Razer is dangling features behind a $30 dongle

Can a $30 dongle make you a better player? | Image: Razer

Razer continues to stretch the limits of what gamers are willing to buy to get the edge on their opponents. Starting today, fans of the Razer Viper V2 Pro wireless gaming mouse can obtain the luxury of having a higher polling rate than the other guy with the $30 Razer HyperPolling dongle. Currently, this dongle is only compatible with the Viper V2 Pro and exists for the sole purpose of giving you an almost imperceptible edge against your competition by providing the wireless mouse with a 4000Hz polling rate.

The Razer Viper V2 Pro.

The polling rate of a device refers to the number of times a mouse or other peripheral relays its information to your desktop. The typical polling rate for wired or wireless peripherals is...

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How to enable your iPhone’s screen reader

VoiceOver is Apple’s built-in screen reader for iOS. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

If you’re looking to enable screen reading on your iPhone, you don’t have to go very far. Since 2009, Apple has included a built-in screen reader called VoiceOver as part of its accessibility features to help those with visual impairments.

VoiceOver essentially works by describing aloud everything that appears on your iPhone’s screen. Over the years, Apple has expanded the feature to include more detailed descriptions of people, objects, text, and other graphics. It also uses gestures and haptics to help users explore their iPhone without ever having to look at the screen itself.

While this feature was developed to help blind and low-vision users, VoiceOver can also be helpful in other use cases. For instance, you can use VoiceOver with...

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LG’s 16:18 DualUp is a weird monitor for getting work done

A good monitor with a great leg to stand on

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Nintendo Switch Sports is adding more motion controls to soccer with a free update

Image: Nintendo

Nintendo Switch Sports is getting a free update on July 26th that will no doubt cause a rise in living room-related injuries. Soccer, one of the six sports you can play, will be getting increased motion control support allowing you to use your legs to kick your way to victory.

In addition to the soccer update, volleyball will also get some new moves — slide attack and rocket serve. And for online players, Nintendo is adding a new S and Infinity rank so you can really brag about how good you are at badminton.

In Nintendo Switch Sports, players use a combination of Joy-Con and motion controls to play. When bowling, you swing your arm back just as you would at the lanes, and for Chambara — the sword-fighting mini-game — you flail your arms...

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The Verge’s back-to-school gift guide

All the best backpacks, laptops, tablets, and wearables for the new school year. | The Verge

Our favorite laptops, bags, and gadgets for students

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Crew members on Jacob Wohl’s Predator DC report assaults during filming

Alex Castro / The Verge

‘My life would be a whole lot simpler right now if none of that had happened’

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Games like Stray and Endling are creating more realistic animals

Stray.

Evolving our relationship with virtual beasts

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Elon Musk took a hit in Chancery Court — and another one in Mykonos

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Welcome to this week’s edition of This Week in Chancery Court! Delaware’s moment in the sun continues as the fight between Elon Musk and Twitter shifts from fiery tweets… to fiery legal filings.

Here’s where we are: lawsuits. Twitter wanted to have a trial as quickly as possible. “This very public dispute harms Twitter with each passing day Musk is in breach,” Twitter said in a legal filing. (The company also reported earnings going down, and basically blamed Musk for its weak performance the last three months.) Musk’s team wanted to move the trial to next February so it could run more tests on Twitter’s firehose to figure out… something, something spam bots?

Kathaleen McCormick, chancellor of the Court of Chancery — name a more iconic...

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Here’s our first full look at the Cadillac Celestiq ultra-luxury electric sedan

After a year of teases, General Motors revealed the Cadillac Celestiq, a $300,000 ultra-luxury electric sedan that the automaker says is the most Cadillac Cadillac that ever Cadillac’d.

The Celestiq is Cadillac’s first major effort to capture some of the high-end market currently dominated by the likes of Rolls-Royce and Bentley. As such, GM is heaping on the superlatives with the description of this Ultium-powered, 55-inch digital display sporting flagship EV — despite still only being the show car version of what is expected to be a production-ready vehicle out later this year. It’s “the purest expression of Cadillac” that was “inspired by the brand’s 120-year heritage,” chockablock with “handcrafted” materials and all of GM’s most...

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Twitter blames Elon Musk for making it lose money

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter would have earned more money over the past few months if Elon Musk hadn’t been in the picture. At least, that’s what the company says in its Q2 earnings release this morning, citing Musk as a factor in its revenue results, which fell year over year to $1.18 billion from $1.19 billion.

