British Army’s YouTube and Twitter accounts were hacked to promote crypto scams

Hackers altered the British Army’s Twitter page to make it seem like it was associated with The Possessed NFT project.

Both the British Army’s Facebook and Twitter accounts were hacked and used to promote cryptocurrency scams, the UK Ministry of Defence confirmed on Sunday. It’s unclear when exactly hackers took over the two accounts, but they both appear to be back to normal now.

“We are aware of a breach of the Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts and an investigation is underway,” the Ministry of Defence Press Office said on Twitter. “The Army takes information security extremely seriously and is resolving the issue.”

Hackers hijacked the British Army’s Twitter page, swapping out the organization’s profile picture, bio, and cover photo to make it seem like it was associated with The Possessed NFT collection. The account sent out various retweets for...

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Tesla is facing yet another racial discrimination lawsuit

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

15 former or current Black Tesla employees are suing the company for allegedly failing to prevent racial discrimination at its Fremont, California factory (via Bloomberg). The lawsuit, which was filed in a California court last week, details workers’ claims that they were subject to racial slurs, derogatory comments, and racially-motivated harassment in the workplace.

As outlined in the filing, workers allege that their colleagues frequently used the N-word and other racist or discriminatory terms like “slavery” or “plantation” to describe the factory’s work culture. In addition, Tesla allegedly left racist graffiti on bathroom walls, benches, lockers, and workstations that contained “KKK,” the N-word, and drawings of swastikas.

The...

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Razer’s Kishi V2 is an improved yet even more imperfect controller

It’s a Backbone clone with little soul of its own

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Apple Watch Series 8 will reportedly be able to detect if you have a fever

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

The upcoming Apple Watch Series 8 will reportedly come with a body temperature sensor that can tell whether you’re running a fever, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Instead of giving you an exact reading, Gurman believes the watch should be able to detect a spike in body temperature, and then encourage you to talk to a doctor or use a thermometer.

Gurman says the body temperature sensor still has to pass internal testing, and if it does, Apple’s expected to incorporate the feature in the Watch Series 8, as well as the rumored “rugged” smartwatch for extreme sports athletes. The upcoming entry-level Apple Watch SE likely won’t have the sensor, though.

Rumors of a body temperature sensor have been floating around for...

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Sony had to make a PC gaming monitor because the PS5 isn’t enough

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

It’s no mystery why Sony made a PC gaming monitor that can also work well with the PS5. The PC gaming business is simply too big to ignore, and it’s just money on the table that’s otherwise up for grabs by other monitor makers.

Sony didn’t say those exact words, but it didn’t have to for me to know that it’s one of the reasons why it decided to announce two gaming monitors this week. Another reason is because Sony’s growing focus on services means that PS Plus will eventually go beyond the console. Getting its games in front of more people instead of locking them down as exclusives has, in the past few years, become a welcome change in strategy.

Sony is late to this particular party, though. Nintendo’s Switch and Valve’s Steam Deck can...

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Neon White’s creative director on making the ‘most video games game possible’

I don’t think I’ve ever played something that blends genres quite like Neon White. Let me try to summarize the game: you play as a demon hunter who destroys baddies in heaven by using cards that serve as either guns or special movement abilities, and the goal is to get through each level as fast as you possibly can. It’s part first-person shooter, part first-person platformer, part puzzler, part card game, part time attack, and even part visual novel.

I’ve struggled to come up with a better description, but in an interview, Neon White creative director Ben Esposito finally gave me one: “a really gamey game.”

“It’s a really unlikely game,” he said. “It’s a really gamey game that’s full of gamey things. But the combination of elements is...

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I’ve been getting tons of ‘wrong number’ spam texts, and I don’t hate it?

Photo by Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge

The text that arrived at 3:51PM on Monday, March 28th, seemed innocent at first.

“Mr. Steven,” it read, “I am very sorry, after our communication and understanding during this period of time, I feel that we are not suitable in some ways.”

That’s odd, I thought, must be a wrong number. But who was this mysterious Mr. Steven? What was the nature of the disagreement? What the heck did Mr. Steven do to offend this person? I was intrigued — but not enough to respond.

Several weeks later, I received another text, this time from someone named “Amy” asking about “a location for coffee.” A couple days after that, “Irene from Vietnam” reached out to ask if I was still living in New York. And then “Sophia” texted, calling me “Laura” and asking...

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Crypto hedge fund Three Arrows files for bankruptcy

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in a bid to protect its US assets from creditors in the country, as reported earlier by Bloomberg and CNBC. Representatives for the Singapore-based company made the filing in a Southern District New York court on Friday, which legally protects the US assets of insolvent foreign debtors from creditors in the US.

