Apex Legends’ new character comes with a cute sidekick and a big sniper rifle

Image: Respawn Entertainment

Apex Legends continues to hold its players’ attention even after several years on the market, and next week, the battle royale shooter will bring things back to where they started with a new season that revisits the game’s original map. This year, the game already added two new characters (plus two more in the new mobile version), brought upgrades for next-gen consoles, rotated in a well-received Control game mode, and, according to EA’s earnings call this week, notched double-digit income growth again for the last quarter. On the other hand, player complaints over glitches, ranked mode scoring, matchmaking, and practically any other small detail continue to mount.

The last season was particularly troubled, with problems that affected...

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Google’s just-released Pixel 6A is $50 off at Amazon

The Pixel 6A in its multitone sage colorway. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

The Pixel 6A from Google is just a week old, but there’ve been notable promotions running on it since before it came out. Now, you can get the Pixel 6A for an outright discount of $50 off at Amazon, knocking the price of the sage and charcoal colors down to $399 — no included gift card or earbud stipulations to worry about. This is a moderately priced phone, now priced even better for a limited time. Be sure to click the on-page coupon to get the full discount at Amazon, so each color becomes $399 at checkout, and don’t be fooled by any third-party sellers that may appear with a similar deal that lacks the coupon.

While the Pixel 6A is a bit of a departure from previous A-series phones from Google, it’s an exceptional midrange option...

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Apple might remove the headphone jack from its next entry-level iPad

There’s no headphone jack present in purported CAD renders of the upcoming iPad. | Renders: MySmartPrice

Apple has gradually removed the headphone jack from its entire iPhone lineup and several iPads like the iPad Pro, iPad Air, and iPad Mini. And now, the company seems poised to eliminate it from the iPad altogether: according to purported renders of an upcoming redesign of the entry-level model, the 3.5mm connector is about to be a goner there as well. It’s nowhere to be found on either the top or bottom of the device.

MySmartPrice says the CAD renders are sourced from a case maker working on accessories for what will be the 10th-generation iPad. It’s a substantial redesign from the classic iPad design that has been left largely untouched for years; Apple increased the display size slightly in 2017 and has made other internal hardware...

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The US-made 2023 Volkswagen ID.4 will start at $37,495

Volkswagen announced that the 2023 ID.4 electric crossover SUV, which the automaker just started producing at its factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, will start at the suggested price of $37,495 — making it one of the more affordable plug-in crossovers on the market today.

Combined with the federal EV tax credit of $7,500 — which may be renewed under the Senate Democrat’s new reconciliation package that’s currently under debate — the ID.4’s price could come down even more.

The ID.4 is VW’s most popular EV, having delivered 190,000 vehicles to customers globally since its release in 2021. VW CEO Herbert Diess, who is stepping down in September, said in May 2022 that the company was “basically sold out on electric vehicles in Europe and...

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Twitter now lets businesses tell you where to find them

Twitter has a new feature useful to brick-and-mortar businesses that can put crucial information near the top of their Twitter profiles. The new Location Spotlight feature, launching widely today, lets businesses add information like store hours and address, a Google Map with directions, and a quick tap option to contact a business via phone or Twitter direct messaging.

Location Spotlight could make it easier and quicker for customers to, say, decide if there’s enough time to walk three blocks for coffee before a shop closes. While it may be faster to search a business directly on a map app, if the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that information may not be correct or up to date.

Part of a broader business-centric feature set...

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How machine learning could help save threatened species from extinction

A male killer whale breaching in the Icy Strait, southeast Alaska. | Photo by: Francois Gohier/VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

There are thousands of species on Earth that we still don’t know much about — but we now know that they are already teetering on the edge of extinction**.** A new study used machine learning to figure out just how threatened these lesser-knownspecies are, and the results were grim.

Some species of animals and plants are labeled “data deficient” because conservationists haven’t been able to gather enough information about them to understand how they live or how many of them are left. It turns out that those “data deficient” species are unfortunately even more threatened than other species that are more well known (to scientists, at least). The data from this study came from theInternational Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which...

