Overwatch Contenders teams ‘go on strike’ mid-broadcast

Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard is facing another walkout of sorts; this time, it’s players in the regional Overwatch Contenders tournament. After a competitive ruling ended a match prematurely, players in the European Overwatch Contenders Summer Series tournament refused to play.

In the off-week of the Overwatch League as teams rest up from the beautiful chaos of the Midseason Madness tournament last week, Blizzard ran an Overwatch Contenders tournament to fill the time. Just like Midseason Madness, the Overwatch Contenders Summer Series is a double-elimination tournament with a winner’s bracket and a loser’s bracket. Today’s European winner’s bracket final — the game that would determine which team would go on to the grand final and which team would fall to...

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Apple says Mac sales are getting hit hard by supply constraints

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple narrowly outperformed Wall Street expectations with its Q3 earnings on Thursday afternoon, reporting a slight year-over-year increase in iPhone revenue and a 12 percent jump for its services division. But elsewhere, the company’s numbers sagged: Mac revenues were down by 10 percent — a drop that CEO Tim Cook attributed to supply chain constraints and unfavorable foreign exchange rates. But it also matches an industry-wide trend of PC sales being on the decline.

Earlier this month, Apple released a redesigned MacBook Air powered by the company’s M2 chip — but that didn’t factor into this quarter’s results. The new Air followed the launch of the upgraded 13-inch MacBook Pro in June. The Mac Studio desktop, Studio Display, M1-powered...

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People aren’t buying as many PCs — and Intel is feeling the multibillion-dollar burn

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The COVID-19 pandemic made personal computers more important than ever, and sales exploded two years in a row. But the good times for PC and chipmakers now seem to be fading fast. Last quarter’s slump in Chromebook sales has made way for an even bigger decline that’s hitting Windows manufacturers as well, and today, chipmaker Intel has revealed a 25 percent decline in consumer chip sales. It says that a “near-term cyclical slowdown” is shrinking the total market for PCs by approximately 10 percent this year.

“Some of our largest customers are reducing inventory levels at a rate not seen in the last decade,” Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said on today’s earnings call.

Earlier this month, Gartner reported that the global PC market had already...

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Amazon says sales are picking up following a big Prime Day

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon’s growth has slowed down in recent quarters after surging during the pandemic, but the company is expecting things to pick up soon. In its second quarter earnings release on Thursday, Amazon said that its net sales grew just 7 percent year over year but that they’ll go up by an estimated 13 to 17 percent in the third quarter — which will account for sales from the company’s massive Prime Day shopping extravaganza.

Sales growth has been on a steady decline for more than a year at Amazon:

• Q2 2021: 27 percent
• Q3 2021: 15 percent
• Q4 2021: 9 percent
• Q1 2022: 7 percent
• Q2 2022: 7 percent

While we don’t yet know the specific results from this year’s Prime Day, which took place earlier in July, Amazon has claimed that it was the “...

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Sony’s got another queue to buy the PS5, and it’s open now

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

After two straight days of afternoon public restocks for the PlayStation 5, Sony is going for the three-peat. The console maker has opened up another public queue to buy PS5 consoles, and you can join in right now. Pending availability after you get through the queue, you may have the chance to buy a standard PS5 for $499.99, a Digital Edition for $399.99, or a bundle of either with a digital voucher for a download of Horizon Forbidden Westfor an additional $50 (which is a discount, by the way). I’d wager on the bundles having the most availability.

We have seen the last two restocks from Sony remain open for a few hours, with many people having easy success buying consoles. You’ll just need to sign in with your PlayStation Network...

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Annapurna teases new games from creators of Katamari, Kentucky Route Zero, and more

Image: Outerloop Games

The Annapurna Interactive Showcase 2022 took a somewhat different approach to the video game publisher summer showcase format. Instead of a fire hose of trailers, sizzle reels, and gameplay videos, Annapurna slowed it down a bit, doing all of the above while also taking time to show off the people who are making some of the best indie games in the industry.

Here are the highlights of this year’s show.

