Here’s where you can preorder Google’s Pixel 6A and Pixel Buds Pro

Image: Google

Google’s more affordable and palm-friendly spin on the Pixel 6, the $449 Pixel 6A, is now available to preorder, as are the new Pixel Buds Pro. Focusing on the phone first, your preorder will ensure that you’re among the first to get the Pixel 6A on or close to launch day, which is Thursday, July 28th. Google announced the release date all the way back at its I/O conference in May, and we’ve been waiting very patiently.

The same goes for the $199 Pixel Buds Pro (scroll down to see a $15 off deal), Google’s first wireless earbuds to include active noise cancellation and ship in multiple bright color options. Those are releasing the same day, and you can place a preorder right now.

We have a review of the Pixel 6A right here from Allison...

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How to change Alexa’s voice

You can change the way the Alexa voice assistant sounds on your smart speaker or smart display just by asking Alexa. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Alexa’s pleasant, feminine voice has filled the homes of millions over the past few years, but Amazon finally offered a viable choice last year when it released a masculine counterpart. Amazon was late to this. Apple and Google have offered different voices, both feminine and masculine, in their virtual assistants for years. But late or not, it’s now easy to switch up the dulcet tones of your virtual assistant.

In addition to the two main Alexa voices, Amazon also has celebrity voices. Right now, you can choose between Samuel L. Jackson, Shaquille O’Neal, and Melissa McCarthy. Last year, during the holiday season, Amazon added Santa Claus as a more limited “celebrity voice.” (He only answers certain holiday-related queries.)

The...

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Google Pixel 6A review: midrange parts, Tensor smarts

The 6A’s Tensor chipset makes all the difference in this midrange phone

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The USPS proposes a new mail delivery fleet that’s 40 percent electric

The service’s Next Generation Delivery Vehicle, which is being built by Oshkosh. | Image: USPS

The United States Postal Service, or USPS, has another new proposal that raises the percentage of electric vehicles it plans on purchasing to modernize its fleet (via Electrek). In a press release on Wednesday, the service said that “at least 50 percent” of its initial order for 50,000 next-generation mail trucks will be battery electric vehicles. That’s quite a change from what USPS leadership announced in February when they said that only 10 percent of the service’s new fleet would be electric.

That number did get bumped up in March when the service announced it was planning an initial order including 10,019 electric trucks, just a few weeks after telling President Biden that it would continue with its plans to obtain mostly...

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Twitch will now let streamers share info on banned users

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitch is rolling out a new safety tool that will allow streamers to share information on users they’ve banned from their chat. Shared Ban Info, as the new function will be known, will allow streamers to cooperate in keeping their communities safe from malicious actors.

Twitch details the process on how Shared Ban Info will work here. Rolling out today, the Shared Ban Info program first requires streamers to create a sharing request. You can request to share ban info with other partners, affiliates, or mutual followers. Once that request has been accepted, when one party bans a user from their channel and that user attempts to chat in a channel that has a Shared Ban Info connection established, that user’s messages will be flagged,...

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Surprise, surprise — Ubisoft’s Avatar game is delayed

Image: Ubisoft

Ubisoft has delayed Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora from a 2022 release window to sometime in 2023 or 2024, the company announced as part of its Q1 earnings on Thursday (pdf). The delay keeps up with something of a tradition for Avatar properties to get pushed.

The company first announced it was working on a new Avatar game in 2017, and it debuted the first trailer in 2021. It seems likely that Ubisoft’s plan was to release Frontiers of Pandora this year to coincide with the December debut of Avatar: The Way of Water, but now, we’ll be waiting until 2023 at the earliest to explore Pandora in Ubisoft’s game.

In its earnings report, Ubisoft also said that it will reveal the “future of the Assassin’s Creed brand” in September and that it has...

