Snap is canceling several projects and laying off 20 percent of employees

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Snap is laying off around 20 percent of its more than 6,400 employees and canceling its original shows, in-app games, and several other projects as part of a corporate restructuring.

In a company memo on Wednesday that you can read in full below, CEO Evan Spiegel wrote that Snap is “restructuring our business to increase focus on our three strategic priorities: community growth, revenue growth, and augmented reality.”

Spiegel said the company’s revenue growth had reaccelerated to 8 percent from being flat in late July, suggesting its ads business is starting to rebound. Still, that is a far cry from the more than 40 percent revenue growth Snap was seeing before Russia invaded Ukraine, which it blamed for a slowdown in marketing spend,...

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Oppo is bringing its Reno 8 midrange series to Europe

The Reno 8 Pro comes to more markets starting September 1st. | Image: Oppo

Oppo is launching its Reno 8 series — previously announced for China and India — in Europe and the UK. The Reno 8 Pro sits at the top of the range with almost-flagship features and pricing: £599, or about $698. One of its key spec points is the inclusion of Oppo’s Marisilicon X neural processor (or NPU), which the company says enables better high-res video capture in very low light. The Reno 8 comes next, with a smaller screen and different processor, and the Reno 8 Light is the most basic model with a lower IP rating and reduced fast charging.

The Reno 8 Pro ranks just below Oppo’s flagship Find X5 series, which also includes the Marisilicon X processor. Oppo says the NPU enables 4K video capture in very low light situations that...

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Bang & Olufsen’s motorized TV stand and Atmos soundbar combo costs nearly $8,000

Image: Bang & Olufsen

Today at IFA 2022, Bang & Olufsen introduced the Beosound Theatre Dolby Atmos soundbar, which doubles as both a stylish speaker and a motorized TV stand. The Beosound Theatre is an all-in-one sound system containing 12 speaker drivers, including two custom-made, long-stroke 6.5-inch woofers. If you have grander plans for your audio setup, however, the Theatre can also form the heart of a Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 surround system, thanks to its seven built-in outputs and support for up to 16 external loudspeakers.

Advertised as providing a “sculptural, modular build,” the interface bracket is motorized, allowing the TV to rotate so that users can find the best possible viewing angle, though if you have no need for it, you’ll be able to buy the...

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Dashlane is ready to replace all your passwords with passkeys

Dashlane’s password manager is ready to support passkeys. | Image: Dashlane

Passwords are dying, long live passkeys. Practically the entire tech industry seems to agree that hexadecimal passwords need to die, and that the best way to replace them is with the cryptographic keys that have come to be known as passkeys. Basically, rather than having you type a phrase to prove you’re you, websites and apps use a standard called WebAuthn to connect directly to a token you have saved — on your device, in your password manager, ultimately just about anywhere — and authenticate you automatically. It’s more secure, it’s more user-friendly, it’s just better.

The transition is going to take a while, though, and even when you can use passkeys, it’ll be a while before all your apps and websites let you do so. But Dashlane is...

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Nvidia Broadcast support will make virtual green screens easier in OBS Studio

Image: OBS

Popular open-source streaming software OBS Studio is getting some new features, including AI-powered virtual backgrounds from Nvidia Broadcast that allow you to change your virtual environment without using a green screen.

The feature is far from perfect and won’t replace the quality of a physical green screen, but we can attest that it does a decent job. There’s a bit of flickering and feathering when you move, but for streamers who scale down their webcams to a small corner of their broadcast, these problems won’t be very noticeable. The quality can also be improved further with strong lighting and a clear background environment.

Those who use an Nvidia RTX graphics card could probably already have the software installed

Streamers...

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What the Apple Watch Pro needs to succeed

watchOS 9 will bring new running metrics, which hints that a “Pro” Apple Watch is on the way. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

2022 is a big year for smartwatches. Samsung just refreshed its Galaxy Watch lineup with a new “Pro” model, Google is finally releasing a Pixel Watch, Qualcomm launched a new wearable chip, and some Wear OS 2 watches will finally get the upgrade to Wear OS 3. And over in Apple’s camp, the Apple Watch lineup is about to see its biggest overhaul in years. This year, we’re expecting to see not one, not two, but potentially three new Apple Watch models. A new Series 8, a new SE, and a never-before-seen rugged “Pro” model — a new high-end option that could potentially shake things up in the smartwatch world.

