Storm season is in full swing in the US, from Alaska to Puerto Rico

A flooded road is seen during the passage of hurricane Fiona in Villa Blanca, Puerto Rico, on September 18th, 2022. | Photo by JOSE RODRIGUEZ / AFP via Getty Images

The US was caught in the crosshairs of both the Atlantic hurricane and Pacific typhoon seasons over the weekend, which saw storms deal heavy blows to communities across both Puerto Rico and Alaska.

More than 1.3 million customers are still without power in Puerto Rico today after Hurricane Fiona tore through the island on Sunday. Fiona’s heavy rains are forecast to bring more “life-threatening and catastrophic flooding,” mudslides, and landslides to Puerto Rico today before the storm moves on to batter other parts of the Caribbean.

Much of Alaska’s western coastline, meanwhile, is reeling from the damage wrought by an unusual Northern Pacific storm that barreled through the state on Saturday. The storm, remnants of Typhoon Merbok,...

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Diablo IV test build leaks with 43 minutes of gameplay footage

Image: Blizzard

It’s been a rough week in big-ticket game development — and it’s only Monday. Shortly after Rockstar confirmed the prolific leak of GTA VI material was the result of a hack, Blizzard is dealing with its own leak of Diablo IV footage.

Reported by PC Gamer, it appears an eagle-eyed Reddit user going by iV1rus0 noticed the videos had been uploaded to a file sharing website and shared the link. The leaked footage is spread across two videos clocking in at 43 minutes and appears to be from a Discord stream. The videos are watermarked, denoting that the footage was from a private test build with a number that might identify which tester this footage came from. (RIP to them.)

The videos also feature computer-modulated voices (ostensibly to...

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Apple confirms frequent ‘allow paste?’ prompts in iOS 16 are a bug

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Some people have been experiencing a frustrating issue in iOS 16 that causes a “do you want to allow this?” dialog box to appear every single time they attempt to copy and paste anything. Now, as noted by MacRumors, Apple has chimed in to confirm that this is not what the company intended with its new stricter clipboard privacy measures.

Ron Huang, a senior engineer at the company, responded to a customer complaint about the issue that was originally emailed to CEO Tim Cook and software chief Craig Federighi. “This is absolutely not expected behavior, and we will get to the bottom of it,” Huang wrote in response.

Apparently, Apple hadn’t encountered this behavior internally before iOS 16 shipped early last week. The bug seems to...

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LG’s new Ultra PC lineup has motion tracking and new chips

The LG logo is prominent, as usual. | Image: LG

LG is best known in the laptop space for its acclaimed high-end, ultra-light Gram line. Today, it’s announced two models that are heavier and lower-cost but carry a similar portable big-screen vibe: the Ultra PC 17 and Ultra PC 16. The models are available now for starting prices of $1,599 and $999, respectively.

The models come with Glance by Mirametrix, a software that’s becoming more common to see on higher-end laptops. The program leverages a device’s webcam to track where a user is positioned. It can automatically lock the screen when you step away. It can also blur the screen if it perceives that someone is peering over your shoulder. And, per LG, if you have external displays connected, it can move your cursor and in-use Window...

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Tile now has QR labels for lost items

The labels are meant to be used with devices you can’t easily stick a Bluetooth tracker on. | Image: Tile

Tile announced its latest product, new QR code labels to help folks find their lost items. The Lost and Found Labels are meant to be used with things that don’t work well with regular Bluetooth item trackers, like earbud cases and school textbooks. This is also Tile’s first launch since being acquired for $205 million by Life360, a family safety and location-sharing app that also owns Jiobit child trackers.

The idea is that anyone who finds your lost belongings can just scan a QR code to find your contact information and view a personalized message. (You set that part up in the Tile app.) It’s basically a more discreet, high-tech version of writing “if lost, please contact so and so and such and such” on your belongings.

...

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Today’s the last day to get one month of Disney Plus for $1.99 ahead of Andor’s premiere

Last chance for this streaming deal. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The evenings are getting cooler as we get closer to fall, so be prepared to get cozy indoors with a comfy sweater and a great streaming deal. After the recent Disney Plus Day, Disney’s annual event of self-congratulations and new announcements, the entertainment giant offered a deal on a one-month subscription to its streaming service. That deal is coming to a close at the end of the day today, so it’s your last chance to get a month of Disney Plus for $1.99 instead of the usual $7.99 price.

