmarky mess.

Years ago, I started getting the better of this issue by signing into Pocket, a popular and long-standing app that allows you to save a bookmarked article to a separate server and then retrieve it to read at your leisure using either a computer or a mobile device. Pocket has been around since 2007. Originally called Read It Later, it started life as...

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BlockFi and Crypto.com lay off hundreds of staff as coins slump

More firms are making cuts. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

BlockFi, a platform for trading and lending cryptocurrency, announced via a blog post on Monday that it’s laying off 20 percent of its 850 employees — around 170 to 200 people. CEO Zac Prince said in a Twitter thread that the layoffs can be traced to a “dramatic shift in macroeconomic conditions” and BlockFi’s push to become profitable.

It’s not the only crypto company letting workers go. On Friday, Crypto.com (the company with the Super Bowl ad featuring LeBron James) announced that it’s laying off around 260 workers, or around 5 percent of its workforce, according to a Twitter thread from its CEO, Kris Marszalek.

It could be a “crypto winter”

We will continue to evaluate how to best optimize our resources to position ourselves as...

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Windows 11’s new File Explorer tabs are getting close to release

New File Explorer tabs are coming soon. | Image: Microsoft

Microsoft has started beta testing its new File Explorer tabs for Windows 11. The tabs feature for File Explorer is now rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel and appears to be very close to release for everyone running Windows 11.

The tabs feature includes a refreshed design that makes it easier to quickly access folders or find favorite files. The updated File Explorer design includes tabs to navigate multiple folders in a single window and the ability to move tabs around freely. Microsoft originally tested tabs in Windows 10 apps four years ago in a feature named Sets. This included support for tabs inside File Explorer, but Microsoft eventually canceled the project and never shipped it to Windows 10 users.

Microsoft...

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Rune Labs’ Apple Watch-based Parkinson’s disease tracker gets FDA clearance

Patients can use the Apple Watch to track symptoms. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Software that helps people with Parkinson’s disease track symptoms through their Apple Watch received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration, the company behind the tool announced today. It automatically tracks things like tremors, and it lets patients report symptoms and medication usage.

Neurology company Rune Labs built the software, called StrivePD. It lets clinicians track their patients’ progress and any changes in symptoms from the neurological disorder, which causes involuntary movements and difficulty with coordination. The passive data collection means patients’ don’t have to try and remember those fluctuations. It’s also a rich source of data on how Parkinson’s disease patients respond to various medications.

“With...

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Sony’s new PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium tiers are now live in the US

Image: Sony

Sony’s revamped PlayStation Plus tiers are now live in the US, offering benefits like access to select PS4 and PS5 games, cloud-streamed games, and a collection of retro titles, depending on which tier you subscribe to.

• PlayStation Plus Essential costs $9.99 per month, and it offers the same benefits you might be familiar with from the old version of PlayStation Plus, including access to online multiplayer for most games.
• PlayStation Plus Extra costs $14.99 per month, and it adds the catalog of PS4 and PS5 games that you can download and play.
• PlayStation Plus Premium costs $17.99 per month, offering everything in the other two tiers as well as game trials, the collection of PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP games, and cloud streaming for...

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Amazon.com is having some problems right now

Image: Amazon.com

For one reason or another, the internet’s biggest retailer has a website that’s not working correctly for some people. Many Amazon.com pages are either not loading at all, displaying error messages, or loading slowly with missing information. Checking with other Verge staffers, some people are getting error messages or partially loading pages, while others report no issues, and sometimes different pages have different results. Reports about the issue started at around 1:40PM ET, and some people have been experiencing the problem ever since.

While it’s not ideal to get a message saying “We’re sorry, an error has occurred. Please reload this page and try again.” when you’re trying to order some cat food or a Fire HD tablet, the good news...

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FAA requiring SpaceX to make changes to Texas launch site ahead of future launches

SpaceX’s Starship prototypes at the company’s Starbase launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas. | Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has determined that SpaceX’s plans for the company’s massive Starbase launch site in South Texas will have some environmental impact on the surrounding land and area, but not enough to require a full environmental impact statement. Now, SpaceX will need to make more than 75 changes to its proposal for the Starbase facility if the company wants to avoid additional review and eventually receive a license from the FAA to launch its new Starship rocket to orbit from the site.