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Activision Blizzard employees walk out again, this time for reproductive protections

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Activision Blizzard employees will participate in yet another walkout today, this time over concerns about employee safety in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Organized by A Better ABK, Activision Blizzard’s internal employee rights advocacy group, the walkout will take place at four of the publisher’s North American offices: California, Texas, Minnesota, and New York, where a new QA worker’s union was just organized.

“We are calling for protection of several communities of marginalized workers,” tweeted A Better ABK on July 6th as they announced the walkout. “Employees are actively facing state legislation that is putting women, LGBTQ+ employees, and their families at risk, with other vulnerable groups...

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TikTok will now let viewers turn on closed captions even if a creator doesn’t

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

TikTok is making it easier for users to watch videos with auto-generated captions, the company announced today, updating a feature it introduced in 2021 that had a number of shortcomings.

The previous caption feature required creators to enable auto-generated captions on their video before posting, meaning the availability of captions depended on whether the video creator remembered to click a button. If a creator forgot to enable captions, there was no way to add them after publishing the post without deleting and starting over, and deaf and hard-of-hearing users regularly had to ask others to turn on closed captions. This new update adds the ability for viewers to turn on closed captions in addition to creators.

@mikaelachavezt

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President Joe Biden tests positive for COVID-19

Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

President Joe Biden has tested positive for COVID-19, the White House announced today. Biden is experiencing mild symptoms and has started taking Paxlovid, an antiviral treatment.

The news comes amid a wave of COVID-19 infections sweeping the country, driven by the highly transmissible BA.5 variant. Biden spent part of yesterday traveling and gave a speech about the administration’s clean energy goals in Massachusetts.

In the week before the positive test, NPR reports that the President had also “lingered for extended conversations, posed for pictures and gave hugs at the Congressional Picnic on the White House South Lawn.” During a four-day trip to the Middle East, he shook hands with leaders in the region, and attended meetings and...

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The PlayStation Summer Sale is offering rare deals on games like The Quarry and Sifu

Martial arts game Sifu is on sale for $31.99 (20 percent off) as part of the PlayStation Summer Sale.

If you’ve recently managed to secure a PlayStation 5, you can enjoy your new console while saving on a number of titles thanks to Sony’s Summer Sale promotion in the PlayStation Store, which lasts until August 3rd. Some highlights from the sale include PS5 and PS4 deals on the new teen-horror game The Quarry and martial arts title Sifu, both of which we don’t often see discounts on. PS4 owners can pick up the standard edition of The Quarry for $40.19 ($19.80 off), while the PS5 version is on sale for $46.89 ($23.10 off). In addition, both the PS4 and PS5 versions of Sifu, a challenging kung fu game wherein you must eliminate the martial arts masters who killed your father, are on sale for $31.99 instead of $39.99. Read our Sifu review.

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Hackers have breached the Neopets virtual pet community

Characters from the popular Neopets game | Image: Neopets

A hacker claims to have stolen information from Neopets, the long-running virtual pet website, affecting 69 million users of the service.

The hack was confirmed by posts from the official Neopets Twitter and Instagram accounts on July 20th, with a tweet informing the public that the company “recently became aware that customer data may have been stolen” and had hired a forensic firm to investigate. The social media posts did not give further information about the scope of the hack but suggested that all site users change their passwords as a precaution.

Neopets recently became aware that customer data may have been stolen. We immediately launched an investigation assisted by a leading forensics firm. We are also engaging law...

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Amazon’s electric Rivian delivery vans will be in 100 cities by the end of 2022

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. | Image: Amazon

Rivian’s R1T electric trucks are becoming increasingly visible across the US, and now Amazon reveals the electric delivery vans it’s buying from Rivian are ready for a nationwide rollout.

Amazon says these new trucks have 360-degree visibility with exterior cameras that link to a large internal display as well as safety features like sensor detection, highway- and traffic-assist technology, adaptive cruise control, collision warnings, and automatic emergency braking. For the drivers inside them, the vans have cooled seats, doors that automatically lock and unlock, and a powered bulkhead door that opens itself when the driver reaches their destination.