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Multimillion-dollar Solana crypto theft linked to Slope mobile wallet

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Earlier this week, thousands of crypto wallets connected to the Solana ecosystem were drained by attackers who used owners’ private keys to steal both Solana (SOL) and USD Coin (USDC). Solana now says that, after an investigation “by developers, ecosystem teams, and security auditors,” it’s linked the attack to accounts tied to the Slope mobile wallet app.

A chart set up on Dune to track the attacks tallies the amount of crypto stolen at just over $4 million, taken from over 9,000 unique wallets.

Slope Finance, which calls itself “the easiest way to discover web3 applications from one secure place,” has issued a statement advising all Slope users to create “a new and unique seed phrase wallet, and transfer all assets to this new wallet.”...

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OnePlus’ 10T launch was a weird return to in-person events

The word “aquamorphic” was used more than once.

There’s nothing minimalist about the scene at OnePlus’ 10T launch event, and at a venue called Gotham Hall, how could it be? The ceiling and walls are lit up in bright red, and the audience is blanketed in a blue glow. There’s also a chandelier in the middle of the ceiling giving real The Phantom of the Opera vibes.

OnePlus hasn’t left much to the imagination leading up to its launch event. For one, a couple of 10Ts are embedded in the wall where attendees walk in, so the jig is up. As it tends to, OnePlus has also dripped out specs ahead of time, from the chipset to the controversial missing alert slider. It’s a color-by-numbers picture of the phone with almost every bit shaded in except for one key spec: the price.

Like just about...

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Hail to the Leaf

Kristen Radtke / The Verge

The first-generation Nissan Leaf was a car that only an owner could love. It had bug eyes for headlights, the body of a Bulbasaur, a toy-like startup sound, and a large plastic nub in the center console that you moved like an air hockey paddle to put the Leaf in drive or reverse.

I was one of those owners, and while I swooned at the 2018 redesign, I still only had eyes for my first-gen Leaf. Like many first-time EV owners, it was my first real all-electric car, the one that changed how I thought about each journey and how to get there without depleting the battery. It’s the one that helped me discover what it’s like to have a gas station in your own home.

The Leaf was one of the best cars I’ve ever owned

And most importantly, it was a...

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Sony’s 27-inch 4K gaming monitor is good but not $900 good

It offers a full array of features aimed squarely at gamers

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How to work from home when your internet goes out

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

You were working. Things were just fine. A landscaper puts a shovel through your buried internet cabling or tree limbs drop and kill a neighborhood’s internet. Or the inexplicable happens, and the little green light on the cable modem goes red. You are, as the sailors say when a ship’s engine becomes quiet, dead in the water. What now?

Most remote work depends on access to a reliable internet connection, and for lots of people, especially for hourly or clocked workers, no internet means no pay. That means finding a way to get back online quickly, either at home or elsewhere. The goal, given the interruption, is to stay in business, be employed, and have a reliable backup plan after the internet outage swear words are spoken. It’s for...

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Forget those Tesla crashes: GM says you can trust its autonomous vehicles

General Motors is racing to electrify its vast lineup of vehicles in a concerted bid to outpace Tesla as the No. 1 seller of EVs in the world. But it’s also competing with Tesla on a whole other front: autonomous vehicles.

On this front, GM feels like it has an edge. It’s hands-free advanced driver-assist system, Super Cruise, will double its coverage area to 400,000 miles of highways and routes later this year. Next year, the automaker will unveil the next iteration, Ultra Cruise, which GM has said will cover “95 percent” of driving tasks. And its robotaxi division, Cruise, is currently picking up and dropping off passengers in San Francisco as part of the city’s first real commercial autonomous ridehail service.

But at present,...

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How to minimize distractions when you work from home

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge | Photography by Robert Nickelsberg / Getty Images

I’ve been working from home for close to 15 years. I also have ADHD. And a lot of streaming subscriptions. And a PlayStation. And hundreds of books. And a partner who also sometimes works from home and is equally aware of the presence of said streaming subscriptions, PlayStation, and books.

