Nier fans finally have the answer to the church mystery

It’s a mod.

After the Nier: Automata community went through a good 96-ish hours of pure, high-octane gas trying to figure out if a heretofore undiscovered church was a mod or an Easter egg or an ARG put together by Yoko Taro and his merry band of weirdos, a trio of modders has come forward and admitted it was a mod.

“We have been loving all the discussions and theories — it has been an amazing journey,” reads a statement from the trio. “It has been inspiring to see the community come together after so many years, it has made all the hard work well worth it.”

Image: Reddit

The mod represents an impressive technological advancement for the Nier: Automata modding community, which in and of itself makes the entire “hoax”...

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AT&T is about to get away with its bogus $1.99 ‘administrative fee’

Since 2013, AT&T has quietly bilked customers out of hundreds of millions of dollars with a bogus “administrative fee,” a fee it more than doubled to $1.99 a month in 2018. For a few years there, a California class-action lawsuit made it seem like AT&T might finally get taken to task. But in May, both sides told a judge they’d settle for just $14 million — meaning customers may get less than 10 percent of what they paid AT&T, while AT&T gets to keep on charging them.

In June, the judge tentatively approved that settlement — and today, July 29th, we’re hearing that AT&T is texting and emailing customers a link to a currently-blank website where the settlement claim form will live.

According to the settlement agreement in Vianu v. AT&T...

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How to turn off Instagram’s feed recommendations for an entire month

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Instagram might be walking back its horribly received TikTok-style redesign and cutting down on the app’s constant avalanche of recommendations, but that won’t prevent recommended content from appearing in your feed altogether. It turns out there’s a fix for that you might not be aware of; I didn’t even know it was a thing until Instagram head Adam Mosseri casually mentioned it in one of his Stories earlier this week.

It’s possible to snooze recommendations and suggested posts from your main Instagram feed for 30 days. Hallelujah! And even better — it only takes a couple taps.

How to snooze Instagram feed recommendations for 30 days

• Scroll through your main Instagram feed until you come across a recommended post. These are usually...

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Valve says you’re getting your Steam Deck by the end of the year

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Valve’s Steam Deck has been in high demand from the moment reservations went live last year, but if you’re still waiting for an order email to come through, good news: if you have a reservation, Valve says you’ll get your Steam Deck by the end of the year. And even if you make a new reservation, as of this writing, Valve says you’ll get your Steam Deck in Q4.

“We’re excited to announce that we’re going to be able to fulfill demand sooner than we had estimated for everyone in the reservation queue,” Valve wrote in a blog post. “Many of the supply chain shortfalls that affect Steam Deck are gradually clearing up, and we’re continuing to ramp production, so we’re able to produce more Decks faster than ever before.”

Great news: Everyone...

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NJ police used baby DNA to investigate crimes, lawsuit claims

Illustration by Ana Kova

New Jersey police may have used blood samples taken from babies to investigate crimes, according to public defenders in the state.

According to a lawsuit filed by the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender (OPD), the practice came to light after a case in which New Jersey State Police successfully subpoenaed a testing lab for a blood sample drawn from a child. Police then performed DNA analysis on the blood sample that reportedly linked the child’s father to a crime committed more than 25 years ago.

The suspect then became a client of the OPD, which alerted the office to the techniques used to identify the man. The lawsuit, filed jointly by the OPD and the New Jersey Monitor, now seeks to compel the state of New Jersey to disclose...

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The UK’s extreme heatwave would have been ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change

Emergency services fight fires on July 19th, 2022, in Wennington, England. A series of grass fires broke out around the British capital amid an intense heatwave. | Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images

Climate change made the record-smashing heatwave in the UK last week at least 10 times more likely, new research has found. The analysis was published yesterday by the World Weather Attribution initiative, a collaboration of scientists from universities and research institutes around the globe.

