Meta Quest headsets will finally stop requiring a Facebook account

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Meta is introducing a new account system for its virtual reality headsets, changing a 2020 requirement that most users log in with Facebook. The new “Meta accounts” don’t require users to sign up for Facebook, and they come with a slew of other updates to Meta’s VR social interface.

Meta accounts will start rolling out in August 2022 for new and existing Quest users. If you’ve been using a Facebook account with a Quest headset (including a Facebook account merged with an earlier Oculus account), you’ll need to create a Meta profile that month. If you’ve been logging in with an Oculus account, you can keep using it until January 1st, 2023, as previously promised. If you migrate your account, you’re supposed to see all the VR apps you...

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Can Microsoft’s data centers become big batteries for the grid?

A server room at a Microsoft data center. Data centers like this have lithium-ion batteries that keep their systems running in the event of a power outage. | Image: Microsoft

Microsoft says its data centers could soon provide backup power to electricgrids transitioning to renewable energy. The data centers alreadyhave lithium-ion batteries on-site so that they can keep running during a power outage. Now, that backup system could also shore upgrids in need of more batteries to store energy produced by growingnumbers of solar panels or wind farms.

That kind of energy storage is absolutely critical for any city or region trying to get its grid to run on renewables. Microsoft’s newest data center in Dublin, Ireland, due to come online next year, will be the company’s first full-scale attempt at providing that service.

Energy storage is absolutely critical

Unlike coal or gas, solar and wind energy ebb and...

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Inscryption is coming to console with PlayStation port

Inscryption.

Roguelike sensation Inscryption is coming to console: today, Sony revealed that the diabolical deck-building card game will be launching on both the PS4 and PS5. There’s no word yet on when the port will be available, but it will include some PlayStation-specific features like haptic feedback that “enhances every grisly action.” Inscryption first made waves when it released on PC last year and recently made its way to Mac and Linux.

The news comes as part of a handful of indie game announcements from Sony. In addition to Inscryption, the company announced PlayStation versions of Cursed to Golf, Signalis, Cult of the Lamb, Schim, and the retro RPG Sea of Stars. A new version of Q-Games’ The Tomorrow Children, called the Phoenix Edition,...

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Netflix introduces spatial audio for Stranger Things and other originals

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Netflix has announced that, beginning today, it’s rolling out spatial audio for select original programming. The feature should deliver more immersive sound, particularly for customers who are listening to a TV show or movie with headphones. Netflix has collaborated with Sennheiser to convert surround sound mixes into an expansive spatial audio presentation that can be played through stereo speakers or headphones; you don’t have to buy anything new or own a proper surround system for this to work. According to Netflix, spatial audio “is compatible with all devices, all streaming plans, and does not require surround sound speakers or home theater equipment.”

“Netflix spatial audio helps to translate the cinematic experience of immersive...

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Court docs reveal secret Elon Musk children with long-term Musk exec

According to a report by Business Insider, Elon Musk is the father of twin children with current Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis. Business Insider shared a court document from this May with Zilis and Musk petitioning for a name change for both children, making “the children’s last name to be their father’s, and for their mother’s last name to be contained in their middle name.” CNN Business obtained a Travis County, Texas, court docket showing the petition was filed in April 2022 and obtained in May.

Seemingly in response to the article, Musk tweeted, “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far,” followed by “mark my words, they are sadly true.”

Mark my...

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How to preorder the 2022 MacBook Air

Apple

Apple’s 2022 MacBook Air with an updated design, M2 processor, MagSafe charging, and a slightly bigger display will soon be available for preorder, starting at $1,199. Apple says it will open preorders online tomorrow, July 8th, at 8AM ET / 5AM PT, and orders will begin shipping Friday, July 15th. If you have a hard time preordering online for delivery (preorders don’t typically sell out, but ship dates often get pushed back very quickly), here’s a tip: try to order online right at 8AM ET on launch day, July 15th, with your order set as an in-store pickup.

The release of this model follows behind the 2022 MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar, which had the honor of being Apple’s first laptop to debut the M2 chip. In terms of how the M2...

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The Verge’s Guide to Amazon Prime Day 2022

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

Whether your wallet is ready or not, Amazon Prime Day 2022 is less than a week away. The annual two-day super sale — which grants Prime subscribers access to a deluge of discounts, promotions, and bonafide deals — remains one of the best times of the year to pick up a range of tech outside of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, whether you plan to shop at Amazon or one of the many other retailers running counter sales elsewhere.

This year’s Prime Day kicks off on July 12th, once again establishing itself as the premier shopping event of the summer. Instead of rounding up every minor price cut and promotion we see, however, we plan to collate only the best deals on the products we know and love, from 4K TVs and noise-canceling headphones to...