Thirsty Suitors

Thirsty Suitors from Outerloop Games features a skateboard-loving South Asian woman named Jala, who, after leaving behind a trail of broken hearts, must now duel the owners of those hearts while trying and failing to live up to her parents’ expectations. We get our first in-depth glimpse of gameplay, highlighting all the...

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Google’s new Play Store rules target annoying ads and copycat crypto apps

It’s making several changes to the Play Store. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google is trying to cut down on annoying, unskippable ads in Android apps and overall bad behavior in the Play Store (via TechCrunch). The company announced wide-ranging policy changes on Wednesday that update rules across several categories to be more specific, clamping down on loopholes developers may have used to skirt existing rules.

One of the changes that will impact your everyday phone usage the most is for ads. Google says its updated guidelines, which will go into effect on September 30th, help ensure “high quality experiences for users when they are using Google Play apps.” The new policy tells developers that apps can’t pop up a full-screen ad that won’t let you close it after 15 seconds. There are some exceptions — if you...

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CHIPS Act clears Congress, ensuring $52 billion boost to US foundries

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

It might get cheaper and easier to buy popular tech products, like gaming consoles and graphics cards, after Congress approved $52 billion in funding for domestic semiconductor manufacturing.

In a 243-187vote on Thursday, the House passed the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act to strengthen US science and technology innovation. The bill, a Biden administration priority, includes $52 billion in subsidies to encourage chip manufacturers to build out semiconductor fabrications plants, or “fabs,” in the US.

After months of negotiations between the House and Senate, Thursday’s approval resolves the looming threat of chipmakers reconsidering plans to build US plants. Earlier this month, the groundbreaking ceremony for a $20 billion Intel...

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Democrats revive the fight for net neutrality

Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP via Getty Images

Democrats are recharging the fight for net neutrality by introducing a new bill on Thursday that would codify the deeply divisive open internet rules.

Led by Sens. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), the Net Neutrality and Broadband Justice Act would reclassify broadband internet service as an essential service, authorizing the Federal Communications Commission to enforce rules banning discriminatory practices like blocking and throttling certain lanes of internet traffic.

Rep. Doris Matsui (D-CA) is spearheading bicameral legislation in the House.

“We need net neutrality so that powerful social media companies can’t step on their competition by cutting deals with big broadband providers,” Markey said during a Thursday press...

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Instagram is walking back its changes for now — Adam Mosseri explains why

Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Say goodbye to the TikTok-style feed and at least some of those recommendations

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Biden’s climate plan is back, and it’s all about building things

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

It’s been a long road for the “Build Back Better” plan — but Wednesday night, after over a year of both public and private negotiations, we finally saw a proposal that could actually clear Congress. Renamed the “Inflation Reduction Act,” the new Sen. Manchin-endorsed proposal would raise roughly $740 billion in revenue through a combination of tax increases and price negotiation — and divert $370 billion of that money to fighting climate change. If it makes it through Congress, the bill would be the largest climate spending package in US history — and with alarming heatwaves in progress all around the world, it couldn’t come at a better time.

But while the sheer volume of the package is striking, it’s even more interesting where the...

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SoulCycle dangles free classes to Peloton users who trade in their bikes

SoulCycle woke up and chose violence with this campaign. | Image: SoulCycle, Equinox

SoulCycle isn’t pulling any punches with its latest campaign that offers Peloton users free in-person classes... if they trade in their bikes. The move comes while Peloton is still dealing with excess inventory after misjudging post-quarantine demand.

“We’re dead set on seeing you back with your pack, so we’re giving you the opportunity to trade in your bike for the equivalent value of in-studio classes at SoulCycle,” reads SoulCycle’s Souls Reunited campaign site.

According to SoulCycle, that translates to 47 classes added directly to the user’s SoulCycle account. The offer is open to the first 100 people to trade in their bikes so long as they live in the contiguous United States. That said, there are a few other caveats. Users must...

