Apple is allegedly threatening to fire an employee over a viral TikTok video

Photo by Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Apple is allegedly threatening to fire an employee who posted a TikTok video with basic iPhone security tips. The employee, Paris Campbell, says she was told that she breached company policy by identifying herself as an Apple employee and posting about Apple-related topics.

The company’s social media policy warns employees against posting about customers, colleagues, or confidential information — but Apple doesn’t specifically bar employees from posting about the technology entirely.

“We want you to be yourself, but you should also be respectful in posts, tweets, and other online communications,” an internal document reads.

Campbell, a single mother living in New York, has worked at Apple for nearly six years, most recently as a...

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Apps don’t make at-home blood pressure monitoring better

Photo by Tobias Hase / picture alliance via Getty Images

Managing blood pressure at home is already difficult, and syncing blood pressure equipment up to an app doesn’t make the process any better, a new study found. In this case, just like many others, technology isn’t a good replacement for medical support.

Millions of adults in the United States have uncontrolled blood pressure, and high blood pressure can put people at risk for heart disease and stroke. Helping people manage their blood pressure is a major goal for health systems — but just sending someone who has high blood pressure home with a cuff isn’t particularly helpful, research shows. What does help is pairing people’s at-home blood pressure trackingwith education support programs, regular counseling about medications from...

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John Wick’s prequel is coming to Peacock in 2023

Keanu Reeves in John Wick: Chapter 2. | Image: Niko Tavernise

The Continental, a three-episode series that takes place before the events of the John Wick films, is coming to Peacock in 2023. In a press release, NBC announced that it has reached “a multi-year deal” for The Continental, which was originally set to premiere on Starz.

Unlike the films, The Continental won’t center around Keanu Reeves as the titular assassin. It will instead explore the origin of the Continental Hotel that serves as a sanctuary for criminals throughout the John Wick franchise.

The series is set in 1975 New York City and follows the younger version of Winston Scott (played by The Flight Attendant’s Colin Woodell) as he tries to gain control of the Continental Hotel. It will also feature Ayomide Adegun as a young Charon,...

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Guillermo del Toro is ready to share his nightmarish Cabinet of Curiosities with you

Netflix

Though Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities began as a bound collection of the director’s nightmarish ideas that weren’t quite ready to be realized, each chapter of Netflix’s upcoming horror anthology based on the book will tell a fully fleshed-out story meant to push the boundaries of the genre. While Cabinet of Curiosities is del Toro’s baby, he’s just one of the many masters of horror with their hands on the eight-episode-long series, and in a new featurette, he breaks down just what all each of his fellow directors has brought to the project.

While del Toro’s obviously proud of the two original stories he wrote and directed for Cabinet of Curiosities, it’s the work of his fellow directors like The Babadook’s Jennifer Kent and T...

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A new Lord of the Rings game is in the works from Weta Workshop

The game will be based on the books. | Image: Warner Bros.

Weta Workshop, which worked on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, is developing a new video game set in the Middle-earth universe from J.R.R. Tolkien’s books. There aren’t many details about this new game just yet — though it sounds as if Weta could have a large well of material to choose from. “Middle-earth Enterprises have licensed the literary works of the series, providing Wētā Workshop with the broadest creative license to interpret the underlying lore of the books,” according to a press release.

Weta’s game division is partnering with Take-Two publishing label Private Division on the upcoming title. There’s no announced release date, though the game is expected to launch in Take-Two’s 2024 fiscal year, which runs from...

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$150 million ‘Much Wow’ yacht left behind by crypto hedge fund’s collapse

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The now bankrupt Three Arrows Capital (3AC) presented signs of mismanagement before the cryptocurrency hedge fund’s ultimate collapse. A report from New York Magazine reveals that 3AC co-founders Kyle Davies and Su Zhu faced criticism from banks and other traders before the company even entered the crypto market.

In its early days, the Singapore-based 3AC got into foreign exchange (FX) trading and reportedly practiced something called currency arbitrage, which allowed Zhu and Davies to cash in on mispriced quotes from different brokers, even if it resulted in gains of just “fractions of a cent on each dollar traded.” According to New York Magazine, banks would sometimes try to contact 3AC in an attempt to call off or adjust the trade,...