Founded in 2012 by Kyle Davis and Su Zhu, 3AC managed about $10 billion in assets as recently as March, later sinking to $3 billion in April. Like several other crypto firms, including the lending giants Celcius and Babel Finance, 3AC’s turn in fortunes is part of the so-called crypto “winter” that’s brought down stablecoins and sent Bitcoin’s...

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Tesla’s run of record quarterly deliveries comes to an end thanks to China’s COVID shutdowns

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Tesla announced it had delivered 254,695 vehicles during the second quarter of 2022, about an 18 percent drop from the previous quarter. The report, which was published on Tesla’s site, signals an end to a nearly two-year-long run of record quarterly deliveries for Elon Musk’s company, which can mostly be attributed to lengthy COVID-related shutdowns of its factory in Shanghai.

Tesla said the Model 3 and Model Y vehicles made up 238,533 of these deliveries, while 16,162 were for the Model S and Model X vehicles. On the production side of things, Tesla said it managed to build a total of 258,580 vehicles.

China has been crucial to the company’s rise to its status as one of the most valuable automakers in the world. But Tesla’s Shanghai...

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Virgin Orbit successfully launches satellites during first night mission

Image: Virgin Orbit

Virgin Orbit launched a rocket carrying seven satellites from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port early Saturday morning at 1:49 AM ET (10:49PM local), marking the small satellite launcher’s first successful night mission. The company brought the satellites into low Earth orbit with the help of its Boeing 747 carrier aircraft called Cosmic Girl, which had the LauncherOne rocket attached beneath one of its wings.

The mission, called Straight Up after a 1988 Paula Abdul song, involved seven research satellites as part of NASA’s Space Test Program. Like its previous missions, Virgin Orbit propelled the satellites into space by having Cosmic Girl carry the LauncherOne rocket 35,000 feet above the ground, giving it a headstart before the...

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These fire-prone places are ditching fireworks for drones this July Fourth

A sparse group of people brave the smoky conditions at Kings Beach, California, as the Caldor Fire burns nearby on Saturday, September 4th, 2021 | Jane Tyska / Digital First Media / East Bay Times via Getty Images

After two years of Fourth of July celebrations without fireworks during the COVID-19 pandemic, the California resort community of North Lake Tahoe is ready to light up the sky again. But instead of traditional fireworks, more than 100 drones will take off for a light show choreographed to music. Like an increasing number of communities throughout the region, city planners chose fire safety and sustainability over nostalgia as California copes with a cruel megadrought.

“Fireworks come with their own list of known environmental impacts—including noise pollution, impacts to the lake, and increased risk of fire at a time when the wildfire risk is already so high,” Katie Biggers, executive director of the Tahoe City Downtown Association,...

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Meta’s shutting down its digital wallet, Novi

Image: Facebook

Meta’s ending the pilot for Novi, the company’s digital wallet and the last remaining piece of its troubled cryptocurrency project, as first reported by Bloomberg. On Novi’s website, Meta says the wallet is shutting down on September 1st, 2022, and asks users to withdraw their funds “as soon as possible.”

Users will lose access to their accounts come September, and will no longer be able to add money to Novi starting July 21st. If someone forgets to withdraw their remaining balance, Meta says it will “attempt to transfer” their funds to the bank account or debit card added to the service.

Meta rolled out the “small pilot” of Novi to users in the US and Guatemala last October. Novi was originally built to support fast and free...

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Your internet life needs a Feeds Reboot — here’s how to do it

If you don’t tend to your algorithms, you’ll eventually hate what they show you. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

For the last few years, I’ve chosen one weekend day a year to undertake what I’ve come to call a Feeds Reboot. I try to systematically go through every subscription, every follow, every algorithmically or chronologically generated thing I see on social platforms, streaming services, and news apps, and reset or at least review the way it works. I can’t recommend this enough.

Every time I do a Feeds Reboot, I notice a huge uptick in how interesting and relevant I suddenly find the internet. Does it then spend the next 364 days slowly degrading back into a morass from which I will try and extricate myself next year? Yep! But I’m still making progress.

The point of a Feeds Reboot is to be more intentional about the internet. It’s not the...

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Refurbished Sonos speakers are discounted for the Fourth of July

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

The Fourth of July weekend is here, and hopefully you get to enjoy some time together with friends and family (and lots of delicious food). The Verge Deals compiled the best deals happening in honor of America’s birthday, but today I aim to give you a smaller, fresher selection of deals that may not last through the holiday. Frequent visitors to the site might recognize one or two of them, but I’ve tried to toss in a few new deals for your perusal. Have a nice weekend.