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MrBallen is YouTube’s big podcast breakout

John Allen, the host of hit podcast MrBallen_._

In each episode of MrBallen, series host John Allen appears in the center of the frame, usually wearing a plaid shirt with a couple of buttons undone and a baseball cap turned backward, and slowly talks viewers through the events of a “strange, dark, and mysterious” true crime story. Episodes with titles like “What I saw in my room still haunts me” and “Real-life ‘ghost ship’ has a SECRET,” bring in more than 40 million monthly views — a massive volume that still is not enough to put Allen in the upper echelon of YouTube influencers. But in podcasting? He’s a star.

Steven Cohen, a longtime audio industry sales executive, was shocked when he dug into the stats for the podcast version of MrBallen, which launched in February. The show was...

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Google Pixel Buds Pro review: the sweet sound of redemption

Google’s premium buds have more features — without deal-breaking flaws

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JetBlue will acquire Spirit, creating the fifth-largest airline in the US

Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images

JetBlue and Spirit announced a $3.8 billion merger agreement after a previous deal between Spirit and Frontier Airlines fell apart Wednesday. The newly merged airline will be the fifth-largest in the US in a potential challenge to the dominance of the “Big Four” carriers.

Spirit’s shareholders rejected the deal in favor of the more generous offer from JetBlue. The two airlines, JetBlue and Frontier, have been courting Spirit for months in the hopes of creating a bigger budget airline that could have the effect of bringing down airline ticket prices.

But it’s been a rocky road to today’s announcement. In February, Frontier announced its plans to buy Spirit in a cash and stock deal valued at $2.9 billion. But JetBlue had its own designs...

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Instagram will start asking some users for their race or ethnicity

Image: Instagram

Instagram will begin asking some US users for race and ethnicity data in order to study how different groups experience the platform, the company says in a blog post published today.

A random assortment of Instagram users will get a pop-up in the app that leads to a survey asking for their race and ethnicity, hosted by the research group YouGov. Answering the questions is optional, and Instagram says responses “will not limit the experiences that you have on Instagram, including impacting your reach or how people engage with your content in any way.”

In a video message posted today, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said collecting the data will help the platform look for ways to improve Instagram for users.

“If we’re going to make sure that...

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Spotify’s Friends Mix playlists are auto-generated mixtapes from your pals

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Spotify has announced another new way to mix and match music on its service with your friends. Its new Friends Mix playlist type aims to get you out of your comfort zone with tracks that your friends have been listening to. Unlike Blend, one of its other personalized playlist types that merges a few of your recent faves with some from a pal, Friends Mix is meant to be like getting a big mixtape full of recommendations that all of your friends would give you.

This new playlist type is available globally to premium Spotify subscribers and to those who use its free offering, though it’s currently limited to the iOS and desktop apps (I guess Spotify decided that Android users are friend-less). In order to actually see a Friends Mix within...

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Apple and Google come under scrutiny for scammy crypto apps

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

From Elon Musk Twitter impersonators to dubious Discord chats, cryptocurrency and non-fungible token (NFT) scammers have stolen billions of dollars from investors over the last few years. But now, politicians and law enforcement are turning their attention to Apple and Google — companies that operate huge app stores — and how they review fraudulent crypto apps.

In letters to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Thursday, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) asked that the companies explain their processes in reviewing and approving crypto trading and wallet apps for download on their app stores. Brown’s inquiry follows a recently released FBI report warning that 244 investors have been scammed out of $42.7 million from fraudulent...

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EV tax credits are back — and bigger — in new Senate climate bill

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge

Senator Joe Manchin has had a change of heart about electric vehicles.

The West Virginia Democrat, who previously described federal tax credits for EVs as “ludicrous,” announced a surprise deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on a reconciliation package that includes $369 billion for climate and energy measures aimed at slashing carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2030.

The bill would allow car buyers to continue to claim the current $7,500 federal tax credit for the purchase of “clean vehicles” — the new preferred phrase describing plug-in hybrid, battery-electric, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, replacing the old phrase “new qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicle.”

It would also remove the current 200,000 vehicle cap

...

