Roomster sued by the FTC and six state AGs for fake listings and fake app store reviews

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), along with six states, filed a lawsuit against John Shriber and Roman Zaks, owners of the room renting and roommate finder platform Roomster, for allegedly defrauding consumers, accusing them of paying people for fake reviews and listings on their site. The agency says that the “deceptive tactics” violated the FTC Act and state laws.

In a complaint filed by the FTC and the attorneys general of New York, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, and Massachusetts, the group alleges that Roomster released “tens of thousands of fake positive reviews to bolster their false claims that properties listed on their Roomster platform are real, available, and verified.” They also allege that Roomster would post...

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Meta is planning more paid features for Facebook and Instagram

Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta is setting up a product organization to identify and build “possible paid features” for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, according to an internal memo sent to employees last week that was obtained by The Verge.

The new division is Meta’s first serious foray into building paid features across its main social apps, all three of which boast billions of users. It’s being set up after Meta’s ads business was severely hurt by Apple’s ad tracking changes on iOS and a broader pullback in digital ad spending. The group, called New Monetization Experiences, will be led by Pratiti Raychoudhury, who was previously Meta’s head of research.

In an interview with The Verge, Meta’s VP of monetization overseeing the group, John Hegeman, said the...

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What to expect from Apple’s iPhone 14 event

Nick Barclay / The Verge

Gadgets galore

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LG’s fancy new shoeboxes pamper your sneakers

The ShoeCare cleaner will take the stench out of your sneaks. | Image: LG

If you’ve browsed around the Container Store looking for the perfect sneaker storage, you’re looking in the wrong places. Maybe what you really need is LG’s new Styler ShoeCase — a shoebox with a window that’s currently being displayed at IFA. The enclosure can keep your shoes safe from moisture and has filters to protect them from UV light.

Oh, then you went to Ikea to get stackable shelving for all your kicks? Well, I’m happy to report that the Styler ShoeCase lets you stack up to four of these bad boys on top of each other. And each has a built-in Lazy Susan that can be rotated to show off your Jordan VII’s best angles — and hide that one scuff mark from when homie moved the chair over it.

LG’s also presenting its new Styler ShoeCare...

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How to use iOS’s App Library to organize your apps

Samar Haddad / The Verge

If you’re an organization junkie and an iPhone user, then iOS has provided you with a useful tool: the App Library, which organizes your apps in labeled groups to make them easier to find. Introduced with iOS 14, all your current apps can be found there, and any apps you download are placed there as well. (You can decide whether you want the apps to also be visible on your homescreen; we’ll tell you how later in this article.)

If you haven’t paid any attention to the App Library up until now, here are some ways to begin.

Automatic groupings

The App Library appears as a separate page on your homescreen. Wherever you are on your homescreen, just keep swiping left — the App Library will be the last page you hit.

It automatically organizes...

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The best Labor Day deals happening now

Apple’s 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros are some of the best deals happening around this holiday, at $400 off each. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Labor Day weekend marks the bittersweet end of summer, but in the midst of kids heading back to school and the world of tech about to pop off with new stuff, there are deals and sales to take advantage of. Yes, Labor Day is meant to honor the American worker — and of course, the only way we really know how to celebrate is by spending. But to help your dollars go further in our gadget-filled world, we’re compiling some of the best tech deals happening from the lead-up to Labor Day and through the holiday weekend.

Many deals and discounts are already around, and some run through Monday, September 5th. While some may not be explicitly labeled as Labor Day promotions, they’re just good deals regardless and worthy of your attention — ranging...

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Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s biggest bet

A screenshot of Horizon Worlds | Image: Meta

Mark Zuckerberg is betting his company’s future on the metaverse — a virtual space in which people interact with each other using avatars and developing AR / VR technology — investing tens of billions of dollars in an attempt to build the platforms and hardware that capture a new generation of users. Now, the question is: will Zuckerberg’s gamble on the metaverse being the future of the internet — and his company — actually succeed?