That’s because an Apple Watch Pro would mean Apple’s entering a whole new wearable category: multisport fitness watches. This is a...

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Zenbook 17 Fold OLED review: the best foldable yet

It’s a 17-inch foldable that actually works

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Portal 2 is the last free Xbox 360 Games with Gold title

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Portal 2 will be the last Xbox 360 game available free to Xbox Live Gold subscribers through Microsoft’s Games with Gold program. Microsoft announced last month that Xbox Games with Gold will no longer include Xbox 360 games in October, simply because the company has “reached the limit of our ability to bring Xbox 360 games to the catalogue.”

The Games with Gold for September, spotted by Ars Technica, lists Portal 2 for Xbox 360, the last title before the October 1st cutoff point. Valve’s classic puzzle-platform game was released more than 10 years ago on Xbox 360, so it’s a fitting end to the nearly decade-long program of free Xbox 360 games for Xbox Live Gold subscribers.

Games with Gold is a monthly benefit for subscribers of Xbox...

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LG’s first bendable OLED TV lets you pick between flat or curved modes

Image: LG

LG has announced its first bendable OLED TV which works either completely flat or as a curved display. The LG OLED Flex (model LX3) is a 42-inch OLED TV that bends into a curved (900R) TV thanks to LG’s latest display technology. Curved displays are suited for a more immersive gaming experience, while flat screens are better for watching TV broadcasts or streaming services.

LG OLED Flex owners can automatically bend and adjust the TV into its curved mode using a dedicated button on the TV remote. (As opposed to some morphing monitors which have to be manually adjusted). There are two presets or owners can adjust the curve of the display in five percent increments through 20 different levels.

Image: LG

LG is...

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NASA moves next Artemis I rocket launch attempt to September 3rd

NASA/Ben Smegelsky

Clear your plans on Saturday: NASA says we’re going to have a rocket launch.

The space agency moved the date for the next Artemis I rocket launch attempt to Saturday, September 3rd, after determining that the initial plan for Friday was going to run into bad weather.

There was a 60 percent chance that the launch would have been delayed for weather on Friday, officials said during a media briefing. The two-hour launch window opens at 2:17PM.

This will be NASA’s second attempt this week at launching its massive next-generation rockets. The first attempted launch on Monday was scrubbed after one of the four RS-25 engines failed to reach the appropriate temperature to allow for liftoff.

This will be NASA’s second attempt this week at...

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Samsung adds more free channels and content to its TV Plus lineup

Image: Samsung

Samsung’s bringing more content to TV Plus, its free, ad-supported streaming package that’s built into a range of Samsung devices and available on the web. The update introduces several new shows, such as Top Gear, Law & Order Special Victims Unit, NCIS, and Chicago Fire.

In addition to the new shows, TV Plus is getting two exclusive Samsung-owned channels: Ride or Drive, a station geared toward car fans, and Samsung Showcase, a channel dedicated to “concerts, events, and special programming.” It’s also partnering with A&E to launch a new home improvement-focused channel, called Home.Made.Nation.

And while Samsung already offers several local and nationwide news channels, including ABC News Live, CBS News, NBC News Now, and more, Samsung...

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Royal Caribbean is putting SpaceX’s Starlink on its cruise ships

That’s a lot of Dishy McFlatfaces. | Image: Royal Caribbean

Royal Caribbean, the cruise company that also operates Celebrity Cruises and Silversea Cruises, has announced that it’ll be outfitting its fleet of ships with SpaceX’s Starlink internet service (via TechCrunch). The company says the service will make the internet experience while at sea faster and more reliable.

Royal Caribbean seems to be moving full steam ahead with deploying Starlink — it trialed the service on one of its ships over the summer, and will be officially launching it on September 5th, starting with a ship called the Celebrity Beyond. The company expects to have the service fully deployed across its fleet by the first quarter of 2023.

Royal Caribbean’s announcement doesn’t include technical details, like how many Starlink...