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The first official PlayStation-friendly iPhone controller is a Backbone One

PS-specific buttons, Xbox analog stick arrangement.

Sony has enlisted accessory company Backbone to make a PlayStation-ified version of the excellent Backbone One mobile controller for iPhone that’s available now from Backbone and Best Buy. It gives off PS Vita vibes, except somehow, Sony was okay with Backbone keeping its Xbox-like analog stick arrangement. The $99.99 controller, which can be pulled open to fit iPhones as small as the 13 Mini and as big as the 13 Pro Max, comes in a new mix of white and black, just like the PS5’s DualSense controller. Sure, this is a pricier workaround than strapping one of Sony’s controllers to your phone, but it’s a more elegant-looking way to play PlayStation games via Remote Play, Sony’s mobile app that streams games from your PS4 or PS5 console.

I...

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How to edit or unsend an iMessage in iOS 16

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

We’ve all done it: sent a text message and then instantly regretted it. Whether it was a text to your parent with a spelling error that they’d never let you live down, a message with a wrong word in it (“I don’t want to come to the party!” instead of “I want to come to the party!”), or a sudden realization that you just sent your message to the wrong person — it can be embarrassing at the least and disastrous at the worst.

While messaging apps like Signal, WhatsApp, and Viber all have some version of “delete for everyone,” until now, there was nothing you could do about it on iMessage except to follow it up with an “I didn’t mean that!” message.

In the iOS 16 beta, Apple introduced a feature to its iMessage chat app that allows you to...

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Spotify paid $123 million for Findaway, the bedrock of its audiobook ambitions

Image: Findaway

Spotify’s purchase of Findaway, a platform that allows users to create, distribute, and monetize their own audiobooks, cost it €117 million, or around $123 million USD, the company revealed today. Findaway will provide the infrastructure for what will become the third pillar of Spotify’s business. The streaming service first announced the acquisition last November.

“We believe that audiobooks, in their many different forms, will be a massive opportunity,” Spotify CEO Daniel Ek told investors at a presentation last month. “And just as we’ve done in podcasting, expect us to play to win.”

Audiobook features are coming “quite imminently”

Spotify’s acquisition of Findaway is reminiscent of when it bought Anchor in 2019. Like Anchor, Findaway...

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It’s time for another round of anxiety over a Chinese rocket booster falling back to Earth

China’s Long March 5B rocket ahead of launch | Photo credit should read CFOTO / Future Publishing via Getty Images

Sometime this weekend, a massive booster from a Chinese rocket will beginan uncontrolled fall back to Earth from space — and because of its considerable size and weight, parts of it may survive the descent through our planet’s atmosphere and hit the ground. The chances of the rocket hitting anyone and killing them are exceedingly rare, but a similar falling Chinese rocket last year sparkedmajor concern worldwide, which means this rocket will probably do the same.

The booster is part of a Long March 5B rocket, which launched on July 24th, sending a new module into orbit for China’s growing Tiangong space station. After the giant rocket reaches space, it sheds a fairly massive part of itself: its core booster. This booster sticks around...

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The 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro is $200 off for the first time

The first solid discount we’ve seen on the latest MacBook Pro | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Summer solstice has come and gone, which means that a new scholastic year is just around the corner. Thankfully, several of our top picks for laptops suited for students are currently on sale. In addition to those deals, the M2-equipped MacBook Pro just got its first significant discount at Best Buy. Normally priced at $1,499.99, the 512GB configuration of Apple’s latest model of the MacBook Pro is discounted to $1,299.99 at Best Buy, its lowest price yet. Also, the 256GB model that typically sells for $1,299.99 is down to just $1,099.99 at Best Buy.

It may look the same as the older versions of the MacBook Pro — Touch Bar and all — but it houses the faster M2 processor. While the tired design and lackluster webcam may not be what every...

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Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s second wave of DLC tracks is coming August 4th

Nintendo has announced a release date — August 4th — for the next DLC courses coming to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. This second wave includes eight courses, the same as what we saw when the first wave launched in March. They’re mostly based around tracks found in previous Mario Kart games, but there’s one that’s brand new: an ice cream-themed course called Sky-High Sundae.