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Android 13 arrives for Pixel phones starting today

Android 13 is 2022’s big Android update. | Image: Google

This year’s major Android update, Android 13, is officially releasing today for Google’s Pixel phones, the search giant has announced. The annual update is getting an official release a little earlier than usual, following Android 12’s release last October and Android 11’s release in September 2020.

The list of updates arriving with this year’s version of Android is likely to be familiar if you’ve been keeping up with Android 13’s beta releases. There’s the ability to customize non-Google app icons to match your homescreen wallpaper that we saw in Android 13’s first developer preview, a new permission to cut down on notification spam, and a new option to limit which of your photos and videos an app can access.

Image:...

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Here are the best AirPods deals you can get right now

Apple’s AirPods Pro are one of our go-to picks and are often on sale at retailers like Amazon and Walmart. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

If you know where to look, there are often some great discounts available on Apple’s popular — yet oftentimes expensive — AirPods. Since Apple launched the third-gen AirPods last year and unveiled its new lineup, we’ve seen the starting price of the second-gen, entry-level model drop from $159 to $129. What’s more, we’ve seen many retailers heavily discounting the second-gen AirPods as well as the more expensive AirPods Pro and Max, which offer noise cancellation and better sound quality than the standard model.

In recent months, we’ve even seen some significant discounts on the third-gen model that, despite lacking the “Pro” moniker, resembles the AirPods Pro more than the long-stemmed original model. Here, we’ll run through the best...

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Buying an EV is about to be a pain in the ass, thanks to stricter tax credits

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Volkswagen “cannot guarantee” that its ID.4 compact electric SUV will be eligible for the new electric vehicle tax credits that are set to go into effect after President Joe Biden signs the Inflation Reduction Act. The automaker isn’t alone in its confusion.

The auto industry is scrambling to adjust to the new rules requiring that EVs must be assembled in North America, using parts and supplies sourced domestically or from official trading partners, in order for customers to qualify for the $7,500 tax credit. Most EVs have batteries that are sourced from China, meaning the new rules are written in such a way as to effectively disqualify the vast majority of EVs on the road today.

In an email to customers, VW says it “expects but cannot...

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Devialet Dione soundbar review: brilliant bass for an exorbitant price

The $2,400 Dione is a luxury buy for people who don’t want to deal with surrounds or a subwoofer

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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 latest Pro models is sure to be worthwhile. As for the new 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air with M2 processors, it may take a while to see some consistent 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...

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Snapchat’s paid subscription is already a hit

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Snap is finding early success with its paid subscription service Snapchat Plus. The company says it has amassed 1 million paid users since launching Snapchat Plus in late June.

A Snapchat Plus subscription gives users early and exclusive access to features for $3.99 a month, including changing the app icon and seeing who rewatched your story. In July, the company rolled out Snapchat for desktop to subscribers — the first major feature for paid users.

New Snapchat Plus features include increased visibility when replying to Snap Stars.

Snapchat is also introducing a new set of features today for its more than 1 million Plus subscribers. Among the updates is priority story replies, which makes Plus subscribers’...

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WeWork co-founder lines up $350 million A16Z investment for a new billion-dollar real estate venture

WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann. | Photo by Ryan Muir / Getty Images via The New York Times

Adam Neumann, the co-founder and former CEO of the shared office startup WeWork, is working on a new rental real estate business that has received funding from Andreessen Horowitz. According to a report from The New York Times, the venture capital firm invested around $350 million in Neumann’s up-and-coming real estate business, called Flow, which aims to provide a consistent housing experience across a chain of branded apartment complexes.

If you’re at all familiar with the story of WeWork, you might be having a bit of déjà vu. The company, which provides flexible office spaces for workers, was once valued at $50 billion. But after a failed IPO (initial public offering) and the layoffs of thousands of its workers, WeWork became more...

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Archive of Our Own’s 15-year journey from blog post to fanfiction powerhouse

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge | Movie stills by Alamy

The site’s long history still has lessons for the internet today

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Uber Eats teams up with Office Depot for on-demand school supplies

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Uber is teaming up with Office Depot to bring on-demand office and school supplies to the Uber Eats platform. It’s the latest effort by the ride-hailing company to diversify its delivery options beyond takeout and groceries.

Starting today, Uber Eats customers can place orders from 900 Office Depot and OfficeMax locations across the country. “From ink and toner, to backpacks, binders, and more, consumers will be able to shop for thousands of items and have them delivered right to their door,” the company says.