Image: Amazon

Inside view of Rivian’s Amazon delivery van.

E...

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Watch a European astronaut and Russian cosmonaut embark on a spacewalk

Today, two astronauts will be conducting a fairly standard spacewalk on the outside of the International Space Station, but the pair of spacewalkers is a bit unusual. The duo consists of cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev of Russia’s Roscosmos and Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency, spacefarers from two countries that do not typically conduct spacewalks together.

The timing of the spacewalk comes amid strained relations between Russia and the European Union over the former’s decision to invade Ukraine. The invasion hasn’t had a significant impact on operations on the ISS, as NASA, the European Space Agency, and Roscosmos have continued to work together — in space and on Earth — to keep the space station running.

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Framework Laptop (2022) review: promises kept

The next generation of the upgradable ultrabook is finally here

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Live A Live is an experimental short story collection disguised as a classic RPG

Live A Live is one of the most influential games you’ve probably never played. The role-playing game originally debuted back in 1994, but it never left Japan — but nearly three decades later, it’s finally getting a global release. The game is particularly notable as the directorial debut of Takashi Tokita, who went on to direct titles like Chrono Trigger and Parasite Eve. That makes Live A Live a fascinating piece of video game history — but it turns out it’s also a fascinating game.

Live A Live looks a lot like a traditional Japanese RPG, albeit one with some modern upgrades, including an art style that’s very similar to newer releases from Square Enix like Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy. It has turn-based combat, an epic...

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Shell makes e-scooters, battery banks, and other non-gas stuff, and I have no idea why

Ride away on your low-emission scooter branded by your favorite big oil corp. | Image: Shell

Shell, the company known for selling gasoline to fill your car, is trying to diversify with other forms of transit, like making electric scooters. That’s right, instead of driving to the red and yellow mollusk in one of the corners of your town for a fossil fuel fill-up, you can just ride with it on a battery-powered Shell Ride scooter.

Shell itself isn’t the one building and selling them. Rather, the gas company licensed out its name to US-based manufacturer Lotus International last year, which then gave birth to Shell Ride-branded e-scooters and e-bikes. Lotus handles the marketing, too — including making an unboxing video of its Shell Ride SR-5S Electric Scooter that’s capable of up to 20 miles of range, up to 15mph speeds, and sells...

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Amazon is buying ‘membership-based’ healthcare provider One Medical for $3.9 billion

One Medical’s (pre-pandemic) picture of a visit with your subscription-provided doctor. | Image: One Medical

Amazon’s two biggest acquisitions in its history have been Whole Foods ($13.7 billion) and the recently closed purchase of MGM ($8.45 billion), but now, if the deal closes, the third entry on that list will be a $3.9 billion buyout of One Medical. One Verge staffer who has been considering signing up for the company’s $199 primary care provider subscription (on top of insurance, just like any other doctor) called the company “healthcare for millennials.”

Backed by Alphabet’s GV unit (formerly Google Ventures), One Medical’s pitch includes an app, 24/7 access to on-demand telehealth services over video, and guaranteed same- or next-day appointments available through more than 125 offices. Slick YouTube videos promise “reimagined” doctors’...

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Jordan Peele’s Nope is a breathtaking celebration of filmmaking as an art form

Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood, Brandon Perea as Angel Torres, and Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood. | Image: Universal Pictures

Nope stars Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, and Steven Yeun

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Warner Music adopts SoundCloud’s user-centric revenue model

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Warner Music Group has cut a licensing deal with SoundCloud to adopt the streamer’s Fan-Powered Royalties system, which allocates royalties based on individual user listening and is thought to be more artist-friendly. WMG is the first major label to adopt the system, and its embrace of the model could signal a larger shift for the industry.

SoundCloud made waves last year when it introduced the new payout model in which money paid by subscribers is allocated to artists they actually listen to. That may seem like a no-brainer, but it is far from the industry standard. The pro rata model, which is used by industry heavyweights like Spotify and Apple Music, pools all subscription money and divvies it up based on total streams across the...