Running down the returning tracks from previous games, there’s Kalimari Desert from the N64 version of Mario Kart, Mario Circuit 3 from the SNES, Mushroom Gorge from the Wii, Waluigi Pinball from the DS, Snow Land from the GBA, and New York Minute and Sydney Sprint, which both previously appeared in the mobile-focused title Mario Kart Tour. Nintendo’s announcement notes that...

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Asus’ compact Zenfone 9 comes with incredible gimbal-like camera stabilization

Just a wee phone with massive cameras.

The Zenfone 9, like last year’s 8, is that rare Android phone that prioritizes compact size rather than maximizing screen or battery size. Be still my heart! But the new story this year is the phone’s camera and stabilization system: rather than just moving a single lens element to compensate for camera shake, the entire main camera — lens, sensor, all of it — moves. It’s a unique approach to fighting some of mobile photography’s biggest enemies: low light and shaky video footage.

The Zenfone 9 is small but mighty and continues the 8’s tradition of including top-tier specs in a compact phone. The screen is a 5.9-inch 1080p OLED with smooth 120Hz refresh rate, and the phone uses a Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset — Qualcomm’s very latest...

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Can hydrogen fuel cells power Microsoft data centers?

This prototype proton exchange membrane, or PEM, fuel cell system can provide emissions-free backup power to about 10,000 data center servers. | Image: Microsoft / John Brecher

Microsoft has reached a new milestone in its effort to ditch diesel in favor of cleaner energy at its data centers. The company announced today that it successfully tested a hydrogen fuel cell system powerful enough to replace a traditional diesel-powered backup generator at a large data center.

As part of its plans to tackle climate change, Microsoft wants to completely quit using diesel as fuel for its backup power systems by 2030. To keep data centers running 24/7, regardless of power outages, each center is equipped with batteries that temporarily kick in until backup generators are fired up.

For now, those generators run on diesel, releasing air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions. Hydrogen fuel cells, in contrast, combine...

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Comcast’s broadband business stopped growing for the first time ever

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Comcast didn’t add any new broadband subscribers between April and June, marking the first time the company has failed to grow its high-speed internet business. Broadband figures stayed flat from Q1 at 32.2 million subscribers, the company announced in its Q2 2022 earnings release this morning.

With just one exception, this is the first time Comcast hasn’t added at least 100,00 new subscribers, according to The Wall Street Journal. That exception came after the 2008 financial crisis and still resulted in 65,000 new subscribers.

Comcast seems to think the flatline is just temporary. CEO Brian Roberts cites “a unique and evolving macroeconomic environment” as limiting the company’s ability to add new subscribers. The spring quarter also...

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Scientists reanimate dead spiders as robot gripping claws

Why bother to design your own robots when you can just reuse what nature created?

This was the thought process behind a research project from engineers at Rice University who successfully transformed dead spiders into robotic gripping claws. The scientists have dubbed their new area of research “necrobotics” and say it could create cheap, effective, and biodegradable alternatives to current robotic systems.

So why spiders? Well, while humans move their limbs using pairs of antagonistic muscles, like biceps and triceps, spiders’ legs contain only a single flexor muscle that draws the leg inward. This is opposed by a hydraulic system: a chamber in the center of the spider’s body (known as a prosoma) pushes out fluid to open the leg, with...

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DeepMind found the structure of nearly every protein known to science

A protein structure identified by AlphaFold. | Image: DeepMind

DeepMind is releasing a free expanded database with its predictions of the structure of nearly every protein known to science, the company, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, announced today.

DeepMind transformed science in 2020 with its AlphaFold AI software, which produces highly accurate predictions of the structures of proteins — information that can help scientists understand how they work, which can help treat diseases and develop medications. It first started publicly releasing AlphaFold’s predictions last summer through a database built in collaboration with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). That initial set included 98 percent of all human proteins.

Now, the database is expanding to over 200 million...

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