The point is that my home is full of distractions. Yours probably is, too. Maybe different distractions from mine, but distractions nonetheless. And, like many workers, it may have taken you a pandemic to discover that it can be hard to avoid these distractions when working from home. (Work itself provides plenty of distractions already, if you’re not careful— the continuous pings of emails and Slacks can make you feel like you’re working all the time...

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Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker sequel planned for release in October 2024

Joaquin Phoenix in Joker. | Screenshot: Joker

The sequel to 2019’s Oscar-winning Joker is planned for release on October 4th 2024, Deadline reports. Director Todd Phillips previously confirmed the sequel was moving ahead in June under the title Joker: Folie à Deux, which literally translates to “madness for two.”

Joaquin Phoenix, who won the Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of the character in the first movie, is expected to return for the sequel, Variety reports, whileLady Gaga is reportedly in talks to star alongside him, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The speculation is that Gaga may play Joker’s long-standing partner Harley Quinn (previously played by Margot Robbie in the DCEU), and that Gaga’s potential involvement could even lead the film to incorporate more...

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The Rotom Phone is finally getting a second camera

While a largely iterative upgrade, the new Rotom Phone gets a couple new features. | Image: The Pokémon Company

The Rotom Phone is getting a big upgrade. Following its introduction in the Galar region three years ago, the updated version of the smartphone-that’s-inhabited-by-a-Pokémon is finally making the jump from one back camera to two. The handset will soon be available in the new Paldea region as well.

It’s difficult to tell exactly what kind the second lens is for — all I can really see is that the main lens remains blue while the new second lens is black. I don’t think that’s enough information to make an informed guess about whether this new lens is a telephoto, an ultrawide, or something else, though I’m hoping I’ll be able to use that second camera to take pictures of the new best boy Fidough.

Good to see Rotom Phone got the second...

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You can now preorder the Steam Deck in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Valve is expanding Steam Deck shipments to some regions that could take the handheld PC-meets-console to new heights. The company just announced that reservations are now open in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan through Komodo, a site that also sells Valve’s Index VR headset for PC among other games and gaming merchandise. If you visit steamdeck.com in one of those regions, you should be rerouted to Komodo’s site soon, or you can click here and select your language. Valve spokesperson Kaci Aitchison Boyle tells The Verge that the first batch of new reservations will be fulfilled later this year.

Pour one out for our friends in Australia, though, who are still waiting on news of a launch after Valve name-dropped the country d...

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A leaked Tomb Raider script is looking pretty legit now that Square Enix DMCA’d it

Ever heard of the Streisand effect? It’s when someone tries to suppress information, only to wind up spreading it even further than it might have otherwise traveled.

For example: Last week, I might have been skeptical if you told me a podcaster got their hands on a casting script for the next Tomb Raider game — one which reveals that a older, lonely Lara Croft may dodge lasers in a “gravity tomb” and engage in a romance with another female character.

But if you also told me that the head lawyer at Tomb Raider studio Crystal Dynamics immediately sent a DMCA takedown notice — one where he attested under penalty of perjury that the podcast infringed on the studio’s intellectual property — I would absolutely think that script and those...

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One of the most enduring shows on TV is getting put behind a Peacock paywall

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

NBC’s long-running soap opera Days of Our Lives will be leaving broadcast television after 57 years on to stream exclusively on Peacock, the network announced on Wednesday. The change means that fans who previously have been able to watch the show for free on broadcast will now have to pay for a streaming service to learn what happens next in the show’s fictional town of Salem. New episodes of Days of Our Lives will debut beginning September 12th.

“With a large percentage of the Days of Our Lives audience already watching digitally, this move enables us to build the show’s loyal fanbase on streaming while simultaneously bolstering the network daytime offering with an urgent, live programming opportunity for partners and consumers,” ...