“In a climate unaffected by human-induced climate change, it would be virtually impossible for temperatures in the UK to reach 40°C but climate change is already making UK heatwaves more frequent, intense and long-lasting,” Mark McCarthy, science manager of the National Climate Information Centre, said in a Met Office press release.

The Met Office declared, for the first time, a “Red” heat warning for “exceptional heat” in parts of England for...

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Amazon Drive is shutting down at the end of 2023

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Bad news for the (presumably few) people out there who have relied on Amazon Drive for storing their important files in the cloud: Amazon is shutting down the service. On the plus side, you’ve got well over a year to figure out an alternative and get everything moved over.

The company says Amazon Drive will no longer be supported as of December 31st, 2023. That’s when access will be completely cut off. Uploads are going away earlier and won’t be accepted as of January 31st. The Amazon Drive apps for Android and iOS will be taken down on October 31st, 2022.

“We will continue to provide customers the ability to safely back up, share, and organize photos and videos with Amazon Photos,” Amazon said in an email to customers. But for all...

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Kylie Jenner can’t save Instagram forever

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge

In early May, the Meta executive in charge of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, shared some news: the social media app’s main feed would start looking dramatically different to some users.

For those in a small test group, the feed they’d been using for a decade would be replaced with an “immersive viewing experience” containing full-screen photos and videos with many posts coming from people they weren’t following. In other words, Instagram would start to look and feel even more like TikTok, the short-form video app that Meta sees as its fiercest competition.

“Let me know what you think down in the comments below,” said the ever-earnest Mosseri. And with the patience of a parent showing their child both sides of an argument, he invited Instagram...

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Analogue releases video game from 1962 on the Pocket

Image: Analogue

The world’s first video game is coming to an Analogue Pocket near you. Today, Analogue announced that it’s launching Spacewar!, a game originally designed for the PDP-1 minicomputer that predates Pong by a full decade, on the Pocket as a part of its larger strategy to bring pioneering video games into the modern era.

The original Spacewar! was created in 1962 by a cadre of engineers led by Steve Russell at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Using a PDP-1 minicomputer and a 1024 x 1024 pixel CRT display, Russell and his colleagues programmed a game in which two spacecraft duke it out in the gravitational well of a star. Two controllers were created for the game featuring switches for maneuvering and buttons that were designed to...

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Amazon’s Paper Girls series takes too long to get fun and weird

Fina Strazza, Riley Lai Nelet, and Camryn Jones in Paper Girls_._ | Image: Anjali Pinto/Prime Video

The live-action adaptation plays things a little too safe

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Analogue’s Pocket is finally getting its 1.1 update, though in beta to start

The Analogue Pocket. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

OS v1.1 for Analogue’s Pocket retro handheld will available in beta on Friday, and it adds features like a new reference tool to learn more about your games and save states so that you can more easily pick up a game where you left off.

The reference tool, called Library, will read a game’s cartridge and then show you details about that title, including the system, developer, publisher, and even the game revision. Analogue has an even bigger vision for Library down the line: it wants it to become a “scholarly cataloging of the entirety of video game history” that you can search through. This evolved version of the Library is expected to be available in September, according to a timeline from Analogue.

The save states, called Memories,...

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Vergecast: Instagram’s risky week and Big Tech earnings

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Every Wednesday and Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where our editors make sense of the week’s most important technology news. On Fridays, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel, editor-at-large David Pierce, and managing editor Alex Cranz discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.

The show starts with the biggest news from the week — Instagram and the controversy around the changes to its app. On our Wednesday show, we discussed Instagram head Adam Mosseri’s response to criticism of the changes and overall direction to make the app feel more like its competitor TikTok. The following day, Instagram walked back its changes, with Mosseri saying “we definitely...