That’s not the only reason Twitter is experiencing revenue problems. The company also cites ad industry problems — see Snap’s poor performance yesterday — and the general economic environment. But “uncertainty related to the pending acquisition of Twitter by an affiliate of Elon Musk” is the most Twitter-specific problem on the list.

Ad sales are reportedly in “disarray”

Musk entered into an agreement to buy Twitter in April, and he’s been trying to...

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Progressives pressure Schumer to call a vote on tech antitrust bills

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

With a months-long recess on the horizon, House progressives are urging Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to act fast on two competition bills that would better equip antitrust enforcers to take on major tech firms.

In a letter sent to Schumer on Friday, more than a dozen Congressional Progressive Caucus leaders urged the Senate majority leader to schedule a vote on two bills in the coming weeks.

“It is time for Congress to vote on this legislation,” the lawmakers wrote. “These bills are ready for a vote and we urge you to schedule the vote on them in the next few weeks.”

The bills – the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICO) and Open Markets Act –were introduced on the heels of a 16-month long congressional investigation...

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Your next smart lock could ditch the battery by harvesting energy from your phone

One of the magical things about near-field communication technology (NFC) is that tags don’t need a battery to communicate — you’ll never need to buy a new coin cell for your employee badge, because the badge scanner wirelessly beams enough power to the badge to verify it’s legit. Now, chipmaker Infineon wants to make the same thing happen with smart locks — ones that can be entirely powered by your phone.

You can already buy fancy door locks in Europe and basic padlocks in China that do the trick, with Finland’s iLOQ claiming to have been the first to do it back in 2016. But today, Infineon is selling a new chip and offering full detailed instructions (PDF) to anyone who wants in on the idea.

It’s called the NAC1080, and it’s designed...

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AMD just leaked its Nvidia RTX Voice competitor in a (now deleted) video

It’s currently unclear what AMD hardware (pictured) might be required to use the new feature. | Image: AMD

AMD looks to be on the cusp of releasing a competitor to RTX Voice, a feature for Nvidia graphics cards that cancels out background noise when you’re on a call or otherwise using your mic. That’s according to a trailer that AMD posted to its YouTube channel (apparently in error), Tom’s Hardware reports. Thankfully, a copy of the trailer was downloaded before it was deleted by Reddit user u/zenobian and uploaded to the AMD subreddit.

The leaked trailer suggests that AMD’s Noise Suppression feature will work very similarly to Nvidia’s RTX Voice (which has subsequently been rolled into Nvidia’s Broadcast app). It uses “a real-time deep learning algorithm” to offer “two-way noise-reduction” that filters background noise out of both outgoing...

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The Last of Us’ PS5 remake includes a speed run mode and smarter AI

Who doesn’t want to know what it’s like to pet a giraffe? | Image: Sony

Sony released a ten-minute-long trailer for The Last of Us Part 1 on Thursday, where the game’s directors talk through some of the improvements coming in the PlayStation 5 remake of Naughty Dog’s iconic game. The trailer takes plenty of opportunities to show off the improved graphics (which look as nice as they have in the leaked screenshots, but it’s not like the game was ugly on the PS3 or PS4), but the most interesting involve changes to the gameplay — Naughty Dog says that the AI for enemies and companions will be improved, that there will be some extra gameplay modes, and that the game’s cutscenes will have audio descriptions for accessibility.

When it was originally released in 2013, The Last of Us’ AI was nothing special. The...

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You can make your new Pixel look like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle

A cool thing about Google’s Pixel 6 series phones is their unique camera bar design. If the finish of that strip were a different color than black — specifically blue, orange, purple, or red — it would totally look kind of like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And now that you can’t unsee the resemblance, device outfitter Dbrand would like to help make your Pixel 6 device look like one of your favorite childhood heroes.

With Google’s latest phone the Pixel 6a releasing next week, Dbrand decided it's a good time to revisit the sewers and launch its Teenage Mutant Ninja Pixels decals for all three phones. They match the green heroes-in-a-half-shell plus their masks, and include four camera decal strips that reflect the colors of Leonardo,...

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Google’s adding the app permissions section back to the Play Store after removing it

It’s rolling back a change it made last week. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google says it’s rolling back its decision to remove a section from the Play Store that listed which permissions an app uses. The company had more or less replaced that info with its Data Safety section, which is supposed to give you an idea of what data apps are collecting and how that data is used.

The problem, as several commentators pointed out, is that the information in the Data Safety section came from developers, whereas the app permissions section was generated by Google. By removing it, Google made it impossible for users to do a quick fact-check by comparing the two sections or to use the info from both to get a more complete picture of what an app is up to and what it has access to.

In a Twitter thread on Thursday spotted by...