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Volkswagen announces $20 billion effort to build its own EV batteries

VW says it hopes to eventually produce 240 GWh of battery capacity. | Image: VW

Volkswagen said it would invest $20.38 billion to build electric vehicle batteries, a move the company says will create 20,000 jobs and generate $20.38 billion in annual sales. The automaker will create a new company called Power Co to oversee the vast effort as VW races to secure enough capacity, materials, and supplies to power its EV ambitions.

Power Co will manage VW’s entire battery supply chain, from research and development of new technologies to the mining of the raw materials to end-of-life recycling. The news was announced at a groundbreaking ceremony for the company’s first battery plant in Salzgitter, a city in Germany’s Lower Saxony.

Power Co will manage VW’s entire battery supply chain

“The battery cell business is one of...

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Twitter starts testing new CoTweets feature that lets two accounts co-author a tweet

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter has started testing a new CoTweets feature this week with users of the social network. The CoTweets feature allows two accounts to co-author a tweet and both be tagged in a single tweet. Twitter has confirmed to The Verge that this new feature is now live for some users for a limited amount of time after the company started experimenting with the idea earlier this year.

“We’re continuing to explore new ways for people to collaborate on Twitter,” explains Twitter spokesperson Joseph J. Nuñez in a statement to The Verge. “We’re testing CoTweets for a limited time to learn how people and brands may use this feature to grow and reach new audiences, and strengthen their collaborations with other accounts.”

Several Twitter users have...

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E3 is partnering with PAX organizers for 2023 return in LA

Illustration by Alex Castro

Mere weeks after the ESA announced that, no, seriously this time, E3 will make an in-person return in 2023, it’s ready to share some more details. In a press release, the ESA announced that it’s partnering with ReedPop, the production company known for running the Penny Arcade Expo and New York Comic Con, to facilitate the industry event.

“We are thrilled to bring back E3 as an in-person event with ReedPop, a global leader in producing pop culture events,” said ESA CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis.

According to the press release, E3 2023 will return to its home at the Los Angeles Convention Center. It’s the same convention center that was so inundated with attendees at last week’s Anime Expo that it produced some truly horrifying pictures (that...

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How engineers got the world’s most powerful space telescope ready to do science

An artistic rendering of JWST fully deployed in space. | Image: ESA

The last six months for the James Webb Space Telescope have been packed full of tasks

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Hydrow Wave review: I can’t believe I love rowing now

The new $1,495 rower is meant to save space and money

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The best deals on Nintendo Switch games right now

Right now, there are discounts on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and a handful of other essential Switch titles.

The Nintendo Switch is one of the most popular consoles ever released, one with an ever-expanding library of games to choose from. Odds are if a game is capable of working on the Switch’s hardware, it’s either already available or it will be soon.

Thankfully, a number of games are currently receiving price breaks if you’re looking to expand your collection, including first-gen offerings like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and remasters likeTony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2. However, if you want to add some less conventional titles to your collection, underwater survival simulator Subnautica, and the side-scrolling beat’em-up Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game, are also discounted right now.

Below, we’ve rounded up some of the...

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Super Bowser now has his own 2,807-piece Lego Mario set

Photo: Lego

How tall is Bowser, the fire-breathing dragon-turtle-lizard thing who regularly roils the Mushroom Kingdom as Mario’s chief nemesis? It is the age-old question, and there’s no single answer. But if you’ve been holding back on Lego’s cutesy interactive Mario sets because their Super Koopa didn’t meet your satisfaction, I might have the set for you.

You’re looking at Lego’s 2,807-piece “The Mighty Bowser,” a supersized $270 version of the reptile that looks ready for some of the biggest boss fights we’ve ever seen in the games. It’s the biggest Lego Super Mario build yet, and much bigger than the original:

Photo: Lego

Here’s the original Lego Bowser for comparison.

While the company hasn’t told us quite how tall...

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Reddit will sell ‘Collectible Avatars,’ and yes — they’re NFTs

Image: Reddit

Compared to other social networking sites, Reddit has taken a slow and limited approach to features that carry a stain of self-promotion or branding. Even a decision to add simple profile pages that users could fill with their own posts faced criticism. Browsing the site, you’re more likely to see posters using variations of the site’s mascot, Snoo, in their profile picture than the selfies that dominate Twitter or Facebook. Now, we’ll see how the community responds to Reddit’s offer of “blockchain-backed Collectible Avatars.” In case you’re wondering, yes, these are non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that are available for purchase in the Reddit Avatar Builder.