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FTC staff reportedly recommended against suing Meta

Image: Supernatural / Within

Federal Trade Commission head Lina Khan overruled staff advice to intervene in a Meta virtual reality studio acquisition, Bloomberg reports. Sources reportedly told Bloomberg that staff had been “recommending against” suing to block Meta’s acquisition of Within, which makes the popular VR fitness app Supernatural_._ The FTC voted 3 to 2 in favor of the suit earlier this week, splitting respectively along Democratic and Republican party lines.

Bloomberg’s article doesn’t detail the substance of the disagreement over Meta’s Supernaturalacquisition, although it does note that “each of the commissioners had the opportunity to test out Meta’s Oculus product, Within’s Supernatural, and Meta’s Beat Saber.” But the report would emphasize that...

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Apple TV Plus’ new thriller Surface keeps you completely in the dark

Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Oliver Jackson-Cohen in Surface_._ | Image: Apple

While Apple TV Plus is probably best known for its comfort food comedies and big-budget genre swings, the streaming service has also steadily built up a lineup of very intense thrillers. The latest is Surface — not to be confused with Suspicion, Severance, or Servant, also available on the service — which takes the idea of a mystery to its most extreme conclusion. The early episodes are almost entirely made up of questions and misdirection. I can’t even tell if the show is even any good at this point — but I know I need to keep watching to find out.

Surface is centered on Sophie (Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who you might remember from Loki, Doctor Who, and the best episode of Black Mirror), five months removed from an accident that caused...

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Get a year of PlayStation Plus Essential for just $40 for a limited time

Our readers can buy a year of PlayStation Plus Essential for just $40 from Eneba today. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

If you’re one of the lucky ones who have managed to nab a PlayStation 5, you’ll be pleased to hear that luck is once again working in your favor. Right now, Verge readers can buy a year of PlayStation Plus Essential service from Eneba for around $40 instead of $59.99 when they use promo code VERGEssentials at checkout. Note that the price might fluctuate by a few dollars and cents on Eneba’s website, but the final sale price at checkout should be under $40.

PlayStation Plus Essential grants access to online multiplayer and monthly PS4 and PS5 titles, which you can download at no additional cost. It also comes with PlayStation Store discounts, exclusive add-on content, and 100GB of cloud storage for saved games. Even better, PS5 owners...

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K-pop stars Blackpink turn PUBG into a beautiful stage for new music video

The latest music video from K-pop stars Blackpink has the band dropping onto a battle royale island. As part of a recent collaboration with PUBG Mobile — which recently featured its first-ever in-game concert — Blackpink released a new video that takes place inside of the game’s world. It features virtual avatars of the band as they sing in post-apocalyptic landscapes and ride motorcycles across abandoned highways. The song itself, called “Ready For Love,” was teased during the group’s virtual concert appearance.

The virtual concert and video follow in the footsteps of other in-game performances, most notably those in Fortnite, which has featured the likes of Travis Scott and Ariana Grande. But it’s also part of a slowly burgeoning...

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Twitter v. Elon Musk trial date set to start October 17th

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

We have a schedule for the Delaware Court of Chancery trial over Twitter’s lawsuit against Elon Musk for attempting to exit his agreement to buy the company for $44 billion. Earlier this week, the Musk team proposed an October 17th start date, which Twitter agreed to provided that the trial could be wrapped up in five days. Now, Judge Kathaleen McCormick has issued an official schedule, with the trial taking place from October 17th until October 21st.

While lawyers for each side initially fought over potential start dates — Twitter was pursuing a September trial while Musk’s lawyers sought something in 2023 — there’s now one element everyone can agree on, and reporters can start scheduling their fall vacations in Delaware. If only it...

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Here are the best accessories for your new PlayStation 5

Sony’s PS5 is a console you can accessorize more than most. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

The PlayStation 5 is becoming more available than it once was, but even with the increased frequency of restocks, Sony’s latest console remains a chore to get a hold of. If you’ve been savvy enough to secure a PS5 of your own, however, getting the right accessories can help ensure you get the most out of your new console.