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Snap’s chief business officer is leaving to run ads at Netflix

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Netflix has found an executive to lead its plan for an ad-supported tier: Snap’s chief business officer and top ad exec, Jeremi Gorman.

Gorman on Tuesday told colleagues at Snap that she was leaving to join Netflix along with Peter Naylor, Snap’s vice president of ad sales for the Americas, according to two people familiar with the matter. Russ Caditz-Peck, a Snap spokesperson, confirmed the departures.

Both Gorman and Naylor are leaving Snap amid a restructuring of its ads team and layoffs hitting the social media firm this week. Snap plans to cut roughly 20 percent of its workforce starting Wednesday, The Verge earlier reported.

Netflix has had its own rounds of layoffs this year, cutting hundreds of employees and paring back...

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Apple Arcade’s latest exclusive is... a Tom Hanks passion project?

The typewriter might be a reference to Hanx Writer, another app from Tom Hanks that emulates writing with a typewriter. | Image: Blueline Studios

Hanx101 Trivia, a trivia game that is narrated by actor Tom Hanks, will soon be one of the games exclusively available on the Apple Arcade subscription service (via Variety). Despite the name, it’s not a game dedicated to quizzing you about Hanks’ career — a press release from the game’s developer, Blueline Studios, says it’ll feature “tens of thousands of questions” about subjects like history, math, geography, and food. (I’m hoping the later set contains at least one question about a box of chocolate.)

The game will feature a head-to-head competition mode, a team mode, and a “Hanx101 mode” where you apparently try to get a high score while answering 101 questions. There will also apparently be “unique formats such as ‘Word Jam’ and ‘I...

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Snap plans to lay off 20 percent of employees

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Snap is planning to lay off approximately 20 percent of its more than 6,400 employees, according to people familiar with the matter.

The layoffs, which Snap has been planning for the past several weeks, will begin on Wednesday and hit some departments harder than others, the people said. For example, the team working on ways for developers to build mini apps and games inside Snapchat will be severely impacted. Zenly, the social mapping app Snap bought in 2017 and has since run separately, will also see deep cuts.

Another team that will see layoffs is Snap’s hardware division, which is responsible for Spectacles and the Pixy camera drone that was recently canceled after being on sale for just a few months. The company’s ad sales...

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Virginia judge shuts down demand to ban book sales to minors

Photo by Lars Niki / Corbis via Getty Images

A Virginia judge has dismissed an unusual case that could have banned selling two books to children in the state. Following a hearing on Tuesday, Virginia Beach Circuit Court Judge Pamela Baskervill found that Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer: A Memoir and Sarah Maas’ A Court of Mist and Fury failed to meet the standard for obscenity under Virginia law — and, more consequentially, that the obscenity law itself was unconstitutional.

Republican State Delegate Tim Anderson and former congressional candidate Tommy Altman instigated the dispute earlier this year, exploiting a little-used rule that allows anyone to launch obscenity proceedings in the state. Altman and Anderson objected to what they characterized as sexually explicit material in both...

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Truth Social is strapped for cash and struggling to find new users

Photo by Scott Olson / Getty Images

Truth Social is strapped for cash and facing a mountain of tech and legal troubles that could doom the future of former president Donald Trump’s personal social media platform.

The most immediate problem is the platform’s stalled SPAC, initially planned as a way to publicly trade shares in the new company without the diligence of an IPO. But the SPAC has been delayed, leaving the Digital World Acquisition Corp., which was projected to take ownership of Truth Social, in an awkward position. SEC filings show that the company has lost over $6 million in the first half of this year, hasn’t generated any revenue, and holds only $293 million in a trust that houses most of its assets.

DWAC’s stock price has shed nearly 75 percent of its value...

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Logitech’s new G502 X gaming mice have clicky optical buttons

Logitech’s new G502 X Plus is the top model with Lightsync RGB. | Image: Logitech

Logitech has three new gaming mice, and the wireless ones finally have USB-C up front. That’s right, Micro USB’s reign of terror continues to be on the decline as Logitech’s new G502 X series gaming mice come to succeed the company’s popular G502 line.