SpaceX’s Starbase facility is located in a small town called Boca Chica, Texas, right on the southern tip of Texas along the Rio Grande river and the US-Mexico border. For the last few years, SpaceX has used the site to...

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Watch the trailer for The Verge’s first Netflix show, The Future Of

It’s taken nearly three years of work, but The Verge’s first Netflix show — The Future Of — is finally arriving on June 21st, with a second set of episodes coming on June 28th.

The Future Of is an ambitious look at how everything around us might change over time, narrated by Jurnee Smollett. And it really is a show about everything: our episodes focus on subjects from cheeseburgers and dogs to skyscrapers and life after death. We did our best to envision how these things might change in our lifetimes, the near future, and then the wildest far futures we could imagine. And we did it by talking to the people working on these ideas now — and a few Verge reporters along the way. Think of it like a documentary for the future.

We wanted the...

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GM will officially reveal Chevy Blazer EV on July 18th

The 2024 Chevy Blazer EV will get a proper reveal on July 18th, General Motors announced Monday. The all-electric mid-sized SUV is expected to go on sale next year, along with the electric version of the Chevy Equinox compact SUV.

GM first teased electric versions of its Blazer and Equinox SUVs last year. But while the automaker has said it aims for the Equinox EV to start at $30,000, it has yet to set similar pricing expectations for the Blazer.

The Equinox and Blazer are Chevy’s compact and mid-sized SUVs, respectively. The Blazer EV is also expected to make its official debut later this year, along with an SS performance model. Both vehicles will be built on GM’s Ultium battery and powertrain platform, which will serve as the...

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Netflix’s Knives Out sequel now has a title, and it’ll be out this holiday season

The new movie will be out later this year. | Image: Lionsgate

Netflix’s Knives Out sequel now has an official title and release window: you’ll be able to watch Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery this holiday season, the company announced Monday.

The upcoming Knives Out installment will be directed by Rian Johnson, who helmed the first movie, and will again star Daniel Craig as detective Benoit Blanc. The rest of the cast is shaping up to be truly awesome — it includes Dave Bautista, Madelyn Cline, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Jessica Henwick, Kate Hudson, Edward Norton, and Leslie Odom Jr., according to a short trailer released by Netflix.

The mystery has just begun. Benoit Blanc returns in GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY, from writer/director Rian Johnson. Coming this holiday season to Netflix....

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What Bitcoin’s nosedive means for the environment

Mining units at the Cormint Data Systems Bitcoin mining facility while under construction in Fort Stockton, Texas, U.S., on Friday, April 29, 2022. | Bloomberg via Getty Images

Bitcoin’s value has nosedived enough to curb the cryptocurrency’s enormous energy use — and associated greenhouse gas emissions— but only if prices stay low. The price of a single Bitcoin plummeted below $24,000 today, about half of what it was worth in March. While it’s been steadily losing value for months, the sudden tumble in value over the past 24 hours brings the price below a key threshold when it comes to Bitcoin’s impact on the environment.

Since Bitcoin’s price peaked at around $69,000 in November, the network’s annual electricity consumption has been estimated to be between roughly 180 and 200 terawatt-hours (TWh). That’s about the same amount ofelectricity used by all thedata centers in the world every year.

Higher prices...

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John Oliver exposes how Google and Amazon stifle competition

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Years ago, John Oliver galvanized his Last Week Tonight viewers to join in the fight for net neutrality — instigating a flood of comments that broke down the Federal Communications Commission’s website in 2014. Last night, he turned his attention to a pair of upcoming tech antitrust bills.

During his Sunday night show, Oliver explained the ways large tech companies rule the internet. From Apple and Google taking huge cuts from app store sales to Amazon’s stranglehold on the online sellers’ market, Oliver outlined how the power these companies hold could stifle innovation and how lawmakers could shake up the industry.

“The problem with letting a few companies control whole sectors of our economy is that it limits what is possible by...