From headsets and spare DualSense controllers to M.2 SSDs that allow you to easily expand your console’s storage capacity — that’s a thing now, after all — these are just a few PS5 accessories we suggest picking up, some of which occasionally go on discount.

Extra controllers

First off, there’s the controller. Every new PS5 includes a white DualSense controller. Unlike the last-gen DualShock controllers, the DualSense...

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Eight Sleep Pod 2 Pro Cover review: a pricey way to end night sweats

How much do you want to invest in a good night’s sleep?

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TikTok has quietly added over half a dozen mini-games into its app

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In recent weeks, TikTok has started testing offering a small collection of mini-games within its app, TechCrunch reports. There are nine games available as part of this initiative, which can be added to a video before it’s uploaded by using the “Add link” option and selecting “MiniGame.” Viewers can play a linked game by tapping the link that appears underneath the account’s username while a video is playing. When playing a game, there’s the option to record gameplay and subsequently post it as a TikTok.

A TikTok spokesperson confirmed the pilot in a statement given to TechCrunch: “We’re always looking at ways to enrich our platform and regularly test new features and integrations that bring value to our community. Currently, we’re...

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Thread is Matter’s secret sauce for a better smart home

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

Why the low-power mesh networking protocol is poised to become the backbone of the connected home

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Sergey Brin and Elon Musk are Silicon Valley frenemies

Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

I’m sorry for what I’m about to do here, but let’s talk about some divorced men. I think Sergey Brin is attempting to smear his ex-wife, and I think he’s using his history with Elon Musk to do it.

Musk allegedly had an affair with Brin’s wife, leading to their divorce. (ALLEGEDLY.) Then, at a party, Musk fell to his knees, begging for Brin’s forgiveness, “according to people with knowledge of the incident,” The Wall Street Journal writes. What a story!

I notice that Brin’s still duking it out with his soon-to-be ex-wife

Except: I find this sourcing weird. How many people? Two sources are different from 10 sources on this, or 30, you know? And what kind of knowledge? Were they there? I understand wanting to protect one’s sources,...

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Ben Affleck’s Batman will return for Aquaman 2

Affleck at the premiere of Batman v Superman. | Photo by Hector Vivas/LatinContent via Getty Images

Ben Affleck is reprising his role as Batman in the forthcoming Aquaman sequel, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. His return was announced by the film’s star Jason Momoa in an Instagram post, featuring a selfie of the two actors. “Reunited,” Momoa wrote. “bruce and arthur. love u and miss u Ben WB studio tours just explored the backlot alright. busted on set all great things coming AQUAMAN 2 all my aloha j.”

Alongside the two images, Momoa posted a short video of a Warner Bros. backlot tour apparently discovering Affleck’s involvement in the film. “Well it’s not a fucking secret anymore!” Momoa jokes, before showing the Batman actor in his trailer.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jason Momoa...

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See exactly what Samsung’s next foldables look like in leaked marketing renders

The Z Flip 4. | Image: Evan Blass / 91 Mobiles

We’re still over a week away from the official launch of Samsung’s latest foldables — the Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4 — so naturally it’s time for the devices’ designs to leak in full online.

Leaker Evan Blass has published a bevy of apparently official images over at 91Mobiles, showing the two phones from almost every angle, including in both their folded and unfolded orientations. There appears to be three color options for the Z Fold 4 (black, beige, and gray) and four for the Z Flip 4 (black, gold, blue, and purple).

If you were hoping for radically different designs for either device compared to last year’s models, though, you’re likely to be disappointed. Both appear to have inherited fundamentally similar looks, right down to camera...

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Sony warns of weaker PlayStation business as game sales wobble

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Sony has cut its annual profit outlook, warning of weaker PlayStation game sales. The forecast comes as Sony revealed it shipped 2.4 million PlayStation 5 consoles in its recent quarter, up only 4 percent from the 2.3 million shipped during the same period last year. PS5 lifetime shipments have now reached 21.7 million.