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120fps GeForce Now cloud gaming comes to all compatible Android phones

This isn’t a 120Hz Android phone, but you get the idea. | Image: Nvidia

Nvidia’s cloud gaming service, GeForce Now, now supports 120fps game streaming across all Android phones with high refresh rate displays, rather than being limited to specific preapproved models. The rollout was announced last month, 9to5Google reported at the time, but Nvidia spokesperson Stephenie Ngo confirmed to The Verge that it’s officially rolling out this week.

Support for 120fps gaming should result in games that look smoother and feel much more responsive compared to the 60fps cap that was previously in place for many devices. 120fps streaming has previously been available on a limited selection of Android handsets from Samsung, Google, OnePlus, Xiaomi, and Asus, but now it’s available on any Android handset with the correctly...

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Facebook doubles down on algorithms in the main feed

The Home tab on the left versus the Feeds tab on the right. | Image: Meta

Facebook’s almighty News Feed is getting split in two… kind of. Today, it’s announcing two feeds that will now be found in its iOS and Android apps. Home is the new name for the tab you see when you first open the app and is designed for algorithm-based discovery with Reels, Stories, and other personalized content. Then there’s an entirely new Feeds tab, which contains recent posts from friends, groups, Facebook Pages, and favorites, with no “Suggested For You” posts in sight.

The two tabs will be accessible from both the iOS and Android versions of the Facebook app, where they will start to appear in the shortcut bar today. Meta’s press release says the contents of this bar are designed to change based on which tabs users spend the most...

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Ford will add iron phosphate battery options for Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge

Just a few months after announcing a “radical” split structure placing its electric vehicle future in a new segment called Model E, Ford is discussing more details about sourcing battery production capacity and the basic raw materials to power all of those EVs. Its run rate by late 2023 will need to support the production of 270,000 Mustang Mach-Es, 150,000 Transit EVs, 150,000 F-150 Lightnings, and 30,000 units of a mystery all-new mid-size SUV destined for release in Europe.

What it did not mention, however, is a report from Bloomberg on Wednesday indicating that the company is planning to lay off as many as 8,000 people from the Ford Blue segment that is now responsible for its legacy internal combustion engine-powered businesses.

...

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TikTok is the fastest growing source of news for adults in the UK, survey finds

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A survey of news consumption habits has found that TikTok is the fastest growing news source among adults in the UK. According to a report from UK regulator Ofcom, the app is currently used by 7 percent of UK adults as a news source, compared to 1 percent in 2020.

The survey is more evidence of TikTok’s massive and growing presence in the digital world, and illustrates how the app is quickly becoming a go-to source for information as well as entertainment. In the US, for example, it was recently estimated that 40 percent of Gen Z (individuals born 1997 to 2012) use either TikTok or Instagram for everyday searches to find things like where to eat, instead of previous favorites like Google Search and Maps.

Although TikTok has risen fast...

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Windows 11’s new taskbar overflow is perfect for people who keep all their apps open

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft is bringing a new taskbar overflow feature to Windows 11, designed to make it easier to find your open apps once you run out of taskbar space. It’s perfect for power users or people who love to keep all of their apps open all the time. The new taskbar overflow is a three-dot menu that appears once you’ve run out of taskbar space, and neatly hides all the apps that can’t fit on the taskbar all at the same time.

Currently, if you open too many apps in Windows 11 and Windows 10, then the taskbar creates an overflow area that only shows the most recent app that has been used or open. This means that if you’re an app connoisseur, it can get difficult to navigate between lots of programs on smaller laptop screens (especially if you...

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Anyone can now share Twitter Spaces clips on iOS and Android

Twitter imagery showing the process of clipping a Space. | Image: Twitter

A new feature that lets you extract a short audio clip from a Twitter Space is getting a widespread release on iOS and Android, Twitter has announced. Anyone in a Space is able to make a clip, which then expires after 30 days. Although the feature isn’t currently available to Twitter web users, the platform says support is “on the way.”