One of the biggest parts of that bet is Horizon, Meta’s software for people to socialize, work, and play in the metaverse. Think of Horizon as a blend of The Sims, Minecraft, and Roblox, with users interacting through their avatars in virtual worlds they build.

“We are seeing the youngest generation spend an...

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Samsung’s first OLED gaming monitor doesn’t need a PC or console attached

Samsung’s nailed the gaming aesthetic here. | Image: Samsung

Samsung has announced its first OLED gaming monitor, the 34-inch Odyssey OLED G8. It’s also one of the company’s first gaming monitors we’ve seen that includes Samsung’s Gaming Hub, which lets people stream games from services like Nvidia’s GeForce Now, Google Stadia, or Xbox Game Pass without the need for a console or PC. (The feature, which also lets you stream movies from services like Amazon Prime, Netflix, and the recently upgraded Samsung TV Plus, has been available on Samsung’s Smart Monitor line, but those aren’t really built for gaming.) But while it seems like a totally reasonable display in its own right, there are a few confusing things about it, as well as some important unknowns.

Let’s put those to the side for just a...

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Chinese tech giant buys Detroit: Become Human developer Quantic Dream

Image: Quantic Dream

Quantic Dream, the game developers behind titles like Detroit: Become Human and Heavy Rain, has been acquired by the Chinese technology giant NetEase (via CNBC). In a blog post, the French game studio announced that it will continue to operate independently despite joining the company.

While Quantic Dream has just a handful of games under its belt over the 25 years it’s been around, it’s currently working on a new Star Wars: Eclipse action-adventure game that’s set in the High Republic Era. The studio says the acquisition should help it expand its team and “develop several projects simultaneously.”

NetEase is a China-based internet technology company with a growing division dedicated to PC, console, and mobile games. It first became a...

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If you have an iPhone 5S or 6, it’s time for a rare iOS update

Updates for Apple’s older devices are rare but worth paying attention to. | Photo by Michael Shane / The Verge

Almost a year after the last update, Apple released a new version of iOS 12 on Wednesday, meant to patch a security hole that was recently fixed in newer versions of the OS. If you’re still using an iPhone 5S or an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, it’s worth taking the time to update — Apple obviously doesn’t release security updates for its older software that often, so when it does, you know it’s a reasonably serious issue.

The vulnerability fixed by iOS 12.5.6 is one that could let a malicious website run unchecked code on your phone if you open it in Safari or another browser. What’s more, Apple says it’s possible someone out in the world has tried to use this exploit. While this type of warning isn’t a reason to panic — it’s relatively common...

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A South Carolina plan to punish abortion aid sites is going nowhere

Photo by Sean Rayford / Getty Images

South Carolina Republican politicians distanced themselves from a widely criticized plan to outlaw offering abortion guidance online — a proposal that raised fears about internet censorship after the end of Roe v. Wade.

Lawmakers introduced the proposed abortion ban in June, basing it on model legislation from the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC). Among other provisions, the proposal would have banned “hosting or maintaining an internet website, providing access to an internet website, or providing an internet service” that told people from the state how to obtain an abortion. Groups like the Knight First Amendment Institute argued that the model legislation raised serious First Amendment questions, and its introduction in South...

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Etsy sellers are starting a ‘union’ to fight policies they say hurt merchants

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

When a group of Etsy sellers announced in March that they would temporarily shut down their shops to protest changes on the platform, organizers made a promise: the strike was just the first step.

Now, following the week-long strike and small concessions by Etsy, organizers have formed the Indie Sellers Guild, a nonprofit they hope will function as an advocacy organization for anyone who sells handmade, vintage, and craft goods online.

“We are modeling ourselves after a union as much as possible, with the same goals as a more traditional union and other organized labor movements,” says Chiarra Lohr, interim secretary-treasurer of the guild who has also worked on organizing the guild and drafting the bylaws. “We are very bottom-up,...