While hardware sales are slightly up year over year, software sales have plummeted 26 percent. In an investor call, Sony blamed the game slump on a lack of big PlayStation titles this year compared to 2021 and less time spent playing games in general — backed up by monthly active PlayStation Network users dropping 3 percent to 102 million. Sony released its exclusive Gran Turismo 7 and Horizon Forbidden West titles...

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YouTube’s making it easier for creators to turn longer content into Shorts

The company’s really pushing Shorts right now. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube is trying to make it even easier for creators to turn their longer videos into Shorts formatted for the platform's TikTok competitor, by adding a new “Edit into a Short” tool to its iOS and Android app. It’ll let creators select up to 60 seconds from one of their videos and bring the clip into the Shorts editor, right from the YouTube app on iOS or Android. From there, they can add things like text, filters, as well as additional videos shot with the Shorts camera or pulled from their photo library.

In an announcement post for the feature, YouTube says that the finished Short will link to the full video it was clipped from, which could help make Shorts an ideal promotional tool for the creator’s longer content — a key incentive...

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The Twitter Blue subscription is getting more expensive

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

People frequently express their amazement that Twitter is free, but for some people, it isn’t — Twitter Blue launched last year in several countries, tacking on a few extra features for anyone willing to pay $2.99 per month. Today the service told subscribers it’s increasing the price (via Matt Navara), and in the US, it’s jumping up to $4.99 per month. That probably won’t break the pockets of information addicts who are choosing to pay for a service that still includes advertisements in their feed, but it might be enough to make people ask themselves if it’s worthwhile.

The add-ons in the Twitter Blue package range from extremely useful (an undo tweet window to fix typos, a customizable navigation bar, a list of Top Articles shared by...

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How to fix the Steam Deck’s noisy fan

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

160-plus hours into Elden Ring, I’m sure of one thing: the single most annoying thing about my Steam Deck is its whiny fan. And now, I’m so happy to report there’s a way to fix it. It takes roughly 15 minutes and $30 — depending on where you live — to install a replacement fan from iFixit.

Recently, the repair company finally got a large shipment of those fans, and I bought one right away. Now, my Steam Deck’s tiny screech is gone.

Here’s how I did it:

@verge

Replacing the Steam Deck's fan makes things just a little quieter. #tiktoktaughtme #SteamDeck #DIY

♬ FUTURE HOUSE - Sergey Wednesday

(If my three-minute video isn’t your thing, you could also read iFixit’s step-by-step guide. TL;DR you’re looking at 13 Philips-head screws...

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Meta will stop paying US publishers to put their content in Facebook’s News tab

Facebook News tab (2019) | Image: Facebook

As you’ve probably heard, Facebook and Instagram will lean heavily into AI-curated creator content going forward, and the News Tab project Facebook launched a few years ago doesn’t seem to be a big part of that. As reported by Axios and confirming earlier rumors, Facebook’s parent company Meta is telling publishers it no longer plans to pay for the content it has been aggregating in the news tab.

According to the report, Meta spent about $105 million in three-year content deals for news (plus another $90 million for news videos), including $10 million for the Wall Street Journal, $20 million for the New York Times, and $3 million for CNN in arrangements that sometimes included unlocked access to paywalled content. The Wall Street...

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Valve won’t allow awards and reviews on Steam store images starting in September

Valve’s new rules will prohibit text like this on an image. | Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

Valve is making a big change to the way developers can market their games on Steam. Beginning September 1st, graphical assets developers use in their store listings will only be able to include game artwork, the game’s name, and any official subtitle. Images won’t be able to include review scores, award names or logos, text that markets discounts, or text promoting a different product.

The new rules could prove to be a drastic shift for some developers, as they may rely on reviews or awards on their images in an effort to stand out from the humongous number of games available on Steam. Even some developers of well-known games will have to make changes — while writing this article, I saw promotional images of Hades and It Takes Two on...

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