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Facebook’s shuttering its live shopping feature to focus on Reels

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Facebook is shutting down live shopping, its QVC-like livestream feature that lets creators broadcast and sell products to an audience (via TechCrunch). The feature will officially shut down on October 1st, and Facebook says it’s part of the company’s initiative to shift focus to Reels.

“As consumers’ viewing behaviors are shifting to short-form video, we are shifting our focus to Reels on Facebook and Instagram, Meta’s short-form video product,” Facebook explains. Although live shopping’s going away on Facebook, it will still be available on Instagram.

First rolled out in 2018 in Thailand, live shopping opens up another revenue stream for creators on Facebook. It lets influencers host their own live shopping sessions where they can show...

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The best Chromebook for 2022

Acer’s Chromebook Spin 713 | Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge

The best Chromebook for anyone who wants Chrome OS on their laptop

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The best Chromebook deals you can get right now

Samsung’s vibrant Galaxy Chromebook 2 is on sale for less than $700 right now. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

If you’re looking for an affordable laptop alternative, Chromebooks are a great option to consider. Yet there are several kinds on the market these days, and it can be overwhelming to pick the right for you and your needs. Some are better suited for basic work tasks, for example, while some of the higher-end models can even rival some of the best laptops you can buy. Moreover, just because one Chromebook has more features than the other doesn’t mean it’s the right one for you or the best value for your money.

That’s why we’ve curated this comprehensive list of the best Chromebook deals. Each varies in price and comes with its own strengths and weaknesses, but all of them come recommended for one reason or another. And if you’d like to do...

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Lucid Motors will barely make any EVs this year as it slashes production goals again

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge

Luxury electric vehicle maker Lucid Motors is slashing its production forecast for 2022 for the second time this year. The Newark, California-based company announced it was revising its production expectations to between 6,000 and 7,000 vehicles.

Lucid originally said it would make 20,000 vehicles in 2022, but that number was revised in February to 12,000–14,000 vehicles. It was another disappointing turn for the EV maker, which is strongly angling to capture some of Tesla’s market share with its ultra-premium, ultra-long-range Lucid Air sedan. Last quarter, Lucid announced a 10 percent price increase for the single model it has in production.

“We’ve identified the primary bottlenecks”

“Our revised production guidance reflects the...

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Spain bans setting the AC below 27 degrees Celsius

At a press conference last week, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez urged the country to conserve energy in every way possible, including taking off ties to stay cool. | Photo By Eduardo Parra/Europa Press via Getty Images

As Europe grapples with a scorching summer and skyrocketing energy prices, Spain has become the latest government to tell its citizens to turn down the AC.

A decree published on Tuesday morning in the official state gazette and scheduled to go into effect next week mandates that air conditioning in public places be set at or below 27 degrees Celsius (about 80 degrees Fahrenheit) and that doors of those buildings remain closed to save energy.

Those public places include offices, shops, bars, theaters, airports, and train stations. The decree is being extended as a recommendation to all Spanish households. The rules include maintaining heating at or below 19 degrees Celsius (about 66 degrees Fahrenheit) in the winter and will remain in...

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Patients did DIY blood draws in a new vaccine study

Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

Here’s how a research study to test for antibodies might normally go: participants who sign up go to a medical office and get their blood drawn. Depending on the type of study, they might have to go back and forth multiple times over a few months. It takes logistics, scheduling, and too much time in probably too cold waiting rooms.

But a new COVID-19 vaccine booster study tried a new — and more badass and / or gross, depending on how squeamish you are — approach. The study didn’t ask anyone to take time out of their day to go to a doctor’s office to test their blood for antibodies. Instead, the process was DIY: people drew their own blood at home.

The study, done by Moderna researchers, was checking the antibody levels of people who...

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Spider-Man Remastered swings onto the Steam Deck with official support

Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered launches August 12th for PC and will be verified on Steam Deck. | Image: Sony

Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered swings onto PC next week, and developer Insomniac Games just announced that the game has been verified for Steam Deck. Games that are verified should play great on the handheld gaming PC without having to make any major tweaks, meaning that you’ll likely be able to jump right into the action when Spider-Man Remastered is released.

Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered is Steam Deck Verified! ✅

— Insomniac Games (@insomniacgames) August 3, 2022

Spider-Man Remastered launches for PC on August 12th, 2022, though it’s not a Steam exclusive — if you prefer the Epic Games Store, you can buy the game there, too. And Insomniac has also confirmed that Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales will be coming to PC sometime...

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Microsoft’s testing a handy Game Pass widget on Windows 11

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft’s first new Windows 11 widget should make it even easier to find out which games are coming to PC Game Pass. The widget is only available to Windows Insider testers for now and is supposed to provide a “window” into the service’s game library, allowing you to check out recent additions and the games leaving soon.

Microsoft currently has a fairly limited selection of widgets in Windows 11, but a Game Pass widget indicates that Microsoft is trying out other applications (that aren’t so boring as the weather, a calendar, and the news). Windows 11 is supposed to support third-party widgets eventually, but adding Game Pass could be a good way to shake the widgets board up for now and might even help promote the subscription service.

...

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How to change the side panels in Gmail’s new view

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

When The Verge’s Richard Lawler reported that Google was rolling out its newly stylized version of Gmail for the web, I decided I wanted to take a look as well. Since my Gmail page hadn’t yet switched over, I clicked on the cog-like Settings icon in the upper-right corner of my page and then on the link labeled Try out the new Gmail view and refreshed my page.

As Richard writes, the change isn’t radical. There is a new color scheme that I rather like and a few other interface tweaks. The main change, however, is the left-hand side panel — now, the two side panels.

Previously, you had a single panel that gave you access to a menu of your various Gmail categories and labels (such as the Inbox, Starred, Trash, etc.). By clicking on the...

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Now TikTok can sell you tickets to see Demi Lovato or the WWE

Demi Lovato, OneRepublic, and Usher can now sell concert tickets through TikTok. | Photo by Xavi Torrent/Redferns

Performers can reach some fans even more directly now that Ticketmaster is selling tickets inside the TikTok app. The partnership means Ticketmaster can take advantage of TikTok’s recommendation feed that helps get artists — and now their event tickets — in front of fans.

Bringing Ticketmaster to TikTok makes sense, based solely on how big a role music plays on the app, but it could also indicate broader plans to delve into the industry. Last month, a report from Insider revealed that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, filed a trademark for “TikTok Music.” The filing describes it as a platform that would allow users to purchase, play, share, and download music.

Image: TikTok / Ticketmaster

Only “select” creators...

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Apple might delay iPadOS 16 launch

A photo of an 11-inch iPad running iPadOS 16. | Photo by David Pierce / The Verge

Apple is making big changes to multitasking and collaboration in iPadOS 16, asking users and developers to get used to its ambitious new Stage Manager user interface. Now, based on anonymous sources, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that, unlike in previous years when new versions of iOS and iPadOS have come out at the same time, the company will delay the launch of iPadOS 16. That would mean we can expect new iPhone software in September as usual, followed by an iPadOS update in October.

Gurman said the delay is due in part to Stage Manager, which, in our preview of iPadOS 16, The Verge’s David Pierce didn’t like very much:

We’ll reserve full judgment for our review this fall, but so far, I hate Stage Manager. The piles take up too much...

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I found $20 in my old pants and I’m ready to take over Robinhood

For a little spare change, this logo could be all yours | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Robinhood is trading just above $10 a share as of this publication, which is about a 73 percent decrease from its price at IPO, $38. The market cap is now under $10 billion. Friends, it’s possible. The more the shares fall, the easier it is for the memestonkers to snatch. How would a bunch of retail investors seize Robinhood? Why not use a DAO?

It’s time to seize the means of investing

There’s been a lot of speculation this year — especially after the first round of layoffs, when Robinhood cut 9 percent of its staff — that the app-based trading service is an attractive takeover target. Yesterday, Robinhood cut further: almost a quarter of its remaining staff, including its showy chief product officer hire they got from Google. It also r...

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