In addition, members of Uber’s monthly subscription service, Uber One, will receive special benefits, like free delivery and a 5 percent discount on all orders with a $15 minimum purchase.

“From ink and toner, to backpacks,...

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Samsung’s $3,500 Odyssey Ark is a raft of a gaming display

The Ark is effectively a curved TV masquerading as a monitor.

It’s fast and bright, yet its multiview features may be equally appealing to you

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Google’s Pixel 6 Pro is more affordable than ever at $649

The Pixel 6 (left) next to the Pixel 6 Pro (right). | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

You have another chance to get a Pixel 6 or Pixel 6 Pro at their lowest respective prices. The 6.4-inch Pixel 6 is $100 off, costing $499 unlocked at Amazon, Best Buy, or through the Google Store. The pricier Pixel 6 Pro has a 6.7-inch display, a higher-res screen, more RAM, and most notably, a telephoto lens with 4x optical zoom on its rear that sets it apart from many flagship phones out there. It normally costs $899, but you can get it for $649 through Amazon, Best Buy, or at the Google Store. To put the price in context, this beats the Prime Day price by $50.

You can nab these phones at Target, too, and if you’re very lucky, you may find an especially good deal at your local store on the Pixel 6 Pro. Some Reddit users found the Pixel...

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Intel turns to emulation for DirectX 9 games after ditching native support

Intel is dropping support for the 20-year-old API across 12th Gen processors and ARC GPUs. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Intel is removing native support for DirectX 9 (DX9) from its new Arc graphics cards and Xe integrated graphics on 12th Gen processors, with support now coming from emulation thanks to DirectX 12.

News of the DirectX 9 change comes from a recently updated support page on Intel’s website in which the company states it will drop support for the 20-year-old graphics API but offers reassurance that “applications and games based on DirectX 9 can still work through [the] Microsoft [Windows 10 and Windows 11] D3D9On12 interface.”

Microsoft is now shouldering responsibility for optimizations to DirectX 9 games and associated bugs

In essence, while modern Intel GPUs won’t have dedicated drivers for older games that solely run on DX9, such as U...

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Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED review: the MacBook Air alternative

OLED with few compromises

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How to stream your Nest security cameras to your TV using a Google Chromecast

Samar Haddad / The Verge

You’re sitting on the couch watching the latest episode of Bluey with your offspring when the doorbell rings or you hear a noise from the nursery. If you have a Google Chromecast hooked up to your TV, there’s no need to whip out your phone or crane your neck to see the Nest Hub smart display in the kitchen — you can just ask Google to show you a live feed of your doorbell or security camera right on said TV.

Any compatible security camera from Nest, Arlo, Wyze, Eufy, Netatmo, TP-Link Kasa, and others can be streamed live on the big screen using any generation of Chromecast. And, as of last month, you can now stream the newer Nest Cams, too, as long as you have a Chromecast with Google TV. Here’s a full list of Nest cams that you can...

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TikTok now offers a very basic text-to-image AI generator directly in the app

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Text-to-image AI systems are booming in both ability and popularity right now, and what better proof than their appearance in the world’s hottest app: TikTok.

The video platform recently added a new effect it calls “AI greenscreen” that allows users to type in a text prompt that the software will then generate as an image. This image can then be used as the background to a video — potentially a very useful tool for creators.

The output of TikTok’s system is pretty basic compared to that of state-of-the-art text-to-image models like Google’s Imagen, OpenAI’s DALL-E 2, or Midjourney’s eponymous software. It creates only rather abstract and swirling images; a strength reflected in the dreamy nature of TikTok’s suggested prompts like...

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Microsoft finally admits Xbox One sales were less than half of the PS4

Xbox One S | Photo by Tyler Pina / The Verge

Official Xbox One sales have largely been a mystery, but now Microsoft is finally admitting the obvious: the PS4 outsold the Xbox One — by a lot.

Microsoft stopped reporting its Xbox One sales figures at the beginning of its 2016 financial year, focusing instead on Xbox Live numbers. The change meant we’ve never officially known how well Xbox One was holding up compared to the PS4 after the Xbox One’s troubled launch. Analyst estimates have consistently put Microsoft in third place behind Sony and Nintendo, and now documents (Word doc) submitted to Brazil’s national competition regulator (spotted by Game Luster) finally shed some light on how the Xbox One generation went.