The three mice — G502 X, G502 X Lightspeed, and G502 X Plus — also now include hybrid optical-mechanical buttons for greater responsiveness as well as a more precise 25,600 dpi “Hero 25K” sensor. They’ll have an overall lighter weight and come in both black and white.

While the mice sport the company’s new “Lightforce” hybrid optical-mechanical switches that are designed to utilize the speed of optical technology, they also include the clicking satisfaction of a traditional mouse button....

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The Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones just got their first discount at Woot

You can currently find the Sony WF-1000XM5 headphones at Woot for just $340. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Our Tuesday deals begin with the first substantial discount we’ve seen on the Sony WH-1000XM5 noise-canceling headphones. The original price for the XM5 headphones was $399.99, but Woot has discounted them to just $339.99. If you’re okay with settling for Woot’s 90-day limited warranty instead of the one-year warranty offered by Sony, this is definitely a deal worth looking into. While the XM5 headphones don’t offer any sweeping changes over the previous iteration, the XM4, they still include some of the best noise cancelation capabilities you’ll find in a pair of headphones, in addition to improved sound quality and better performance on voice calls. Read our review.

Hot on the heels of some of our Xbox Series S deals from last week,...

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Google’s open-source bug bounty aims to clamp down on supply chain attacks

An important and sometimes overlooked part of security | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Google has introduced a new vulnerability rewards program to pay researchers who find security flaws in its open-source software or in the building blocks that its software is built on. It’ll pay anywhere from $101 to $31,337 for information about bugs in projects like Angular, GoLang, and Fuchsia or for vulnerabilities in the third-party dependencies that are included in those projects’ codebases.

While it’s important for Google to fix bugs in its own projects (and in the software that it uses to keep track of changes to its code, which the program also covers), perhaps the most interesting part is the bit about third-party dependencies. Programmers often use code from open-source projects so they don’t continuously have to reinvent the...

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This is the last week to get free rapid COVID-19 tests from the US government

Photo by Sina Schuldt / picture alliance via Getty Images

This is the last week to order free COVID-19 rapid tests from the United States government. The program will be suspended on Friday, September 2nd, “because Congress hasn’t provided additional funding to replenish the nation’s stockpile of tests,” the program’s website reads.

The White House launched COVIDTests.gov in January of this year, soon after the omicron variant first started burning through the US. Every US household is eligible for three sets of tests from the website, so if you still haven’t gotten all of your tests, now’s the time to place the order. Here’s our how-to guide.

An unnamed White House official told CNNthat the Biden administration didn’t have enough funding from Congress for all its COVID-19 response programs...

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Elon Musk pushes to delay the Twitter trial while citing whistleblower’s testimony

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

After Elon Musk tried to get out of his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter and the company sued to hold him to it, his lawyers unsuccessfully tried to hold off the trial until next year, and now they’re pushing for another delay. The Musk team’s proposing a new timeline that would push the week-long trial’s start from the currently scheduled October 17th date until some time in mid- to late-November.

This time, they cite the testimony of former Twitter security head Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, who has filed a whistleblower claim against the company accusing it of security flaws, making “false and misleading statements” to users and the FTC, and hiring agents of foreign governments. His lawyers also submitted an amended filing adding more...

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Netflix’s Cyberpunk: Edgerunners anime gets September release date in new trailer

Image: Netflix

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is coming very soon. Netflix announced today that the anime spinoff will start streaming on September 13th. As part of the announcement, the company also released a new “NSFW” trailer ahead of the show’s debut next month. The series will consist of 10 episodes, each 30 minutes long.

Edgerunners has been in the works for some time. It was first announced back in 2020 in the lead-up to Cyberpunk 2077’s launch (which didn’t go quite as planned — though the game ended up being a hit eventually). While TV and film adaptations of games are increasingly common, Edgerunners is particularly exciting, mostly for the talent behind it — it’s being created by Studio Trigger, the famed anime studio behind the likes of Kill la...

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Instagram is testing more ways to flag posts you’re not interested in

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Instagram is testing new settings for users to control what kind of content they see on the platform.