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Nobody knows what’s in Pink Sauce, TikTok’s latest viral product

Image: thepinksauce.com

TikTok is known for making small businesses go viral overnight, product recommendations that cause a specific shade of blush to sell out everywhere, and convincing thousands of people to make salmon rice bowls for lunch every day.

But buzz on the platform has apparently gotten the better of some users, causing them to forget a tried-and-true rule: maybe don’t eat unidentified goo made by a stranger and shipped in plastic flat mailers during a record-breaking heatwave?

@chef.pii

Its the Aquarius Virgo Creative Extra Energy #beyonce

♬ original sound - vicmram

Since mid-June, a TikToker going by Chef.Pii has been posting about Pink Sauce, a homemade concoction that she’s used as a dipping sauce for chicken and cucumbers and...

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The best deals on MacBooks right now

The 2020 MacBook Air, one of the best laptops you can get, is now available at Amazon and Best Buy starting at $899.99.

With multiple configurations and various models to choose from, finding a deal on an M1-equipped MacBook or Mac Mini is not all that difficult. It’s a slightly different story for the MacBook Pros with the beefier M1 Pro and M1 Max CPUs, but any bit of savings you can get on the new Pro models is sure to be worthwhile. As for the new 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air with M2, it may still take a while to see some deals.

Here, we’ll run through the discounts that are currently available for the current MacBooks, as well as any deals to be had on the Mac Mini. Of course, there are still some lingering discounts available for older, Intel-based configurations — which are compatible with macOS Monterey and the upcoming macOS Ventura — but...

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YouTube says it will remove ‘unsafe’ DIY abortion guides

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube says it will begin removing “instructions for unsafe abortion methods” or content that “promotes false claims about abortion safety.” The company made the announcement on Twitter, saying it falls under its medical misinformation policy. It’s also adding an information panel to related videos that will offer health information about abortion from the National Library of Medicine, similar to what it’s done for vaccines and some other topics.

“Starting today and ramping up over the next few weeks, we will remove content that provides instructions for unsafe abortion methods or promotes false claims about abortion safety under our medical misinformation policies,” tweeted the official YouTube account. “Like all of our policies on...

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Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves looks like a celebrity-filled LARP in first trailer

The resurgence of D&D in pop culture continues with an upcoming live-action film set in the fantasy universe. A new trailer for the movie — which has the slightly unwieldy name of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves — kicked off San Diego Comic-Con, showing off a film that seems to jump between serious fantasy epic and lighthearted action comedy.

Here’s the setup: “A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people.” In addition to the trailer, we also got a glimpse at a poster for the film, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, goes all-in on the “dragons” part of Dungeons & Dragons.

The party’s just getting started....

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Snap isn’t happy with how much money it’s making

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

Snap knows it can do better. The company reported earnings results for the second quarter of 2022 this afternoon, and the numbers show a company that’s continuing to grow its users and revenue — but at a much slower rate than it used to.

“Our financial results for Q2 do not reflect the scale of our ambition,” the company wrote in a note to investors. “We are not satisfied with the results we are delivering.”

The message was part of a rallying cry to investors that essentially says hang tight, we’re working on it. To turn things around, Snap is promising to “recalibrate” its hiring, goals, and investments. And, in a splashier move, the company said it had signed Snap co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, the company’s CEO and CTO, to...

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Lyft Rentals shuts down as the ride-sharing company lays off about 60 people

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Lyft launched its rental car service in December 2019, more than a year after Uber shut down a similar program that provided rental cars and access to bike rides and public transportation. Lyft Rentals stood out for its low starting rate of $35 a day and lack of mileage limit that also allowed renters as young as 22 years old. Now, The Wall Street Journal reports Lyft has decided to call it quits, and the company confirmed to The Verge that it laid off about 60 employees in the rental car service as well as a smaller number of people in operations.

In an emailed statement, the company told The Verge it discontinued the business to instead focus on partnerships with rental car companies Sixt and Hertz. “This decision will ensure we...

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Android is ready for the Pixel Buds Pro’s AirPods-like audio switching trick

Image: Google

Google’s latest and most advanced wireless earbuds yet, the Pixel Buds Pro, won’t be on store shelves for another week. But the company has announced that its Android software is already prepared for one of the earbuds’ most convenient new features: the Pixel Buds Pro will be able to switch between devices automatically — no settings menus necessary.

Much like the AirPods can hop between other Apple products (iPhone, iPad, Mac) depending on which one you’re actively using, Google’s flagship earbuds will be able to do the same across Android hardware.