“Sony has surpassed Microsoft in terms of console sales and...

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Zoom’s latest update on Mac includes a fix for a dangerous security flaw

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Zoom has issued a patch for a bug on macOS that could allow a hacker to take control of a user’s operating system (via MacRumors). In an update on its security bulletin, Zoom acknowledges the issue (CVE-2022-28756) and says a fix is included in version 5.11.5 of the app on Mac, which you can (and should) download now.

Patrick Wardle, a security researcher and founder of the Objective-See Foundation, a nonprofit that creates open-source macOS security tools, first uncovered the flaw and presented it at the Def Con hacking conference last week. My colleague, Corin Faife, attended the event and reported on Wardle’s findings.

As Corin explains, the exploit targets the Zoom installer, which requires special user permissions to run. By...

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Reddit partners with crypto exchange FTX to help users manage community points

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Reddit now lets users purchase Ethereum cryptocurrency on the platform through an integration with FTX, the crypto exchange owned by billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried. In a press release, FTX announced that Reddit users can now use the firm’s payment system, FTX Pay, when managing their blockchain-based community points.

Reddit first rolled out community points in 2020 as a way to reward users for interacting with a community. These points exist on the Ethereum blockchain and are stored in the “Vault,” a user’s blockchain-based wallet that also holds the collectible NFT (non-fungible token) avatars that Reddit introduced last month.

Reddit displays a user’s community points next to their username as a measure of their reputation, but also...

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Your iPhone may soon have more ads

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Apple could eventually bring ads to more of the apps that come pre-installed on your iPhone and other Apple devices, including Maps, Books, and Podcasts. According to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple has internally tested search ads in Maps, which could display recommendations when you search for restaurants, stores, or other nearby businesses.

Apple already implements a similar advertising model on the App Store, as developers can pay to have their app promoted on a search page for a particular query, like “puzzle games” or “photo editor.” As noted by Gurman, ads on Maps could work in the same way, with businesses paying to appear at the top of search results when users enter certain search terms.

Gurman believes that Apple...

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Halo system link still holds up more than 20 years later

I just played some Halo on an original Xbox, and it was still very good. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Moments after booting up Halo: Combat Evolved with some friends, stepping onto the legendary Blood Gulch map, and dying nearly instantly from a few well-placed pistol shots, I remembered exactly why wires are good.

When my friends brought two original Xbox consoles along for a beach weekend, I expected that there would be some hassle getting them to work for our planned six-player matches. The game and consoles are more than 20 years old, likely predating even the dusty flat-screen TVs we were playing on. But to my surprise, just a few minutes after we had set up the consoles and connected them for system link play, we plugged in some controllers, made a Halo lobby, and began trash talking each other across the entire house.

Modern...

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Philips Hue Play sync box and gradient lightstrip review: wholly unnecessary, totally delightful

Leveling up your home theater experience

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Elon Musk pitches lofty goals in a magazine run by China’s internet censorship agency

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Elon Musk pitched sustainable energy, brain implants, and space exploration in an article published in a Chinese magazine run by the country’s internet watchdog and censorship agency, according to a translation from Yang Liu, a reporter for the Chinese state press agency, Xinhua. (via WSJ reporter Karen Hao).

Formed in 2013, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) is in charge of creating and enforcing policies surrounding online content, user data, and digital security. The CAC later created a magazine that, according to China Media Project senior researcher, Stella Chen, typically includes regulatory announcements and research on internet policy. The magazine was initially called New Media before it was rebranded as China...

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Uber is shutting down its free loyalty program later this year

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Uber is ending its free loyalty program, Uber Rewards, so it can turn its attention to its subscription-based Uber One membership. In an email sent to customers, Uber explains that users can still earn points until the end of August, and that the last day to redeem points is October 31st.

“Thank you for being part of Uber Rewards,” the email reads. “It’s been a great ride, but we’ve decided to end Rewards soon, as we shift our focus to our new Uber One membership program.”

Screenshot: Uber via Michael Konen

The email sent to Uber Rewards users.

Uber has since posted an update about the loyalty program’s imminent shutdown, which will take place on November 1st, 2022. Launched in 2018, Uber Rewards is a free...

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The DCEU has become a crisis of Warner Bros.’ own making

The fate of Warner Bros. DC Comics movies is looking grim

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