These limited-edition avatars, which purchasers can then customize in the Avatar...

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Netflix doesn’t want to hear it anymore

Tech workers at Netflix thought the company would always value their feedback. How naïve.

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CD Projekt Red launches single player Gwent: Rogue Mage on PC, iOS, and Android

CD Projekt Red has launched new single player title based on the Gwent card game from The Witcher series. Gwent: Rogue Mage is a roguelike deckbuilder, in which players enter a procedurally-generated map and fight their way through a series of monsters and bosses using a deck of card-based abilities and characters deployed on the battlefield.

The game is set hundreds of years before the events of The Witcher 3, with players taking on the role of the mage Alzur as he attempts to create the first ever Witcher. However, the story is mostly just set-dressing, with game director Vladimir Tortsov telling IGN: “We do not treat this expansion as an official addition to The Witcher lore.”

The game is available today on PC, iOS, and Android, and...

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FBI and MI5: ‘The Chinese government is set on stealing your technology’

MI5 Director General Ken McCallum (left) and FBI Director Christopher Wray (right). | Photo by Dominic Lipinski/PA Images via Getty Images

The heads of the FBI and UK domestic security service shared a platform for the first time to issue dire warnings about the threats posed by the Chinese government’s espionage operations, BBC News reports. FBI Director Christopher Wray and MI5 Director General Ken McCallum were speaking at a joint event at MI5’s London headquarters in front of an audience that included business CEOs and senior figures from universities.

“The Chinese government is set on stealing your technology—whatever it is that makes your industry tick—and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market,” the Wall Street Journal reports Wray said in the speech. The FBI director added that the benefits of keeping a piece of technology confidential may...

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Galaxy Watch 5 leak gives best look yet at Samsung’s upcoming smartwatches

The Galaxy Watch 5 Pro (left) and Watch 5 (right). | Image: 91Mobiles

3D renders of Samsung’s upcoming smartwatches, the Galaxy Watch 5 and Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, have appeared online thanks to leaker Evan Blass and 91Mobiles, a month ahead of their expected launch in August. The renders show the two watches from every angle, and line up with other leaked details about the two devices.

First up is the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, the more premium of the two and the rumored successor to last year’s Galaxy Watch 4 Classic. The bad news is that the rumors about the watch no longer featuring a physical rotating bezel appear to be true — there’s no sign of the fan-favorite mechanism in these renders. There’s also only mention of one model size, 45mm, rather than the two sizes we saw last year (46mm and 44mm).

...

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Grab the jaw-dropping Matrix Awakens tech demo before it’s delisted this week

Download it before Saturday if you want the experience. | Screenshot by Umar Shakir / The Verge

If you’ve wanted to experience the impressive visuals in The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience and haven’t downloaded it yet, you’ll want to act fast — according to Unreal Engine’s website, it’ll be removed from the PlayStation and Xbox stores on Saturday, July 9th. After that date you’ll still be able to play and download it, but only if you added it to your library before the cutoff.

The Matrix Awakens, released in December 2021 for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S / X, is meant to act as a tech demo showing off the “power and potential” of Epic’s next-generation graphics engine, with its ray traced lighting and “metahumans.” It features digital replicas of Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss, a car chase turret sequence,...

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The best Chromebook deals you can get right now

You can save hundreds on Lenovo’s ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook. | Photo by Monica Chin / 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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Blizzard will bring back BlizzCon in 2023

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

It’s been a few years since Blizzard has hosted an in-person version of BlizzCon, its fan convention, but it sounds like that’s going to change in 2023. The company, known for huge franchises like World of Warcraft and Diablo, is “committed to bringing back BlizzCon in 2023,” Blizzard boss Mike Ybarra told the Los Angeles Times.

“We previously announced we’re taking a pause on BlizzCon while we reimagine it for the future but do want to return to a live event that enables us to celebrate the community,” Ybarra said. “We recently hired a new leader of BlizzCon, April McKee, who is hard at work on that plan. ... We are committed to bringing back BlizzCon in 2023.”

It’s not clear when the event might happen, and Activision Blizzard didn’t...

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The gang’s all back in Clerks III’s first trailer

Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith as Jay and Silent Bob.

Had Kevin Smith not canceled one of his comedy shows in 2018 after suffering an unexpected heart attack, the Clerks director might not have survived to use his brush with death as the basis for Lionsgate’s upcoming Clerks III. Though the specter of humanity’s mortality is what brings Dante, Randal, Jay, and Silent Bob back together in Clerks III’s first trailer, the relatively dark circumstances also remind them that they’ve still got valuable time left to make some of their dreams come true.

