Wordle’s upgraded Wordlebot has a new recommended starting word

No, it’s not “words.” | photo by Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images

The New York Times has made a few upgrades to its Wordle assistant WordleBot, and that includes a new recommended starting word: SLATE. Previously, it recommended CRANE, but now you might want to slate this new one into your repertoire.

The NYT introduced WordleBot in April as a “daily companion” to help analyze your Wordle play, and with WordleBot 2.0, the team has made some changes. One of the bigger changes is that the bot no longer limits its analysis to the subset of five letter words that are known Wordle solutions — that is, it’s thinking more like a typical human player would. Previously, the bot could have judged you harshly for guessing a legit word that, for whatever reason, isn’t one of the possible Wordle solutions, which...

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Yes, the new electric vehicle tax credits are really confusing, but we can help

Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Buy now or buy later?

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Code in the Netflix app suggests the ad-supported version may have a drawback

Nick Barclay / The Verge

If you thought ad-supported Netflix would just be the regular service with some commercial breaks, then I regret to inform you you were wrong. According to language in the code of the Netflix app, discovered by developer Steve Moser and shared with Bloomberg, Netflix may limit offline downloads to the ad-free tiers of Netflix.

Currently, Netflix has three tiers. For $9.99 a month, you get standard definition content and the ability to watch TV on one screen at a time. Pay $14.99 a month and you get HD and the ability to watch on two screens at a time. If you want to watch everything in UHD (with 4K and HDR), you’ll have to pay $19.99. You’ll also be able to watch on four screens at a time.

It’s not really a surprise Netflix would...

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China’s heatwave closes factories that supply parts to Tesla, Intel, and Toyota

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The world’s biggest electric vehicle battery maker, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL), and Intel are among the major companies shutting down their factories for six days in China’s Sichuan province because of a heatwave-related power shortage in the area, according to CNN and Bloomberg.

The move affects factories belonging to companies like Tesla’s battery supplier CATL, Apple’s supplier Foxconn Technology, Toyota, Texas Instruments, Volkswagen, Onsemi, and more.

China ordered all Sichuan factories to pause operations until August 20th to alleviate the pressure placed on the power grid after China’s worst heatwave in 60 years resulted in increased air conditioning usage. According to CNN, temperatures spiked to 104...

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Adidas will now sell you a pair of solar-powered headphones

The Adidas RPT-02 SOL Bluetooth headphones. | Image: Adidas

Solar-powered gadgets are nothing new — Logitech has sold keyboards you never have to plug in for over a decade now. But an audio headset where barely there solar cells blend into the design? Until this week, we’d only ever tried one of those. Now, there are at least four.

On Tuesday, Adidas announced the RPT-02 SOL, a $230 pair of self-charging Bluetooth cans with Exeger’s Powerfoyle solar cells built right into the recycled plastic headband (via Engadget). That’s the same exact technology as in the Urbanista Los Angeles solar-powered headphones we reviewed last year, and they also quote the same 80 hours of “reserve” battery life, even in a pitch-black room.

Image: Adidas

I wouldn’t know it held solar cells...

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Sony has opened another public queue to buy the PlayStation 5

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

It’s been a minute since Sony last offered the PlayStation 5 via its digital storefront. Last month, the company ran public restocks three days in a row, allowing anyone with a PlayStation Network account to line up online for a chance to buy one. And frankly, recent restock events have been fairly easy to breeze through and nab a console. So now is the time to line up, as Sony has a restock going on right now.

Once you wait in the queue and your turn comes around (keep your volume on and you’ll hear a chime) you should be able to shop for a PlayStation 5 console and a selection of accessories and games. While availability has varied for past restock events, it appears Sony is currently only offering the disc-based PS5 for $549.99 with a...

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Turtle Beach’s new React-R controller brings handy audio features down to a lower budget

The React-R controller comes in two colors: black and white / purple.

The Turtle Beach React-R is the latest controller from the gaming accessories brand, newly available in the USA today for $39.99. It’s a wired Xbox and PC controller with a detachable USB-C cable, officially licensed by Microsoft, and it mixes some of Turtle Beach’s audio chops from its headsets into an affordable gamepad.