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The Apple TV 4K is available for its best price ever

The 4K Apple TV gives you more ways to enjoy Apple services in your living room. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Even though Apple completely overlooked tvOS during its WWDC announcements last week, there’s a very good reason why you should think about getting an Apple TV 4K today. The 32 and 64GB configurations of the Apple TV 4K are discounted to $129.99 and $149.99, respectively — their best price ever at Amazon and Best Buy.

In addition to providing access to Apple services like Apple Arcade and Apple Music on your TV, this compact streaming box also provides you with a way to enjoy other streaming services, like Apple TV Plus, Disney Plus, HBO Max, and more. The 4K model of the Apple TV is also equipped with an HDMI 2.1 port, along with features like HDR, Dolby Vision, and Dolby Atmos for an improved audio / visual experience. The included...

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Sonos accidentally shipped customers extra speakers and charged them for it

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Some customers who recently ordered speakers from Sonos’ website received more than what they ordered, which normally wouldn’t be something to complain about — but Sonos charged extra for the devices sent in error and wants them back. While Sonos is providing users with a refund for the additional charges, some are still disappointed they weren’t offered a discount for the inconvenience of dealing with a problem they didn’t cause.

Two separate users reported the issue to The Verge. In both cases, they placed an order for a single Sonos Move and received three. There are plenty of other reports in a thread on Reddit that indicate the issue affects more than just the Move — other users ordered the Roam and Ray, with some saying they...

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Amazon’s troubled drone delivery project is finally taking off

Amazon is taking steps to get its long-delayed drone delivery project off the ground. The company announced that it would launch its inaugural drone delivery service in the town of Lockeford, California, later this year after it receives the green light from the Federal Aviation Administration.

If the regulatory approval goes through, it will be a major milestone for Amazon, which has been promising some version of aerial package delivery for almost a decade. The company has had some major setbacks, including a handful of crashes, reports of alleged safety lapses, and high turnover. But today’s announcement indicates that Amazon is confident that it’s ready for primetime (no pun intended).

Amazon says that later this year, Lockeford...

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Bitcoin price plummets below $25K following Celsius freeze

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

On Sunday night, the Celsius Network, one of the largest crypto lending platforms, abruptly announced a “pause” on withdrawals and transfers, citing “extreme market conditions.” Celsius announced its halt as markets in Asia opened on Monday morning, and the price of its CEL token — worth nearly $7 a year ago — lost a third of its remaining value, falling to just 21 cents.

In the hours that followed the pause, prices of other cryptocurrencies have also tumbled. CoinMarketCap’s global cryptocurrency tracker showed the total market cap of crypto assets (including stablecoins and tokens) below $1 trillion as of 8:53AM ET, falling from its peak of $3 trillion last November.

Image: Coinbase

The price of Bitcoin on...

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Microsoft Teams now uses AI to improve echo, interruptions, and acoustics

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft has spent the past two years adding flashy new productivity features to Teams, and now the company is overhauling how the fundamentals work thanks to AI. We’ve all been on a call where someone has poor room acoustics making it hard to hear them, or seen two people try to talk at the same time creating an awkward “no, you go ahead” moment. Microsoft’s new AI-powered voice quality improvements should improve or even eliminate these day-to-day annoyances.

Microsoft is now using a machine learning models to improve room acoustics so you’ll no longer sound like you’re hiding in a cave. “While we have been trying our best with digital signal processing to do a really good job in Teams, we have now started using machine learning for...

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TP-Link’s new smart plug adds HomeKit and energy monitoring

TP-Link’s Kasa mini smart plug just got better.

TP-Link has finally added HomeKit to one of its products, and it's a serious bargain. The new version of its very good mini smart plug has Apple HomeKit support and energy monitoring all for just $12.50 per plug. The Kasa Smart WiFi Plug Mini with Energy Monitoring and Apple HomeKit, EP25 is available on Amazon for $49.99 for a four-pack (a two-pack at $29.99 is coming in Q4).

There are a lot of smart plugs out there but very few with energy monitoring and HomeKit compatibility, and none as cheap as $12.50 that offer both. TP-Link’s Kasa line also works with Amazon Alexa and Google Home, but this is the first device with HomeKit. The company had originally promised the mini plug would get HomeKit in January 2019 but then changed its...