Clerks III’s first trailer zooms in on Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) just as he’s having a heart attack at the Quick Stop, where the two have been for decades. While Randal’s heart attack doesn’t kill him, it does leave him...

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Here are the best tablet deals right now

Best Buy is currently discounting a bundle containing the Surface Pro 8 and Surface Pro keyboard to $899.99. | Image by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Tablets exist in a space between phones and laptops that is becoming increasingly muddled. As phones become more powerful and gain larger displays, laptops continue to get lighter. Tablet manufacturers haven’t been resting on their laurels, though. Many of the more recent tablets we’ve seen are looking to bridge the gap in terms of performance and, in select cases, handle some tasks more efficiently than both phones and laptops.

The tablet spectrum is varied, too. Inexpensive models like the Amazon Fire HD 10 make for excellent media streaming devices, while those in Microsoft’s versatile Surface lineup can easily serve as ad-hoc laptops when paired with an optional folio-style keyboard. Then there’s the ubiquitous iPad, a slate that has...

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A rumored extreme sports Apple Watch could have larger screen, ‘strong metal’ case

The rumored watch is expected to be larger than the current Series 7, pictured here. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Apple is working on a version of the Apple Watch meant for “extreme sports athletes,” which will feature a bigger screen and tougher design, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The report says the sports model will feature a “nearly 2-inch display” with 7 percent more area than the one found on the current 45 mm watches and that it would be powered by a larger battery. (Note that the 45 mm — or roughly 1.77-inch — measurement is in reference to the watch’s case size, not its screen size.)

Gurman has reported on a potential rugged Apple Watch before, but now the prediction is slightly different. He previously said Apple could make its Watch more rugged with a rubberized exterior, which he said was sometimes internally...

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The GTA V modder we just wrote about has been slapped with a DMCA takedown

Last Friday, we introduced you to Luke Ross: a modder who now makes $20,000 a month on Patreon bringing big games like Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2 to virtual reality. But the publisher of those games, Take-Two Interactive, was apparently not amused — and Patreon is now threatening to suspend his account unless he plays ball with a DMCA takedown.

What does Take-Two want him to do? That’s not actually clear, but it’s looking like Ross will be forced to remove his VR mods anyhow.

Here’s a copy of the message Ross says he received from Patreon on Wednesday morning, as provided to The Verge:

Richard (Patreon)

Jul 6, 2022, 8:54 AM PDT

Hello,

My name is Richard, and I’m contacting you from the Patreon Trust & Safety team

We...

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Sorry, so LimeWire is now a dumping ground for celebrity NFTs?

I have fond memories of hanging out at my childhood friend’s house and watching as she downloaded thousands of pirated songs (and viruses) onto her family’s computer using LimeWire. It was a simpler time — we didn’t have to worry about jobs because we were 12 years old. Soulja Boy’s “Crank That” had infiltrated our Midwestern school dances and we reveled in learning the choreography. And this cool service let you listen to whatever music you wanted for free. I love the internet, I thought to myself.

As an adult in 2022, reading “[insert bygone brand name] is back!” is a dangerous game. These days, announcements frequently include a string of phrases nonsensical to the average person, as brands like RadioShack, Blockbuster, and other...

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Amazon Prime Day 2022: the latest news, deals, and coverage

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Everything you need to know to score the best deals possible

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FDA suspends Juul ban during appeal process

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Food and Drug Administration suspended its ban on Juul’s e-cigarettes as the company goes through the appeals process, the agency said Tuesday.

The FDA rejected Juul’s applications to sell tobacco- and menthol-flavored e-cigarettes in June, saying the company had to pull its products off the market. Juul appealed the decision, and a federal court issued a temporary stay of the ban while the company went through the appeals process. The company also asked the FDA to stay its own ban, and the agency initially refused, according to court filings.

Juul said in court filings that the FDA did not evaluate its entire application and that it made the decision to ban Juul’s products based on political pressure. Juul said it will continue to...

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Games Done Quick bans Metal Gear speedrunner for faking world record

The joy of Summer Games Done Quick raising $3.01 million for Doctors Without Borders has been marred with a bit of controversy. During the charity marathon, Mekarazium, a Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance runner, faked his run of the Revengeance Blade Wolf DLC, playing a spliced video instead of running the game live. The fake run was discovered when Mekarazium himself confessed to cheating, prompting Games Done Quick organizers to remove the VOD of the run and ban Mekarazium from future events. Mekarazium was able to pull off the deception as, even though this was the first live GDQ since AGDQ 2020, he participated remotely, broadcasting from his home.

On Thursday, June 30th, Mekarazium ran Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance on new game plus...

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