The React-R is a bit like Turtle Beach stripped down its Recon controller and gave it a slightly worse name. For $20 less than the Recon, the React-R offers nice quality face buttons, sticks, triggers, and two programmable rear buttons. Some of those buttons, particularly the shoulders, sound a bit more hollow in their clickiness — but that wasn’t something that felt especially premium on its pricier counterpart...

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Janet Jackson’s ‘Rhythm Nation’ apparently vibed too hard for some laptops

Bad vibrations. | Image: A&M Records

While it’s normal for friends to judge our music tastes and take away your aux privileges, our devices usually won’t complain about our listening habits (even if we ask them to repeatedly play a song that most humans would find insufferable). However, according to a story shared by Microsoft principal software engineer Raymond Chen on his blog The Old New Thing, some Windows XP-era laptops did end up taking exception to the music video for Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” because it contained a sound that crashed their hard drives.

According to Chen, an unnamed “major computer manufacturer” discovered that some of their computers were crashing when trying to play the song and that playing the song on one laptop could even crash another...

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Substack’s promise to be different than a newsroom is getting messy

Image: Substack

By most measures, Forever Wars should have been a Substack success story. The newsletter, which documents the war on terror, began last year after Substack cut a deal with a seasoned reporter to write on the platform, build an audience, and — if everything went well — launch a reader-supported venture that made the switch from newsroom to newsletter worth the gamble. Substack’s usual promise applied: if a writer wants to leave, they can, and it will be easy to do. And, in late July, a day after the expiration of a year-long deal, that’s what Spencer Ackerman did, moving Forever Wars to the newsletter platform Ghost as seamlessly as possible.

But the switch became far messier this week when Substack barreled through its standing promise...

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Reddit is going to make it easier to create great bots

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Reddit’s working on a new portal to provide developers with the resources they need to create bots and other third-party tools. In a blog post, Reddit announced that it’s opening a wait list for the beta of its developer platform, allowing developers to host bots for free and reuse apps across different communities.

If you’re a frequent Reddit user, you might already be familiar with some of the more popular bots on the platform, like u/RemindMeBot, which sends you a message to remind you about a certain post or comment at a specified time. There’s also a bot that provides summaries of Wikipedia pages and even one that converts videos on the platform into downloadable links.

As Reddit notes, developers on the platform currently “operate...

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We stress-tested the microphones on Samsung and Google’s new earbuds

Chris Welch on top of the NYC Ferry. | Photo by Andrew Marino / The Verge

A couple of months ago on The Vergecast, we wanted to answer a question: which wireless earbuds should you buy to use for phone calls, Zoom meetings, or chatting with your voice assistant? So The Verge’s Chris Welch went to a noisy coffee shop in Brooklyn and hopped on a call with Vergecast co-host David Pierce to test out a bunch of wireless earbuds in a tough noise environment.

The pretty clear winners of that test were the Apple AirPods Pro and the Sony LinkBuds, which had the clearest detail in the voice and took out a fair amount of background noise.

But since that test, two new pairs of flagship earbuds have launched: the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro and the Google Pixel Buds Pro. So, obviously, we had to put them to the test, along...

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This is Facebook’s plan to be cool again

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Facebook was once, believe it or not, cool.

But a lot has changed since the early days of News Feed, when it was full of status updates and photos from friends. Facebook has gotten crowded with brands and pages vying for eyeballs. It has become a place where people, especially teenagers and young adults, don’t feel as comfortable sharing their lives.

Now, after spending the past four years trying to fix the News Feed by making it more about friends and family, Facebook is going in the other direction: toward showing you more entertaining content from people you don’t know. This new “Discovery Engine” push is all about becoming more like TikTok, which has captured the attention of the young generation Facebook so desperately wants to win...

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Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting

Alex Castro / The Verge

A Saudi woman has been sentenced to 34 years in prison for retweeting activists through her Twitter account and sharing posts that spoke in favor of the right of women to drive. Salma al-Shehab was a PhD candidate at the University of Leeds in the UK and was detained in January 2021 after returning to Saudi Arabia for a vacation.

Shehab was initially sentenced to six years for using social media to “disturb public order and destabilize the security and stability of the state,” based on having reshared tweets from Saudi activists living in exile who called for the release of political prisoners in the kingdom.

The incident was reported in an editorial board piece from The Washington Post, which called it “yet another glimpse at the brutal...