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The iPhone 14 Pro may have one pill-shaped notch when turned on

Image: Jay Peters / The Verge

Leakers have long suggested that 2022 iPhone models would include two notches at the top of their screens: one for the camera, and one for the FaceID system (the “hole + pill design,” as consultant Ross Young referred to it). A new leak from MacRumors, citing “an anonymous tipster,” suggests that the two notches will appear as a single pill-shaped notch when the iPhone’s display is active.

Apple, per MacRumors’ source, intends to turn off the pixels between these two notches to create a contiguous black space.

The source also suggests that the company “intends to visually expand the blacked-out areas around the cutouts to host content.” In other words, the iPhone could feasibly be making use of this black space, and could change the...

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The shift to electric vehicles is about to overwhelm meager US mining operations

Electric vehicles are very helpful for fighting climate change. But EVs need batteries, and batteries need minerals like nickel, cobalt, and lithium. The US has some of these minerals underground, and it wants to dig them up, expeditiously, so that it doesn’t have to rely as much on other countries, including China.

But this is where it gets tricky. Mining operators say they can speed up the digging process, but a bunch of regulatory roadblocks stand in their way. And environmentalists and tribal groups remain extremely skeptical that all this mining can be done in a way that doesn’t ruin the land and spoil the water.

27,000 comments

This more or less summarizes the nearly 27,000 comments that the Department of the Interior has...

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T-Mobile will let you try its network free for three months

T-Mobile is embracing eSIM. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

T-Mobile is pushing some new app features focused on getting prospective customers to switch with as little friction as possible, all thanks to eSIM technology. There’s a new version of the existing Test Drive program called Network Pass, which allows people to try out T-Mobile’s network with unlimited data for three months. Another new feature called Easy Switch aims to streamline the process of setting up a new account with T-Mobile using eSIM. They’re all part of an update to the company’s app coming to iOS today, with an Android update to follow “soon.”

T-Mobile already supports switching via eSIM, which is just a digital version of the physical SIM card you probably have in your phone. In fact, the Department of Justice made sure...

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Get ready for a rare ‘triple-dip’ La Niña

The flooded Windsor Bridge along the Hawkesbury River in the suburb of Windsor, on July 4th, 2022, in Sydney, Australia. Thousands of residents were forced to leave their homes overnight. | Photo by Jenny Evans / Getty Images

We’re about to see the first “triple-dip” La Niña of the century, spanning three consecutive Northern hemisphere winters, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) predicts. The organization issued a forecast today warning of the unusual turn of events: the current La Niña, a weather pattern that can drive severe weather, will likely persist over the next six months into 2023.

“It is exceptional to have three consecutive years”

“It is exceptional to have three consecutive years with a la Niña event,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a press release. The phenomenon is expected to continue fueling bad weather across far-flung corners of the world.

La Niña typically shows up every two to seven years, usually lasting a year...

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Congress presses big crypto exchanges for details on how they’re fighting scams

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Congress wants to know what Coinbase, Binance.US, FTX, Kraken, and KuCoin are doing to address scams related to cryptocurrency. In separate letters sent to each crypto exchange, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform expresses concern over “the rapid growth of fraud and consumer abuse,” as well as the “lack of action by cryptocurrency exchanges to protect consumers conducting transactions.”

The committee’s letters cite data from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) indicating that over 46,000 people in the US lost a combined $1 billion due to crypto scams since the start of 2021, with individuals losing $2,600 on average. Investment and romance scams have been particularly lucrative for bad actors, who collected about $575 million and...

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A ‘high severity’ TikTok vulnerability allowed one-click account hijacking

Nick Barclay / The Verge

A vulnerability in the TikTok app for Android could have let attackers take over any account that clicked on a malicious link, potentially affecting hundreds of millions of users of the platform.

Details of the one-click exploit were revealed today in a blog post from researchers on Microsoft’s 365 Defender Research Team. The vulnerability was disclosed to TikTok by Microsoft, and has since been patched.

The bug and its resulting attack, labelled a “high severity vulnerability,” could have been used to hijack the account of any TikTok user on Android without their knowledge, once they clicked on a specially crafted link. After the link was clicked, the attacker would have access to all primary functions of the account, including the...