This 75 percent discount is valid for both new and returning subscribers, though it’s ending at 11:59PM PT tonight. Though the timing is quite advantageous, as that one-month membership will cover you for the first few episodes of the upcoming Star...

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Return to Monkey Island is like hanging out with an old friend

Return to Monkey Island | Image: Devolver Digital

Playing Return to Monkey Island felt like picking things up with an old friend. Return is the newest game in the iconic Monkey Island series of point-and-click adventure games and the first in quite some time. The original, released more than 30 years ago, is beloved for its silly story about protagonist Guybrush Threepwood on a quest to become a pirate. This new title captures the joy and playfulness that the series is known for — which is no surprise, given that series creator Ron Gilbert is back and Dave Grossman has returned to co-write — and the developers at Terrible Toybox have streamlined the experience to make it feel right at home in 2022.

In my opinion, you don’t need to have played any other games in the series to have fun...

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Automakers are ignoring the simple solution to the rise of traffic deaths

The government thinks there’s a high-tech fix to the rise of traffic fatalities, but the answer is much simpler. | Image: Department of Transportation

Ford announced today that it’s exploring “new smartphone-based communications technology” to warn drivers about pedestrians, cyclists, and other vulnerable road users that may be hidden from their view. This follows a request for information from the US Department of Transportation (USDOT) on the possibility of using similar communication technology as “warning systems for both drivers and [vulnerable road users].”

The underlying message of both of these announcements is that technology can help slow or even reserve the dramatic rise in road deaths in the US. Traffic fatalities hit a 20-year high in early 2022, with officials blaming the pandemic for causing more reckless driving behavior. And technology, that amorphous panacea to so...

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Apple’s hidden redesign makes the iPhone 14 much easier to fix

The iPhone 14’s glass backing is held in place by a connector and two screws. | Image: iFixit

A new iPhone 14 teardown video from iFixit shows a major repairability improvement: removable back glass. The video demonstrates how you can lift the rear glass panel with ease, using only a heating mat, a suction handle, and an opening pick — a huge deviation from the past few generations of iPhones that weren’t so repair-friendly.

iFixit describes the process in more detail in a post on its site, noting that the back glass is “simply secured with two screws and a single connector.” Apple appears to have used an adhesive that isn’t so strong, making it a lot easier to take off the back panel without any expensive tools. iFixit also points out that removing those same screws will give you access to the screen in case you need to repair...

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The best thing about my new Apple Watch is the super-stretchy band

The Braided Solo Loop is the stretchy watch band I’ve been waiting for. | Image: Apple

My problem with the Apple Watch, and with practically all watches in general, is the band. Like many people, I spend most of my time sitting at a desk typing on a computer, and I’ve never been able to get used to the way my watch strap, or even just the small metal clasp, clacks around on my desk or on the palm rest of my laptop. It’s scratchy, it’s loud, and it’s uncomfortable. Inevitably, I get into a watch-wearing habit only to take it off to work and then eventually just never put it back on again.

But I bought a Watch Series 8 this weekend with the stretchy Braided Solo Loop, and it changed things for this watch wearer. The Braided Solo Loop (I call it the BSL, as in, “hang on bros, let me throw on the BSL before we hit those gnarly...

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The Pentagon has ordered a review of US psyops on social media

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Pentagon officials have ordered a sweeping review of US information warfare operations conducted through social media platforms, The Washington Post reports, after Twitter and Meta both identified networks of fake accounts believed to be connected to the US military.

Citing interviews with unnamed defense officials, the Post states that Colin Kahl, undersecretary for policy within the Department of Defense, instructed all branches of the military that conduct online influence campaigns to provide a full account of their operations by next month.

The call for review comes after revelations in an August report from social network analysis firm Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory, which uncovered a series of influence operations...

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Rockstar confirms hack, says work on GTA VI will ‘continue as planned’

Image: Rockstar

Rockstar has confirmed the Grand Theft Auto VI footage leaked online over the weekend was stolen from its network. The user who posted the gameplay, “teapotuberhacker,” claims they also carried out an attack on Uber that occurred last week, but it’s still unclear whether they’re actually connected.

“We recently suffered a network intrusion in which an unauthorized third party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems, including early development footage for the next Grand Theft Auto,” Rockstar says on Twitter. “We are extremely disappointed to have any details of our next game shared with you all in this way. Our work on the next Grand Theft Auto game will continue as planned and we remain as committed...

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Will the future of music sound a lot like the past?