Sonos is hosting another one of its sale events on refurbished audio products (in like-new condition, and covered by a one-year warranty), running the gamut of its most affordable and pricey hardware. Starting at the low end, the Sonos Roam is selling for $139, down from...

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TCL 30 XE 5G review: not bad for $200

TCL’s inexpensive phone offers decent performance, access to T-Mobile’s good 5G network, and not much else

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How to delete your Instagram account

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

If you’ve made the decision to delete Instagram, whether because you’ve outgrown the need for a certain finsta or because its parent company Meta is courting controversy again, doing so isn’t as quick or easy as it should be. Up until recently, it couldn’t even be done from within the Instagram app.

Go ahead and take a moment to make an obligatory “I’m deleting Instagram” post if you’d like. After that, you have two ways you can go about it.

Deleting Instagram using the iOS or Android App

The easiest way for iPhone users to delete Instagram is by using the app. To do so, go to your profile, tap the hamburger menu in the top right, and select Settings. Then go to Account, and scroll down to the bottom of the menu. There will be a Delete...

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Stranger Things 4 ends by trusting in the season’s best and worst instincts

Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven and Matthew Modine as Dr. Martin Brenner. | Netflix

Stranger Things 4 Vol. 2 finishes with a deadly bang and the glimpse of the apocalypse

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The GPU shortage is over

These cards are now worth just over $1,000, well under MSRP — down from $2,570 last March. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Nvidia and AMD graphics cards are again within reach

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Google will start auto-deleting abortion clinic visits from user location history

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Google says it’ll start automatically deleting visits to abortion clinics, domestic violence shelters, weight loss clinics, and other potentially sensitive locations from users’ location histories in the coming weeks. In a blog post on Friday, the company says that the deletion will happen “soon after” the visit, once its systems have identified that a trip was made to one of the locations. This change is happening in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the moves several states have immediately made to outlaw abortions.

You can also turn off Google’s location logging altogether by following its instructions here.

Google’s post, entitled “Protecting people’s privacy on health topics,” also mentions that...

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The best Xbox controller to buy right now

Photo Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Basic, premium, affordable, and customizable — lots to pick from

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There’s a better way to bypass Windows 11 install restrictions

Rufus 3.19 Beta has options when you start creating the bootable windows installer. | Image: Umar Shakir / The Verge

Windows 11 comes with more restrictive install requirements when compared to its predecessor, including restrictions on older processors as well as requiring an internet connection and Microsoft account. Luckily, there are workarounds that allow for upgrades to Windows 11 on unsupported CPUs, and the company isn’t blocking those circumventions. But, if you’re looking to do a clean Windows 11 install and configure the system with just a local account, you can now do that easily with a tool called Rufus.

The app has been long used by IT departments to quickly create bootable Windows installers. The latest beta release, as reported by Ars Technica, now has the ability to remove the requirement of an online Microsoft account, alongside other...

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You can now play the ‘all your base are belong to us’ game on Switch

Image: Nintendo

You can now play one of the internet’s most famous memes right on your Nintendo Switch. Zero Wing, which features the classic line “all your base are belong to us” during its introductory cutscene, is now available to play on the Sega Genesis app that’s accessible with a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription.

Nintendo seems to be well aware of the meme. In a video announcing the arrival of Zero Wing and three other games to the service, Nintendo leads with the space shooter and features many memorable quotes from its bad translation, including, of course, the “all your base” line. (Warning that the Zero Wing section in the video and the game itself has patches of intensely flickering lights, in case you’re sensitive to...

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The government’s going after alleged crypto scammers as market crashes

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The US government seems to be worked up about cryptocurrency scams. On Thursday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of Justice all released news that they were taking some form of action against people accused of carrying out multimillion or billion-dollar schemes. One of the cases involves knock-off apes, one is the “largest fraudulent scheme involving Bitcoin charged in any CFTC case,” and one involves someone nicknamed “the Cryptoqueen.” The wave of enforcement is happening against a backdrop of plummeting crypto prices.

Let’s start with the CFTC — the regulator has filed an action against a company called Mirror Trading International (MTI), which was run by a South African...

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Social networks won’t be able to stay neutral on abortion

In reaction to the announcement that the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade_, protestors assembled in Washington Square Park and then marched north to Union Square on June 24th, 2022, in New York City._ | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The end of Roe v. Wade is leaving web platforms struggling to handle moderation — and data safety — questions around newly instituted abortion bans.

