The modder who gave the iPhone USB-C shows how he did it to AirPods

Image: Ken Pillonel

After teasing modified AirPods that swap Apple’s Lightning port for a USB-C connection, Ken Pillonel, the robotics engineering student behind the USB-C iPhone, has finally released the full video that shows his entire process. And the best part is that Pillonel is making his schematics open source, meaning you, too, can accomplish such a feat (given that you have a 3D printer).

Pillonel starts by sawing open the AirPods case, essentially breaking it, as they’re not designed to be taken apart. He then designs two replacement pieces to go on either side of the case, first by using an FDM 3D printer and then switching to SLA for a smoother result. The pieces he constructs snap perfectly into place in the most satisfying way possible,...

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Real cats are obsessed with Stray and this Twitter account proves it

Image: Annapurna Interactive

Annapurna Interactive’s Stray, the fantastic adventure game where you navigate through a cyberpunk-inspired world as a cat, is winning over more than just players. House cats, who typically sit idly as their owners play games, are getting engaged with the game, too. And people can’t stop tweeting about it. So, someone smarter than I am made the Twitter account @CatsWatchStray to bundle up all of that joy in one place.

Compared to almost everything else happening around the globe, this is so wholesome. You just get to see cats being unabashedly invested in the game. Perhaps it’s due to the realistic animations of the in-game cat or the fact that there’s a dedicated meow button, but cats are turning Stray, a single-player game, into a...

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Destiny Item Manager has a Stream Deck app now

Managing your Destiny 2 loot should’ve always been this easy. | Image: Alice Newcome-Beill

While everyone is talking about Destiny 2’s annual summer event, Solstice of Heroes, I’m busy with an evergreen event I like to call “managing my character’s inventory.” Anyone that plays Destiny 2 regularly has almost definitely used Destiny Item Manager (DIM), a community-created tool that keeps track of your items in a browser or on your phone at one point or another.

In fact, this tool has become so widely used that opening your vault in Destiny has a disclaimer that you should use DIM instead of attempting to manage your piles of loot in-game. DIM syncs with your Destiny 2 account and allows you to easily swap items between characters, assign loadouts, remotely pull stuff from the postmaster, and other quality-of-life improvements...

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Why BeReal is breaking out

Creative constraints + Instagram angst = success

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No Man’s Sky’s latest major update overhauls its towering space freighters

Endurance focuses on the game’s larger ships. | Image: Hello Games

No Man’s Sky has a major new free update releasing today, developer Hello Games has announced. The new Endurance update is focused on the game’s freighters and frigates, the large ships in the game that players can use as a mobile base of operations and to complete missions. Endurance is the twentieth major update for the game, which was originally released in 2016.

Improvements coming with this major update include a new ship bridge that offers instant access to warping and teleportation to navigate the game’s universe. Players can also build bigger freighters featuring exterior sections, as well as with new plant growing and manufacturing features, and the ships can now analyze planets from space. New expedition and combat-focused...

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OnePlus confirms that the 10T will arrive August 3rd with a top-shelf chipset

The 10T will have a Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset and a sparkly back panel. | Image: OnePlus

Pete Lau is throwing a party. As he has just announced in a community forum post, the OnePlus CEO says its upcoming 10T will launch on August 3rd with an in-person event in New York City. The 10T continues OnePlus’ tradition of performance-focused specs with a Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset, which is, in theory, a cut above the regular ol’ Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in the OnePlus 10 Pro. OnePlus will also take the opportunity to launch OxygenOS 13, which Lau says will come to the 10 Pro first and the 10T later this year.

Qualcomm says the “Plus” version of the 8 Gen 1 offers faster performance and better battery efficiency than the non-plus chipset. It’s a pull-out-all-the-stops kind of processor, and it’s largely intended for mobile devices...

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Facebook puts news on the back burner as it continues to push video and creators

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Facebook is only 18 but it’s slap-bang in the middle of a mid-life crisis, with user numbers declining and TikTok eating its Gen Z lunch. In response, the company is trying to push more video content from creators into users’ feeds, and is now shifting resources away from more text-focused products like its News tab and Bulletin newsletter platform.