In a blog post, Meta says its tests include the ability to select multiple posts and mark them using the “not interested” button, which is supposed to flag to the app that a user doesn’t want to see similar content. Currently, users can click into an individual post to flag it, but there’s no way to do that at scale.

Instagram will also soon start testing a way for users to make a list of keywords, phrases, emojis, and hashtags in recommended posts that they’re not interested in and that they don’t want to see. TikTok rolled out a similar keyword-based feature in June — it already gave users the ability to “dislike” videos to steer...

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The Department of Energy wants feedback on how to recycle lithium-ion batteries

An employee moves a used lithium-ion electric vehicle battery under a Nissan Leaf electric vehicle at a factory in Namie Town, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, on Mar. 26, 2018. | Photo by Akio Kon / Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Department of Energy just took a first step toward launching new lithium-ion battery recycling programs in the US. It issued a Request for Information (RFI) yesterday to ask for public input on how to spend $335 million in federal investments for battery recycling that was included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed last year.

Lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles and store renewable electricity are a major building block for a clean energy economy. Recycling could ease the impending squeeze on materials needed to meet rapidly rising demand for those technologies — especially as the Biden administration tries to keep the US on track to meet pollution-cutting goals it’s agreed to under the Paris climate...

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Cox is getting into the mobile industry — again

Cox Communications had planned to launch the service in October. | Image: Cox Communications

Cox announced on Monday that it is launching a pilot for Cox Mobile that will be available to Cox’s internet customers. This will be the company’s second major attempt to get into the mobile industry, after its effort launched in 2010 shut down after less than two years, citing an inability to offer “iconic phones” (like Apple’s iPhone, for example) along with its suite of feature phones and Android handsets.

Under the new Cox Mobile, customers will have access to both 4G and 5G coverage with access to “on-the-go wifi hotspots.” They will also have access to high-speed data plans “Pay As You Gig” that will let customers pay for needed data and an unlimited data plan called “Gig Unlimited.” The Wall Street Journal reported that prices...

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How to quickly record voice notes on your iPhone

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Whether you’re trying to quickly record ideas, an interview, or even a song idea, a voice recording app on your iPhone can come in useful. While Apple’s App Store is filled with third-party apps that can do that for you, Apple’s built-in Voice Memos app is particularly easy to use, given there’s no need to download anything — and it’s totally free. Plus, once you’re finished recording your voice note, you can also easily share it — and even edit the recording if need be. Below, we’ll guide you through just how to do so.

How to record your voice on an iPhone

• First, open the Voice Memos app, which is represented by an audio graph icon on your phone. You’ll likely find it either in your iPhone’s Extras or Utilities folder, or you can...

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The security flaws that make Twitter’s insider threat so scary

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Peiter “Mudge” Zatko’s whistleblower disclosure contained a lot of alarming claims about Twitter — from confusing bot measurements to executive misconduct — but one of the most alarming claims was that the company was actively infiltrated by agents of the Indian government. For a platform that has always presented itself as a haven for journalists and activists, it’s a troubling claim and one that the company has not directly confronted in responses given to US media.

But the allegations are less outlandish than it seems — and part of a much larger issue for international tech platforms.

Zatko’s SEC filing claims that, in the course of his time as Twitter’s head of security, he was informed that the Indian government forced Twitter to...

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IFA 2022: all the news from Berlin’s big tech show

IFA’s entrance as seen in 2020 | Photo by Fabian Sommer / picture alliance via Getty Images

All the product announcements in one place

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Tesla slapped with class action lawsuit over phantom braking problem

Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON / AFP via Getty Images

A Tesla owner from San Francisco filed a proposed class action lawsuit against the electric vehicle company over a phantom braking problem that he claims has turned “a safety feature into a frightening and dangerous nightmare.” The lawsuit was first reported by Reuters.

The lawsuit was filed by San Francisco resident Jose Alvarez Toledo in federal court in the Northern District of California. In the complaint, Toledo estimates that there are “hundreds of thousands” of Tesla customers that could seek to join his class action suit against the company.

The lawsuit accuses Tesla of fraudulently hiding the safety risks associated with the company’s Autopilot driver assist system, breaching its warranties, unfairly profiting from Autopilot,...

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