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Netflix’s take on Wednesday Addams is the ultimate transfer student in series’ new trailer

Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams. | Netflix

Though Morticia and Gomez Addams’ daughter is best known for her misanthropy, the first trailer for Netflix’s upcoming comedy Wednesdayfrom director Tim Burton’s a very useful (and promising) reminder that the morose teen’s always been a social butterfly. While the people Wednesday Addams deigns to grace with her presence might not enjoy her idea of a good time, that’s not to say that she isn’t making a good faith effort to, you know, connect with them.

Wednesday’s first trailer introduces its take on Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) just as she’s being expelled from yet another one of her “normal” schools for terrorizing her fellow students — something neither her mother (Catherine Zeta-Jones) nor father (Luis Guzman) are especially surprised...

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Nothing Phone 1 review: something else

A good midrange phone underneath a whole lot of hype

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Escape Academy has made it harder to mess up your perfect score

Coin Crew Games

I loved, loved Escape Academy. I think it’s one of the best, most interesting games of the year, an opinion that is definitely not influenced by my brain’s incessant need to “solve a puzzle, any puzzle.”

I purposefully abstained from partaking in too many previews and demos in order to keep my full experience unspoiled. Then, when the game launched, I devoured it, pacing myself so I wouldn’t blow through it in one sitting. It’s just a really neat puzzle game set in a fantastical escape room school that trains teens to solve puzzles in increasingly life-threatening situations because... why not?

And while I eagerly await the new content updates revealed in the game’s roadmap, I must be content with a new quality-of-life update that is...

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Apple’s iPhone 14 event will reportedly take place in early September

These are iPhone 13 Pro phones, not the iPhone 14. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Apple is targeting a September 7th date for its next product launch event, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The company typically hosts a big event in the first part of September, and now we have a very likely date we can circle on the calendar. As with its other events that have taken place during the COVID-19 pandemic, the plan is for this event to be streamed online, Gurman reports.

Apple is rumored to announce the iPhone 14 lineup at the show, which is expected to include: the base iPhone 14, a new big-screened iPhone 14, an iPhone 14 Pro, and an iPhone 14 Pro Max. The Pro phones may be getting some of the flashier upgrades, as they’re rumored to lose the notch in favor of a pill-shaped hole-punch cutout, gain an always-on...

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Yes, the new electric vehicle tax credits are really confusing, but we can help

Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Buy now or buy later?

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Facebook won’t rush the review of its Donald Trump ban

Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Facebook won’t rush to review its decision to ban Donald Trump even if the former president announces he’s running for office again in the coming weeks, according to a new report from Politicoon Tuesday.

In an interview with Politico, Nick Clegg, president of global affairs for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said that the company would maintain its January 7th, 2023, date for reaching a decision on whether to reinstate Trump’s accounts. On Wednesday, Meta confirmed to The Verge that the timetable had not changed.

The news comes as Trump is expected to run for president once again in 2024 and could reportedly announce his candidacy prior to this year’s November midterm elections. An early announcement could complicate the ongoing...

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Airbnb accidentally sent tons of Android users a ‘test’ notification

Airbnb sent out the “test” notification early Wednesday morning. | Photo Illustration by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images

Airbnb lit up Android phones around the globe with a notification that reads: “Test dev.” The apparent blunder occurred early Wednesday morning, and judging by how many users are posting about it on Twitter, it seems like a lot of people received the accidental alert (via 9to5Google).

While I personally don’t have the Airbnb app installed on my phone, my colleague Cameron Faulkner does, and he got the notification at 3:41AM ET this morning. Tapping into the notification leads to the Airbnb app but doesn’t do anything else.

Screenshot: Cameron Faulkner / The Verge

You might’ve received this notification if you have Airbnb installed on Android.

Burger King made a similar mistake last week when it emailed...

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Desk setup videos have taken over YouTube — and my life

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge | Photography by Brent Rose

How DeskTube reinvented my home office and solved the YouTube algorithm

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Timbaland and Swizz Beatz sold Verzuz to Triller — and now they say Triller didn’t pay

Triller acquired Swizz Beatz and Timbaland’s Verzuz in 2021. | Photo by Paras Griffin / Getty Images for Revolt

Timbaland and Swizz Beatz are suing Triller after the short-form video platform allegedly failed to make a $28 million payment for the acquisition of their live music face-off series, Verzuz.