As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook exec Campbell Brown told employees about this change in priorities in a recent memo. Brown said engineering and product teams at Meta-owned Facebook would, in future, spend less time on News and Bulletin to “heighten their focus on building a more robust Creator economy.”

Facebook wants its feed to look more like TikTok

This change in...

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Alaska Airlines will let flyers use digital bag tags to save time and paper

The tags include an e-paper display to show your flight info. | Image: Alaska Airlines

Alaska Airlines says it’s becoming the first US-based airline to roll out support for electronic bag tags, small programmable devices with e-paper displays that are designed to replace the paper tags currently in use. It plans to launch the new program in phases, and it’ll initially be focused on San Jose airport in California. The airline will initially give out 2,500 of the tags for free to its frequent flyers from the airport in late 2022, TechCrunch reports, and they’ll be available to purchase by Mileage Plan members next year.

Alaska Airlines intends for the tags to cut down on the amount of time its customers spend on flight admin at the airport. Rather than having to print a luggage tag in person, they can instead set up the...

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Netflix’s CEO is ready for TV to die

Photo by Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images

Netflix wants linear TV to die. CEO Reed Hastings has been banging the TV murder drum for more than 8 years now, and in the investor call today, he reiterated his belief, confidently saying that Netflix was in a great place because linear TV would be dead in “5 to 10 years.”

Hastings is financially incentivized to say this. One of the biggest competitors for the largest streaming service on the planet is the set of totally free streaming channels that beam into any TV with an antenna, and their costlier friends on cable TV.

Netflix needs linear TV to die because it needs the streaming holdouts still using linear TV. It shed a whopping 1.3 million subscribers across the US and Canada in the last three months, according to its 2022 Q2...

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Volkswagen names a new CEO to run its electric truck and SUV spinoff Scout

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The electric rebirth of Scout, the classic off-road SUV brand, is getting real this week as Volkswagen names Scott Keogh as CEO of its new spinoff company. The former head of VW Group America, as initially reported by Axios, pushed for VW to start a new electric truck line after seeing a fully restored vintage Scout: “the rights to the brand were just sitting there,” Keogh said.

VW acquired the Scout brand through a 2020 merger of its commercial trucking company Traton with Navistar, which the German automaker initially bought part of in 2016. In May, it was reported that VW Group is willing to pump $1 billion into the new Scout brand and set goals to sell a quarter million electric off-roaders under the name annually starting in 2026.

...

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Samsung’s August 10th Unpacked will definitely feature at least one foldable

Yep, that’s a foldable. | Image: Samsung

Samsung has provided a clear solution to the unusual puzzle it provided yesterday, confirming that its Galaxy Unpacked event will indeed take place on August 10th. The image included with the teaser also confirms that its foldables will be taking center stage, with a Galaxy Z Flip-shaped device acting as a “greater than” symbol. The event will start at 9AM ET and will be streamed on Samsung.com.

Based on the cryptic hint that Samsung dropped yesterday, along with the timing of last year’s Galaxy Z Flip 3 and Fold 3 launch, it was kind of a no-brainer to assume that we’d see updated foldable phones next month. If the phone in the invitation image is actually the Z Flip 4, then rumors that the device would feature minimal updates appear...

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Samsung will give you up to $200 credit for placing a Galaxy Z Fold 4 or Z Flip 4 reservation

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Another Samsung Unpacked virtual event is right around the corner, now confirmed to take place on August 10th at 9AM ET / 6AM PT, and along with it are some incentives for the early, early birds. Samsung is offering customers in the US the chance to put in free, no-commitment reservations for its upcoming devices on its website now, well ahead of preorders — and even the devices’ announcement.

Galaxy fans who reserve before the August 10th Unpacked will later receive varying tier-levels of store credit once the devices can be ordered, ranging from $30 to $200, toward Samsung’s next devices. As for what devices you’re signing up for? We can say with certainty that among the rumors, leaks, and Samsung’s own invite graphic, you can expect...

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Netflix’s ad-supported tier won’t have everything at launch

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Netflix’s upcoming ad-supported offering won’t include all of the content you can currently watch on the streaming service, Netflix executives said during the company’s Q2 2022 earnings interview video.