“Our audio switching technology builds on top of Fast Pair to use contextual information on what you’re listening to in order to switch the audio based on your actions,” Google’s Angela...

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The World Meteorological Organization has ‘no immediate plans’ to name heatwaves

A woman cools herself by a water sprinkler installed in the city during the heatwave in Kraków, Poland, on July 21st, 2022. | Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

As extreme heat stifles communities around the world this week, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that it has “no immediate plans” to give heatwaves names. The July 19th announcement seems to pump the brakes on growing calls to come up with a strategy for ranking and naming heatwaves around the world.

In the US, heat kills more people than any other weather-related disaster. Globally, it kills 5 million people a year. But heat spells haven’t always spurred the same careful preparations people might take to, say, shelter from a major storm. The goal of naming heatwaves would be to make it easier to communicate the risks they pose to the public so that people can take measures to stay safe.

In the US, heat kills more...

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Here’s how to turn off Twitter’s weird new refresh sound

An accessibility option lets you turn the app’s sounds off. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Recently, Twitter users noticed that the app has started making a new sound — when you pull down to refresh your timeline, notifications, DMs, or pretty much anything else in the official app, there’s a robotic chirp sound that sounds like a futuristic bird or frog. The sound has been polarizing — some people have been mesmerized by it, while others hate it.

Thankfully, there are a few ways to make sure you don’t hear it, which I’ll cover in this article.

Set your phone to silent

The first is astoundingly simple: according to my tests, turning your phone to silent mode makes it so that the sound doesn’t play. On iPhones, that means flipping the ringer switch on the left side of the phone above the volume buttons so the switch is closer...

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Anyone can take new public Instagram photos and turn them into a Reel

Instagram’s Remix interface. | Image: Meta

Instagram will soon let anyone on the platform remix your new photos, as long as your account is public. There’ll be a way to turn remixing off, but you’ll have to actively opt out once the option is live — it’ll be enabled by default.

In “the coming weeks,” Instagram says it’ll add the ability to “remix” public photos for use inside of Reels, its TikTok-like video service. The change is meant to provide more content for Reels creators to work with as the company goes all in on short-form video in the hopes of keeping up with its explosively popular competitor.

Remixing will be enabled by default, but Instagram will provide ways to turn it off, according to Devi Narasimhan, a Meta spokesperson. Users will be able to turn off remixing on...

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Yes, crypto Twitter, the FBI is reading your tweets

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

It appears that a crypto Twitter user named Cobie influenced the FBI into bringing an insider trading case. The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York is bringing an indictment against a former Coinbase employee, who allegedly tipped his brother and his buddy about which assets were about to list on Coinbase — leading to $1.5 million in “realized and unrealized gains,” according to the indictment.

This is the first insider trading case involving cryptocurrency markets, says U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, in a statement.

In response, he booked a one-way ticket to New Delhi

Ishan Wahi, the Coinbase employee who was charged, was involved in listing new crypto assets on Coinbase’s exchange. When Coinbase announces that a...

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Instagram is making almost all videos Reels and will show them to way more people

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Welcome to the new era of Instagram, as it shifts even further into an all-Reels, all-the-time machine to keep users’ short attention spans inside its app instead of TikTok. Other than incentivizing users to create Reels with easier templates to let you react to content and a new Dual feature that records using the front and back camera simultaneously, it has one more shortcut to a wealth of new Reels content: pretty much any video you post on Instagram.

Is your account public, and did you post a video under 90 seconds? Into the Reels suggestion algorithm it goes, playing to whoever Instagram thinks will find it interesting, and it will be fully available for them to Remix and add their own spin to using the built-in content tools.

...

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Mysterious pro-Kari Lake PAC paid fake elector $2 million for ads and promotion

Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Fake elector Jake Hoffman has been accused of running a Turning Point Action troll farm

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Logan and the Deadpool movies are coming to Disney Plus

20th Century Studios

It was once hard to imagine that 20th Century Studios’ more mature Marvel projects like the Deadpool movies and Logan would ever end up streaming on (a relatively kid-friendly platform like) Disney Plus. But that’s precisely what is about to happen — just in time for San Diego Comic-Con.

Marvel announced today that 20th Century Studios’ Deadpool, Deadpool 2, and Logan are all following in the footsteps of Netflix’s Marvel shows and making the move to Disney Plus on July 22nd.

This is NOT a drill. Marvel’s #Deadpool, #Deadpool2, and #Logan are coming to #DisneyPlus tomorrow! (2/3) pic.twitter.com/5YRhoYHoPk

— Disney+ (@disneyplus) July 21, 2022

After Disney Plus rolled out additional content rating controls earlier this year, it was...

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