Samar Haddad / The Verge

A new biopic about Elvis Presley came out this summer, and it was naturally accompanied by a big soundtrack full of popular Elvis tracks like “Suspicious Minds.” But the biggest hit of the album — the one getting radio play this year — was “Vegas.” The song, performed by Doja Cat, didn’t include a lick of Elvis’ work but did include samplings of Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog” — a song that Elvis covered to great success in the ’50s.

And that was kind of the point. Many of the songs on the soundtrack — the ones not sung by Elvis or the guy playing Elvis in the movie — were borrowing motifs and samplings of Elvis-associated songs. They were attempts by Elvis’ former label, RCA, to capitalize off the songs many of us already know. And RCA...

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Telemed abortion is expanding in parts of the US

Wisp is a reproductive health-focused telehealth company. | Image: Wisp

Reproductive health-focused telemedicine company Wisp is expanding abortion pill access to six additional states, it announced Monday. The company launched abortion care in August with a program in California, and the service will now be available in Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New York, and Washington.

Wisp is able to offer abortion pills via telehealth because of new rules introduced by the Food and Drug Administration during the pandemic. Prior to the public health emergency, people had to see providers in-person in order to get mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in a medical abortion. The agency relaxed the rules early in the pandemic and then permanently lifted them at the end of 2021.

“We believe abortion is a...

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Instacart’s grocery ‘smart cart’ shows how it’s about more than just deliveries

The Caper Cart has sensors that can detect what you put in it, plus a touch screen and built-in payment system for self-checkout. | Image: Instacart

Instacart gig workers have a smartphone app with scanning tools at their disposal to fulfill delivery orders — but what if regular shoppers could also use them? The grocery delivery service plans to get regular everyday shoppers into “Connected Stores,” where they’d use a rolling smart cart with built-in support for lists, order deli meats or baked goods, finding items, and self-checkout.

The star of the show is Instacart’s upgraded “Caper Cart,” a smart cart that can detect what items in your list are placed in — based on computer vision and weight — and checks them off in your app. It’s got a big touchscreen that syncs your grocery list from your app and an attached payment terminal so you can self-checkout without waiting to use a...

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Govee’s new multicolor light strip is long and syncs with your music

The Govee M1 LED strip is flexible and can be tucked away unobtrusively for accent lighting or featured prominently to form a pattern or design. | Image: Govee

Basic strips of cheap LEDs are commodity items these days, but Govee has a new premium smart LED strip that is promising new levels of brightness and sound-reactive light shows. The Govee LED Strip Light M1 is a five-meter / 16-foot RGBIC Plus-powered light that can produce 16 million colors and has a built-in mic for syncing to music and movies. It also has 11 music modes and additional light settings like fade, twinkle, stream, and flow that you can dial in through the Govee Home app — with some controls accessible via voice command when synced to Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.

The Govee M1 is available now on Amazon and Govee’s online store for $99.99, and it seems aimed squarely at Philips Hue’s gradient light strips. Govee claims...

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Google’s Nest Wifi Pro pricing leaks early

The 2019 version of the Google Nest Wifi which will likely stick around. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Google’s big hardware event isn’t until next month but the leaks have already begun, this time showing pricing for a new “Google Nest Wifi Pro 6E Router” courtesy of B&H Photo (via 9to5Google). The online store lists a variety of colors and combo packs starting at $199.99, each labeled as “new item — coming soon.” In other words, coming as early as October 6th when this pro version of the Nest Wifi is expected to be announced at the Made By Google event.

Unfortunately, the listings don’t include any photos or specs, but we’re not totally in the dark here. We previously saw details for what we expect to be called the “Nest Wifi Pro” in an FCC listing that mentioned Bluetooth Low Energy and Thread mesh networking radios (for Matter), in...

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Tom Brady just chucked another Microsoft Surface tablet

Touchdown!

Tom Brady might as well have been practicing his touchdown spike when he whipped a Microsoft Surface tablet into the ground during the Tampa Bay Buccaneers game against the Saints on Sunday night. The quarterback was visibly frustrated following an incomplete pass, tossed his helmet onto the field, and stormed back to the sidelines where he chucked the tablet.

The Buccs were losing when Brady threw the tablet, but they ended up coming back and defeating the Saints 20-10. This isn’t Brady’s first documented case of tablet abuse — he threw the thing so hard against the bench after losing a Saints game last year that it actually bounced.

Microsoft Surface chief Panos Panay responded to the incident on his Instagram story this time around,...