“Today, the vast majority of what people watch on Netflix, we can include in the ad-supported tier,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said. “There are some things that don’t — that we’re in conversation about with the studios on — but if we launched the product today, the members in the ad tier would have a great experience. We will clear some additional content, but certainly not all of it, but we don’t think it’s a material holdback to the business.”

“It’s certainly a nice to have,” said CFO Spencer Neumann. “But it’s not a must-have. As...

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Instagram’s trying to make it easier to find nearby businesses

The map includes filters for narrowing down what type of locations you’re looking for.

Instagram’s latest update aims to make it easier for users to find local businesses or attractions by adding a searchable map that lets you “discover popular local businesses near you,” according to an Instagram Story from Mark Zuckerberg. The map will show you a list of places nearby and will let you see posts about a certain place or see only certain types of business.

There are a few ways to get to the map — if someone tags a place in a post or story, you can tap on the tag and hit “see location” to get to the location’s page. If you move around on the map, you’ll then be able to search the area to see what’s nearby.

Navigating to the map and searching it from a story sticker.

You can also search for places...

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Here are the best Amazon Echo deals right now

The Echo Show 5 (left), Echo Show 8 (middle), and the Echo Show (right). | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Amazon’s current Echo lineup offers a broad selection of smart speakers and displays that can fit just about anywhere in your home. Whether you want to place a voice assistant in your living room, replace the bulletin board in your office, or pick up a touchscreen-enabled device to showcase recipes in the kitchen, there's an Echo device for just about every occasion and use case.

Regardless of why you might want one, there’s also always a way to save on an Echo device, from the last-gen Dot to the wall-mounted Echo Show 15. Even when they’re selling at full price, for instance, Amazon offers a 25 percent discount when you trade in select devices, meaning there are still other ways to save money when none of the models are on sale.

B...

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How to learn a language online

The owl is cute, though. | Illustration by Alex Castro/The Verge

Last year, I decided to start learning Korean. It was entirely on a whim — I don’t live in Korea and have no reason I’d ever need to go there. Nonetheless, it’s been an incredibly rewarding experience, and I’ve gotten to a point where I can speak, read, and write comfortably much faster than I ever thought I could.

That’s entirely due to the wealth of apps and online services out there that I’ve been able to take advantage of. Without easy access to native speakers or in-person classes, much of my early journey involved scouring the internet for resources and trying every one I could find. Here, I’m going to briefly discuss my experience with each one and whether I’d recommend it for its price.

It’s important that I make a few caveats...

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The best Spider-Man movies are coming to Netflix

Netflix actually used this image in its announcement tweet. | Image: Netflix

Sam Raimi’s incredible Spider-Man movie trilogy will be available on Netflix beginning August 1st, the company announced on Tuesday.

Raimi’s trilogy is the best Spider-Man trilogy, and I won’t hear another word edgewise. I know the films aren’t objectively the best — the third one is just bad — but for many people of a certain age like me, they’re formative movies that are packed with iconic moments and legendary memes.

Tobey Maguire’s Emo Peter Parker is basically a permanent internet character. One of the best parts of Spider-Man: No Way Home was when Willem Dafoe got to say perhaps his most classic Norman Osborne line. Netflix itself even used a Spider-Man meme in its announcement tweet.

He said our Spider-Man trilogy is coming to...

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Google Cloud and Oracle servers suffer cooling breakdowns during UK heatwave

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google Cloud and Oracle servers located in the UK struggled with cooling-related outages Tuesday as the country experienced record-breaking heat that reached as high as 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius). Both companies blame temperature for the unexpected shutdowns.

On its Google Cloud status page, Google notes it has experienced a “cooling related failure” in one of its UK-based data centers. “This caused a partial failure of capacity in that zone, leading to VM [virtual machine] terminations and a loss of machines for a small set of our customers,” Google states. The company adds that it has also “powered down” some of its machines to prevent any further damage.

As pointed out by The Register and Bleeping Computer, Oracle has...

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Most Americans think NASA’s $10 billion space telescope is a good investment, poll finds

An image of the Carina Nebula, taken by JWST | Image: NASA

Soon after NASA shared the first stunning images taken by the agency’s new, powerful James Webb Space Telescope, a new online opinion poll asked Americans: was the nearly $10 billion observatory a good investment? And the resounding answer: yes.