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For All Mankind’s first season is currently free to stream

For All Mankind’s third season just started. | Image: Apple

The first season of For All Mankind, the science fiction alternate history show from Battlestar Galactica creator Ron D. Moore, is now available to stream free of charge — no Apple TV Plus subscription required. The limited time promotion coincides with the release of the show’s third season, which premiered on June 10th on Apple’s video streaming service.

While Ted Lasso and Severance have arguably been the biggest breakout TV show hits from Apple TV Plus, my colleague Alex Cranz would have everyone believe that For All Mankind is better than both. Here’s how she recently described it:

[Warning: Season 1 spoilers ahead]

The show started as an almost rote alternate history, where the USSR beat the USA to the Moon, and in a bid for a...

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Wikimedia Foundation appeals Russian fine over Ukraine war articles

The Wikimedia Foundation is challenging a Russian court’s ruling that it violated disinformation laws in articles about the invasion of Ukraine. The organization filed its appeal last week, arguing that the articles contained “well-sourced, verified knowledge” and that Russia did not have jurisdiction over the globally operating Wikimedia Foundation.

The Moscow court fined Wikimedia 5 million rubles (around $65,000) after an April ruling that covered seven Russian-language articles, including Russian Invasions of Ukraine (2022), War Crimes during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, Shelling of Hospital in Mariupol, and Massacre in Bucha. The decision followed an order from Russia’s tech and communications agency Roskomnadzor, as well as the...

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Google suspends engineer who claims its AI is sentient

Its LaMDA system is built to make AI more conversational. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Google has placed one of its engineers on paid administrative leave for allegedly breaking its confidentiality policies after he grew concerned that an AI chatbot system had achieved sentience, the Washington Post reports. The engineer, Blake Lemoine, works for Google’s Responsible AI organization, and was testing whether its LaMDA model generates discriminatory language or hate speech.

The engineer’s concerns reportedly grew out of convincing responses he saw the AI system generating about its rights and the ethics of robotics. In April he shared a document with executives titled “Is LaMDA Sentient?” containing a transcript of his conversations with the AI (after being placed on leave, Lemoine published the transcript via his Medium...

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DeFi lending giant Celsius halts withdrawals

Exhibition And Experience Zones at The Paris NFT Day Conference

The Celsius Network, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform and one of the largest crypto lenders, announced Sunday night that it was “pausing all withdrawals, Swap, and transfers between accounts.” It has 1.7 million customers.

The company’s token, CEL, is trading at 23 cents as of this writing, according to CoinMarketCap. That’s a 92 percent decrease from April 8th, when CEL was worth $3. The token was worth nearly $7 a year ago.

There have been questions about Celsius Networks’ high yields, its connections to failed stablecoin Terra, and its reserves. The value of assets on its platform dropped by half to $12 billion in May, from $24 billion in December 2021. Between March and May, a billion dollars flowed out of the system, The...

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Astra’s failed launch resulted in the loss of two NASA weather satellites

A rocket belonging to the up-and-coming Astra space company failed to deliver two of NASA’s weather-tracking satellites to space after its second stage engine shut down prematurely. Both satellites were lost as a result of the failure.

Astra’s Launch Vehicle 0010 (LV0010) successfully took off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 1:43PM ET, but suffered an upper stage failure about 10 minutes into its flight. The launch was part of NASA’s mission to send six TROPICS satellites into space — these small, foot-long CubeSats are supposed to help NASA keep better track of developing tropical storms. CubeSats are low-cost satellites frequently built by researchers at colleges and universities.

We had a nominal first stage...

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Watch 15 minutes of Starfield gameplay

After an early glimpse of Starfield at Microsoft’s Xbox & Bethesda showcase last year and a delay to 2023, we’re now getting a much closer look at Bethesda’s first new IP in 25 years thanks to 15 minutes of gameplay. Starfield is, naturally, set in space where players will take on the role of a last group of explorers. Described as “Skyrim in space,” by game director Todd Howard, the RPG will be playable in both first- and third-person, but primarily it’s first-person.

During the early stages of the gameplay, we arrive on the moon of Kreet, just one of more than 1,000 planets that players will be able to fly to and explore freely. Powered by Bethesda’s new Creation Engine 2, the first Starfield gameplay shows a player freely roaming...

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