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Now you can watch Paramount Plus and Showtime in a single app

The new Paramount Plus app will feature Showtime’s catalogue | Image: Paramount

You can now access the content packed into Paramount Plus and Showtime from a single app. First bundled as a subscription last September, Paramount and Showtime’s catalogs have been separated between two apps for viewers in the US, but viewers can now access the full roster of TV shows and films from the Paramount Plus app.

For new subscribers, the Paramount Plus and Showtime bundle is available at a discounted rate until October 2nd, at $7.99 per month for the Essential plan (which includes ad breaks) with Showtime and $12.99 per month for the Premium plan with Showtime that adds more sports, live broadcasts of your local CBS station, and downloads for offline viewing on mobile, and mostly removes ads, except on live TV and certain...

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Google Nest’s fall-themed ringtones are coming even earlier this year

Hopefully this child isn’t scared by the sounds of a spooky, scary skeleton. | Image: Google

Google — along with Starbucks, Spirit Halloween, and seemingly every grocery store in my area — is starting to gear up for fall. It’s bringing seasonal ringtones to the Nest Doorbell (battery) even earlier this year, with the addition of a festive accordion jingle for Oktoberfest that’ll become available in the Google Home App starting September 5th.

Like last year, Google will also let you set your doorbell chime to some spooky sounds for Halloween, starting on October 1st. Previously, those included things like witch, werewolf, and ghost sounds. Those are pretty easy to imagine, but here's what the Oktoberfest ringtone sounds like:

Oktoberfest isn’t the only new holiday Google’s adding to its seasonal ringtone lineup. Starting on...

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Tado’s smart thermostat can now heat your home when prices are cheapest

Tado Balance aims to sync heating and cooling your home with when energy prices are cheapest. | Image: Tado

European smart home company Tado already promises that its smart thermostats will save you money on your energy bill. But now, the firm is launching a new premium subscription called Tado Balance that it says will go even further.

Tado Balance, which is launching today across several European markets for €4 (£4) a month or €30 (£30) a year, is a feature that attempts to intelligently shift when your home is heated or cooled, taking advantage of cheaper electricity and avoiding usage when prices spike. So, if a Tado thermostat sees that you want your home to be heated in three hours’ time but prices are cheaper in an hour, it’ll overheat your house at that point just by half a degree or a degree, so the heat will stick around. It can also...

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The Last of Us’ PS5 remake makes it feel like a modern game

The Last of Us Part I | Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment

The original The Last of Us first debuted on the PS3 in 2013 and was remastered for the PS4 just a year later. But here we are, less than a decade from its debut, and the game is already being remade. The newly christened The Last of Us Part I takes that original experience, the one that helped make Naughty Dog one of gaming’s most revered studios, and makes it feel comfortably at home on the PS5; in fact, the new version makes the game look and play a lot like its controversial sequel. In some ways, The Last of Us Part I seems superfluous, given the relatively young age of the original, which is still very accessible. It’s not like the PS4 remaster doesn’t hold up. But after spending some time with the remake, I have to say — it’s also...

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Nanoleaf’s latest sale drops its colorful smart light starter kits to as low as $50

Various Nanoleaf lights are on sale, including the Nanoleaf Lines starter kit. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Smart lighting accessories make for cute home and dorm decor, but they’re often expensive. However, today until September 5th, Nanoleaf’s back-to-school sale is making it just a little more affordable to brighten up your dorm or house. Right now, you can buy Nanoleaf’s colorful Mini Triangle five-pack starter kit for just $49.99 ($70 off) at Amazon and directly from Nanoleaf itself. The kit consists of five small triangles you can customize into whatever kind of layout you prefer, as well as a controller and power supply. All of the lights integrate with Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Assistant, and you can sync them with music or even the lights emanating from your games for a more immersive experience.

However, if you want...