Today, marketing and data analytics firm YouGov released an online poll of 1,000 Americans, asking them their overall opinion of NASA and whether or not various space programs have been good investments. Roughly 70 percent of those polled had a favorable opinion of NASA, and 60 percent thought that the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, was worth it.

Seven in 10 Americans have a very or somewhat favorable view of NASA; just 13% view NASA unfavorably and 16% say they don't know.

Similar shares...

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Netflix is acquiring the animation studio behind The Lego Movie

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Netflix plans to acquire the animation studio Animal Logic, which is known for making hits like Happy Feet and The Lego Movie, the streaming company announced on Tuesday alongside its Q2 2022 earnings.

“Today, we announced that we will be acquiring leading animation studio Animal Logic, with ~800 amazing people mostly in Sydney and Vancouver, which will help us accelerate the development of our animation production capabilities and reinforces our commitment to build a world-class animation studio,” Netflix wrote in its Q2 2022 shareholder letter (pdf).

The two companies are already partnering on The Magician’s Elephant (set for a 2023 release) and Ron Howard’s first animated film, The Shrinking of Treehorn. The acquisition is expected...

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Netflix subscriber count in the US and Canada dropped by 1.3 million over the last three months

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

After Netflix reported losing subscribers for the first time in over a decade last quarter, the company’s Q2 earnings report revealed the number of worldwide subscribers dipped by 1 million, including a drop of 1.28 million in the US and Canada alone between the end of March and the end of June. That’s better than its projection of losing 2 million worldwide, but the subscriber shortfall in the US and Canada is double the 600,000 drop it reported for Q1. Netflix now reports it has 73.28 million paid subscribers in the US and Canada and 220.67 million worldwide.

This comes nearly a week after Netflix announced a partnership with Microsoft on its cheaper ad-supported tier that it expects to launch by early next year. In the letter,...

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The Snyder Cut’s online fandom was reportedly infested with bots and bad-faith actors

The cast of Zack Snyder’s Justice League. | Image: HBO Max/Warner Bros.

Though there were quite a few real people campaigning for #TheSnyderCut’s release before Warner Bros.’ 2021 announcement, new reporting from Rolling Stonesuggests that a sizable amount of the movie’s social media hype was being driven by bots and inauthentic accounts.

When Warner Bros. announced last year that it planned to release an extended cut of its 2017 Justice League film, the move was seen by many as both a vindication of and capitulation to director Zack Snyder and his extremely online fandom. For years, Snyder loyalists insisted that the movement developed organically as people saw the cut Joss Whedon, who replaced Snyder as director, delivered — and found it lacking. But, according to Rolling Stone, which obtained copies of...

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Fitbit’s adding one of the Apple Watch’s most useful features to the Charge 5

Please just tell me where my phone is. | Photo by Jay Peters / The Verge

If you own a Fitbit Charge 5 and are chronically forgetful, there’s good news — according to 9to5Google and Android Police, the fitness tracker’s latest update adds an app that lets you ring your phone from your wrist. This feature has been available on some Fitbit smartwatches for a while, but it’s exciting to see it come to one of the company’s simpler devices, especially as someone who used to ping my phone several times a day back when I had an Apple Watch.

Charge 5 owners should get the find my phone feature automatically when they install the 171.50 update. Instructions on how to do so can be found in this Fitbit help article. Reportedly, the option will show up when you swipe down from the top of the screen, amid other options...

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Internal documents show Facebook and Google discussing platform strategies

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

New internal documents released Tuesday detail how three of Big Tech’s most prominent companies favored their own products as a means of stamping out competition. Their release comes as lawmakers push to approve stronger antitrust legislation by the end of the year.

The documents were obtained by the House Judiciary Committee as part of its lengthy investigation into anticompetitive behavior from Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook’s parent company Meta. The investigation wrapped up in 2020, but the newly published emails, memos, and reports provide new evidence backing the committee’s calls to advance tougher competition rules for the tech industry.

“It is time for Congress to act,” Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), chair of the antitrust...

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PlayStation outage meant some PS5, PS4 owners couldn’t start games or access multiplayer

The cat from Stray_._ | Image: Annapurna Interactive

The PlayStation Network experienced some issues on Tuesday. At the time, Sony’s PlayStation status page said that says that things like launching games, buying, downloading, and browsing games, and signing in to your account may have been impacted.