Clips are designed to make content from Twitter’s live audio feature more easily sharable on the platform, by serving up the best bits of an audio livestream without asking listeners to sit through the whole thing.

The widespread rollout of the feature follows a more limited test that started in March. At the time, the ability to clip a Space was only available to a small number of users on iOS, and even...

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We have good and bad news about that video of the robot dog firing a gun

Image via Facebook

Have you seen the tank of nightmare fuel currently circulating around the internet — the video where a robot dog fires an assault rifle? I’ve got good and bad news.

The good news: It’s probably just a dangerous toy cobbled together by a Russian hoverbike startup guy.

Vice traced the video back to a Russian hoverbike company founder named Alexander Atamanov, who uploaded both the video and a high-res image of the gun-dog-bot in March. Looking at both the bot itself, it’s not clear it’s anything more than a gun strapped to an existing Unitree dogbot. (It’s not clear if the bot even aims or fires the gun itself.) Looking at his larger Facebook history, it seems likely that he simply slapped together a couple of things he liked into a new...

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Dell’s XPS 13 Plus is the first laptop certified for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Dell XPS 13 Plus running Ubuntu 22.04 LTS | Image: Dell

Ten years after launching a pioneering combination of Linux preinstalled on a commercial laptop with Project Sputnik, Dell and Canonical announced that the XPS 13 Plus is the first OEM PC certified for Ubuntu 22.04 Long-Term Support (LTS). That makes this a straightforward route to having a PC that just works without worrying about whether or not each component is ready to work with Linux.

Linux-equipped Developer Edition models of the laptop were already available, with prices starting at $1,289.00, but currently ship with the older 20.04 LTS software. Long-term support releases deliver what it says on the tin, with the end of standard support for this version scheduled in 2027 and the end of life in 2032. Certified devices are lab...

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Eve’s new motion sensor is the first with Thread

The Eve Motion is the first Thread-based motion sensor. | Image: Eve

Smart home company Eve continues its transition to Thread this week with the release of the second generation of its motion sensor. A wireless sensor that works over Thread and Bluetooth Low Energy, the Eve Motion is the first standalone motion sensor to use the Thread wireless protocol, which is a pillar of the new Matter smart home standard.

Today, the motion sensor will work with Apple HomeKit to trigger automations such as turning on connected smart lights or opening smart window shades. But when Matter arrives later this year, Eve says the motion sensor and all Eve’s Thread-based products will receive an over-the-air firmware update to be compatible with Matter. This will open the device to other Matter ecosystems, including Google...

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Square Enix summons Meteor, launches its NFT project

Square Enix

What had once been a warning of dark times to come is now a reality. Square Enix has finally announced its NFT (or non-fungible token) project after threatening us with the company’s embrace of the controversial and largely reviled-by-gamers blockchain technology.

To facilitate this extraordinary waste of fans’ good-will, Square Enix has partnered with Enjin, an NFT company that will store Square Enix’s tokens on its Efinity blockchain. Starting today, consumers will be able to pre-order a physical action figure that comes with a code redeemable for a digital NFT. There will also be physical trading cards that similarly have a digital NFT component available for pre-order later this year.

If you’re wondering which of its many franchises...

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Mojang blocks NFTs in Minecraft

Minecraft developer Mojang Studios is taking a strong stance against NFTs. In a blog post titled “Minecraft and NFTs,” the studio, which is owned by Microsoft, wrote that “integrations of NFTs with Minecraft are generally not something we will support or allow.”

“To ensure that Minecraft players have a safe and inclusive experience, blockchain technologies are not permitted to be integrated inside our client and server applications, nor may Minecraft in-game content such as worlds, skins, persona items, or other mods, be utilized by blockchain technology to create a scarce digital asset,” Mojang said.

According to Mojang, some companies have created “NFT implementations that are associated with Minecraft world files and skin packs.” The...

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