The music-producing pair claim Triller hasn’t followed through on any of its required payments since January. According to the lawsuit, which was filed in a Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday, Triller allegedly failed to pay Timbaland and Swizz Beatz in January and later agreed to a settlement that would require it to pay $18 million in March and $1 million every month for the next 10 months. But those payments supposedly haven’t come through either.

Triller claims it has paid Swizz Beatz and Timbaland “millions in cash and in stock”

“To...

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Get three months of Apple TV Plus for free at Best Buy

You can binge a lot of Apple original shows in three months. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In addition to inching toward the season of new tech launches, we’re also approaching the release of fall TV show and movie releases. If you’re looking for an extended trial to a streaming service, Best Buy is offering a free three-month membership of Apple TV Plus. The only stipulation here is that you must be a new or returning subscriber, so it won’t automatically add three months to an existing plan.

An Apple TV Plus subscription normally costs $4.99 per month, so you’re getting $14.97 of value for free. It’s much better than the usual seven-day free trial that Apple typically offers, and by activating three months now, you’re covered into November. That means you have plenty of time to catch up on shows like For All Mankind and...

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What’s on your desk, Alex Heath?

Minimalist and productive

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She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is peak uncanny valley, but it works

Image: Marvel Studios

The Hulk’s cousin is here to smash through the fourth wall

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Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 review: incremental innovation

Is it a tablet? Or two phones in a trench coat?

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This Kickstarter project turns an iPhone into your smart home’s magic wand

Fluid One is an app that lets you point and click at smart home devices to control them. | Image: Fluid

The smart home has an interface problem, and six undergrads from Duke think they’ve solved it with a Raspberry Pi and Apple’s U1 chip. They believe most of today’s methods for controlling smart devices — voice control, fiddly apps with multiple menus, motion sensors — are cumbersome and sometimes frustrating. What the smart home needs, they say, is an intuitive control interface and automations that fire off based on where you are in your home. Basically, one app to rule it all. And they’re not wrong.

Fluid One is their solution. A smart home app that leverages ultra-wideband technology in Apple’s iPhones, Fluid can control connected lighting, locks, cameras, thermostats, and more in two ways: a point-and-click control interface and...

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Electric vehicle owners are fed up with broken EV chargers and janky software

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge

A common complaint you hear from electric vehicle owners is about the sorry state of public EV charging: broken chargers, janky software, busted screens. But a lot of this is anecdotal, and it can be hard to find any rigorous studies that capture the current state of EV charging in the US.

JD Power surveyed 11,554 electric vehicle and plug-in hybrid vehicle owners from January through June 2022 for its second annual Electric Vehicle Experience Public Charging Study. Despite big growth in the number of public EV chargers in the US, EV owners say the overall experience still sucks.

The consumer research firm measured customer satisfaction with EV charging on a 1,000-point scale. According to respondents, charging at a public Level 2...

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TikTok preps for midterm misinformation chaos

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In a few short years, TikTok has grown into one of the fastest-growing social networks in the world — and with the 2022 midterm election cycle heating up, the app is now preparing to take on the maddening problem of election misinformation.

In a Wednesday blog post, TikTok’s head of US safety, Eric Han, outlined how the company plans to combat the threat of harmful misinformation. First, TikTok will begin rolling out its Election Center this week in order to provide authoritative voting information in the coming weeks and results from the Associated Press once they are reported. TikTok says it will link out to the Election Center through labels placed on midterm-related content, including videos posted by governments, candidates, and...

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Airbnb is rolling out ‘new anti-party technology’ in North America

Image: Airbnb

Airbnb is testing new “anti-party technology” in the US and Canada as it attempts to enforce a global ban on house parties it made permanent earlier this year, the company has announced. The technology is designed to automatically catch the kinds of bookings that are likely to result in unauthorized parties, by looking at factors like a guests’ review history, the age of their account, the length of the stay they’re requesting, and whether they’re booking for a weekday or weekend.

The company says it’s been trialing similar technology in select areas of Australia since October 2021, where it saw a 35 percent drop in unauthorized parties. It’s also previously used a similar system in the US since July 2020 that has a more limited focus on...

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