The issues popped up just a few hours after the release of Stray, the futuristic adventure game starring a cat. Sony didn’t give a specific reason as to why there were problems, so I’m going to place the blame for the outage squarely on the cute kitty. The cat wreaked havoc.

It’s not clear how widespread the issues were. Things seemed to work fine on my PS5, though I saw a lot of people report issues on Twitter, and there was a spike of user reports of problems on Downdetector. Maybe someone...

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Apple will settle butterfly keyboard lawsuit for $50 million

If you had your keyboard repaired, you may be eligible for some money back. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Apple has agreed to pay out $50 million to settle a class action lawsuit that said the company knew about flaws with the butterfly keyboard switches it built into several MacBook models (via Reuters).

The keyboards, introduced with the 2015 MacBook, were notoriously unreliable; basically any sort of grime, crumb, or dust could make it so that a key stopped responding altogether or got stuck, resulting in embarrassing typos. Apple tried several fixes for the keyboards, but each new generation failed to fix the core issue, with computers impacted as recently as the 2019 MacBook Pros and Air. (A full list of the affected computers is included on the first page of the settlement, but it’s basically all of Apple’s laptops from 2015 to 2019.)...

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A company called Meta is suing Meta for naming itself Meta

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

When Facebook changed its name to Meta in October, there were a few concerns that the company was planning to dominate the nascent metaverse — but there’s one aggrieved party that’s only now going public.

An installation-art company called META (or Meta.is) announced Tuesday that it will be suing Meta (or Facebook) for trademark violation, alleging that Zuckerberg’s name change violated the smaller company’s established brand.

“On October 28, 2021, Facebook seized our META mark and name, which we put our blood, sweat, and tears into building for over twelve years,” reads a post on the smaller company’s site. “Today, after eight months of trying to negotiate with Facebook in good faith to no avail, we were left with no choice but to file...

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Blizzard QA workers in Albany are organizing Activision’s second union

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The QA department at Blizzard Albany, the studio formerly known as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2’s Vicarious Visions, has become the second QA department within Activision Blizzard to organize a union.

Today, we announce a new union at Activision Blizzard.

QA is currently an undervalued discipline in the games and software industries. We strive to
foster work environments where we are respected and compensated for our essential role in the
development process. 1/5

— GWA Albany (@WeAreGWAAlbany) July 19, 2022

The group, organized as GWA Albany, has around 20 members and formed a union to address issues like competitive and fair compensation, healthcare, and “establishing reasonable protocols to address demands of ‘crunch’ time.”

GWA...

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Twitch is launching a new charity fundraising tool

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitch is launching a new built-in fundraising tool called Twitch Charity to make it easier for streamers to run charity streams.

Many streamers and organizations put on charity streams to help raise funds for causes they support. Right now, streamers often pledge donations, subscriptions, and Bits (Twitch’s virtual currency) received over a certain period of time to the charity of their choice. But there can be a lot to manage when hosting a charity stream — you can get an idea of what’s involved in this guide to hosting a charity stream from my former colleague Bijan Stephen.

Twitch Charity is designed to simplify the fundraising process. Streamers will be able to go into “charity mode,” which activates a “Donate to Charity” button...

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Lightyear will be available to stream on Disney Plus in August

Buzz Lightyear in Lightyear_._ | Image: Disney / Pixar

Lightyear, Disney and Pixar’s Buzz Lightyear-focused movie that hit theaters in June, will be available to stream on Disney Plus beginning August 3rd.

Get ready to blast off with Disney and Pixar’s #Lightyear, streaming August 3 only on #DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/K75UdXQQrg

— Disney+ (@disneyplus) July 19, 2022

Lightyear stars Chris Evans as Buzz Lightyear, though he’s not the toy Buzz Lightyear you might be familiar with from Toy Story — instead, Evans portrays a sci-fi action hero Buzz Lightyear in a movie about the character. My colleague Charles Pulliam-Moore called the film “a visual stunner with a predictable story” in his review, and that honestly put me off from seeing the movie in theaters. But I’ve still been wanting...

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