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Crypto.com mistakenly sent a customer $7.2 million instead of a $68 refund

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Los Angeles Lakers arena sponsoring and Matt Damon-endorsed cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com accidentally transferred $10.5 million AUD (~$7.2 million USD) to an Australian customer instead of issuing a standard $100 AUD (~$68 USD) due to a pretty unfortunate typo. According to Australian news outlet 7News (via CoinTelegraph), the exchange didn’t even notice the error until seven months later, and by that time, a portion of the money was already gone.

The initial transfer occurred in May 2021 after an employee accidentally typed an account number in the payment amount field. Crypto.com only realized the mistake when conducting an audit in December 2021.

Apparently code isn’t law

Instead of reporting the incorrect refund to...

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Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is small-screen high fantasy done right

Image: Amazon Studios

The Rings of Power will take you there and back again with some new stops along the way

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The Humiliating History of the TSA

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

People cry at airports all the time. So when Jai Cooper heard sobbing from the back of the security line, it didn’t really faze her. As an officer of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), she had gotten used to the strange behavior of passengers. Her job was to check people’s travel documents, not their emotional well-being.

But this particular group of tearful passengers presented her with a problem. One of them was in a wheelchair, bent over with her head between her knees, completely unresponsive. “Is she okay? Can she sit up?” Cooper asked, taking their boarding passes and IDs to check. “I need to see her face to identify her.”

“She can’t, she can’t, she can’t,” said the passenger who was pushing the wheelchair.

Soon,...

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The Disaster Consultants

The small city of Mexico Beach, Florida, always had a certain charm. It had been lucky. Even though it sits on the Gulf of Mexico, which gets rocked by hurricanes each year, it had never been affected by a major storm. The cinder block buildings and the cottage-style houses still had the same look and character as they did back in the ‘50s and ‘60s when the town was first built. Says longtime mayor Al Cathey, “We were just an old Florida look.”

That luck ended with Michael, a Category 5 hurricane that slammed into the Gulf Coast in 2018. It leveled Mexico Beach. Nearly every building was destroyed or unlivable. In the aftermath, there was no power grid, no sewage, no water lines. No police station, no fire station.

Cathey, surveying the...

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Omicron-specific vaccine boosters get FDA sign-off

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

COVID-19 vaccines designed to target the omicron variant have just been authorized by the Food and Drug Administration. Both Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna got the FDA’s sign-off for their booster doses of the reformulated shot. This is the first update to COVID-19 vaccines to be authorized in the United States.

The Pfizer / BioNTech booster is available to people 12 and older, and the Moderna shot will be available to people 18 and older. They’ll only be boosters — they can’t be used by people who haven’t already had their first doses.

The new booster shots target both the originalstrain of the coronavirus and the BA.4 and BA.5 lineages of the omicron variant — which are currently the predominant versions of the virus in circulation.

T...

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The open elevator door button puts kindness at our fingertips

The button you reach for in someone else’s time of need. | Image: Mitchell Clark / The Verge

Elevator buttons can sometimes be fickle things — confusing labels or tricky security systems can start a trip up or down a building off on a slightly sour note. But on the control panel, there’s one button that stands out for its ability to make someone’s day instead of ruining it: the open door button.

There’s no mystery as to what its job is. If the elevator doors are open, pressing and holding the open door button will usually make sure they stay that way. If the doors have started to close, jabbing the button often adorned with an icon of opposing arrows should stop the process and make the elevator accessible again.

What makes the open door button special is that it gives elevator passengers (the ones standing within arm’s reach of...

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How to order free rapid COVID tests from the US government [Update: as of Friday, you can’t]

[NOTE: As of Friday, September 2nd, 2022, the program offering free home COVID-19 rapid antigen tests has been suspended due, according to the website, to a lack of funding from Congress. In other words, we’re on our own.]

Original story below

With the rise of the Omicron variant, we’ve been urged to use COVID-19 rapid antigen tests to make sure that we don’t spread the virus to friends and family. However, it’s been very difficult to follow that suggestion, what with long lines at COVID testing stations and high prices for home kits — when you can find them.

To try to alleviate this situation, the US federal government has created a website where you can order four free rapid test kits per month per household. While the site was...

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