For years, web platforms have faced relatively little backlash for pledging to remove posts that violate US law, even if there’s debate over whether specific content meets that standard. Policies that “match the laws of the country” — Elon Musk’s initial description of his plans for Twitter — are typically code for very permissive moderation in the US, where the First Amendment has historically protected a huge swath of content. The 2018 FOSTA-SESTA carveout, a rare exception, targeted the marginalized community of sex workers and used the justification that it was fighting the rightfully...

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Sprint’s network has been officially retired

The Sprint shutdown is fully underway. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The remnants of Sprint’s network have been put out to pasture. As of yesterday, Sprint’s LTE network has been retired by its new owner, T-Mobile. That’s along with Sprint’s 3G CDMA network, which was shut down earlier this year, and what remained of T-Mobile’s own 3G network, which enters retirement today. T-Mobile spokesperson Justin Paulsen confirmed to The Verge that the network shutdowns are now underway.

It may come as a surprise that any part of Sprint’s network was still operational so recently. In April 2020, T-Mobile officially took ownership of the company, including all of its spectrum and network towers, which would ultimately be repurposed for 5G. Sprint’s 3G CDMA network was the first to go when T-Mobile started to shut...

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Twitch is testing channel surfing

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitch is testing a new way to discover new channels that reminds me of the good old days of channel surfing on my TV. The experiment, which it calls the Channel Switcher, lets you easily flip through previews of a bunch of different streams to help you find something to watch. And perhaps best of all, you won’t see ads while using it.

You can get an idea of how it works in this tweet from Twitch:

No more pogoing.

Introducing a new experiment - the Channel Switcher. pic.twitter.com/WrB33TH6Mq

— Twitch (@Twitch) June 30, 2022

Right now on Twitch, if you don’t already know what you want to watch, it can be difficult to find something new that you might actually want to tune into. Personally, my rundown is to check the homepage, scan...

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The Sims 4 High School Years expansion adds a Depop-created ‘virtual thrift store’

The Sims 4 High School Years will be available on July 28th. | Image: EA

Later this month, clothing from the fashion marketplace Depop will be available in an expansion pack for The Sims 4 called High School Years (via Polygon). Depop describes itself as a “circular” and “community-powered” online resale site and app that allows users to buy and sell vintage clothing items, mostly at discounted rates.

The expansion pack will feature Sims characters experiencing “the rollercoaster of puberty,” complete with events like prom, school pranks, and the ability to cut class.

Image: Depop.com

Depop seller Lapoze McTribouy’s shop Sooki Sooki Vintage.

Teenage Sims now have a chance to become a fashion “Simfluencer” and earn Simoleons, the game’s in-app currency, using an app like Depop...

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Avatar: The Way of Water’s going to turn Sigourney Weaver into a teenage Na’vi

Jake Sully and Dr. Grace Augustine in the first Avatar_._ | Image: 20th Century Studios

Though Sigourney Weaver’s Dr. Grace Augustine ultimately died in the first Avatar film, one of the first surprising details director James Cameron shared about the film’s sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, was that Weaver was set to return as a mysterious new character. While Avatar’s story of symbiotic aliens could potentially have led to resurrecting Dr. Augustine in an imaginative way, it turns out that The Way of Water’s taking a much more surprising approach to incorporating Weaver back into the franchise.

Avatar: The Way of Water’s first trailer revealed that its story would focus on the blended family that former human Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and the Na’vi Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) began after the original film. Surprising as it...

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You should probably skip the base M2 MacBook Pro model

The base model MacBook Pro is not a good buy. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The base model 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro with 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM is available to buy right now. You probably shouldn’t buy it. With more details coming out about just how slow it is compared to higher-specced versions of the M2 and even the M1 model, it's becoming increasingly clear that the cheapest 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro is a real stinker of a deal.

Earlier this week, videos from Max Tech and Created Tech showed the storage in the base M2 model was slow compared to the M1 version, with 50 percent slower SSD read speeds and 30 percent slower write speeds. It's because Apple opted to just use one 256GB NAND flash storage chip instead of two 128GB chips as found on the M1. The move, likely a cost-saving one, means none of the...

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EA makes a bad joke, gets relentlessly flamed

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Electronic Arts, the unmitigated king of unforced errors, made a woefully ill-advised tweet yesterday, and the company’s Twitter mentions have not known peace since.

They’re a 10 but they only like playing single-player games

— Electronic Arts (@EA) June 30, 2022

The tweet follows the convention of a popular meme that’s been circulating the bird app in which a person is described as being highly attractive, then listing something about that person that’s supposed to make them instantly unattractive.

In EA’s case, the quality that’s supposed to make the person unattractive is the fact they prefer single-player games. Now I get that there’s supposed to be a message here. I’m going to interpret this as a dig at the kinds of people who...

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