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DirecTV fumbles NFL Sunday Ticket... again

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket stream has gone down for the second week in a row. Football fans across Twitter are complaining that they’re unable to log in or receive an error message when trying to load the stream.

Former Deadspin reporter Timothy Burke says on Twitter the service started having issues at about 2PM ET, and since then, all the streams have gone dark. DirecTV acknowledged the issue in a tweet, noting that it’s “aware customers are unable to stream NFL Sunday Ticket through the app, and will share more information when we restore programming.” When reached for comment DirecTV pointed The Verge to the statement it shared on Twitter.

“We’re aware customers are temporarily unable to stream NFL Sunday Ticket through the app,...

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iPhone 14 Pro users report camera shakiness and grinding noise when using third-party apps

The iPhone 14 Pro camera. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Users who just purchased a new iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max might experience a strange issue: uncontrollable lens movement (via 9to5Mac). As demonstrated in videos and complaints posted across the web, some users noticed that their camera shakes and even makes an awful grinding noise when opening the camera on a third-party app, like Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok.

Apple YouTuber Luke Miani posted a video to Twitter showing how his iPhone 14 Pro Max camera vibrates when using Snapchat, making the photo completely blurry. You can also clearly hear a buzzing or rattling sound coming from the lens that really doesn’t sound good.

So uh, we’re having some issues with the 14 Pro Max camera pic.twitter.com/7HH1wLFjdF

— Luke Miani (@LukeMiani) S...

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The Dynamic Island might come to all iPhone 15 models

The Dynamic Island on the iPhone 14 Pro. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The iPhone 14 has only been out for a few days, but that isn’t stopping the rumor mill from churning out predictions about Apple’s next iPhone. Supply chain analyst Ross Young says on Twitter that he expects Apple to include the Dynamic Island — the notch successor that currently only comes on the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max — on all iPhone 15 models, not just the Pro variations (via MacRumors).

If true, this would make the Dynamic Island the standard across all new iPhones, allowing it to fully replace the notch that Apple first introduced with the iPhone X in 2017 (at least until Apple comes up with another design). Young also indicates that the base iPhone 15 still won’t come with an 120Hz LTPO display that enables the iPhone 14 Pro’s...

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GTA 6 gameplay leaks online in 90 videos

GTA V was released almost nine years ago. | Image: Rockstar

Footage of Grand Theft Auto VI, Rockstar’s next entry in its open-world franchise, appears to have leaked online. PC Gamer reports that a user on the GTA Forums has posted a 3GB file full of 90 videos of GTA VI footage. It’s not exactly clear how the footage was obtained, but the “teapotuberhacker” poster claims to be behind the unrelated Uber hack late last week, and says they may “leak more data soon” including GTA V and GTA VI source code, assets, and testing builds.

The massive leak lines up with some earlier reporting on GTA VI, showing a female playable character in some clips. Bloomberg reported earlier this year that GTA VI would include two female protagonists influenced by Bonnie and Clyde.

The leaked videos are currently...

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Fortnite’s new season adds Spider-Gwen and goopy chrome

Spider-Gwen in Fortnite. | Image: Epic Games

A new season of Fortnite is upon us, and it’s dripping with chrome. Today sees the launch of Chapter 3: Season 4 for the battle royale game, dubbed “Paradise,” and the big change this time around is a mysterious new substance. It’s called chrome, and it appears to be able to change just about everything it touches: you can splash it on walls to go right through them or splash it on yourself for temporary fire immunity and faster sprinting.

Other additions this season including new locations, like a floating condo, and other points of interest that have, naturally, been infested with chrome. Sniper rifles have received a big buff, increasing both damage and headshot multipliers. There’s also a new kind of vault, which can be opened by...

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Elden Ring is getting its own board game

Image: Steamforged

Elden Ring’s expansive world of the Lands Between will soon be small enough to set atop your table. Steamforged Games, the company behind the board game adaptions of Dark Souls, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Resident Evil, announced that it’s working on an Elden Ring board game through Kickstarter.

The game will allow one to four players to “embark on a huge and varied adventure, visiting iconic locations and crossing paths with familiar enemies and characters,” while offering dice-free combat between both bosses and minor foes. Mat Hart, the co-founder and chief creative officer at Steamforged explains that “fans should expect a dark, richly-realised tabletop world of mystery and peril, with satisfying combat and rewarding exploration.”...

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In defense of the RGB mouse pad

Yes, we are going to talk about this thing today. | Image: Razer

Recently, The Verge’s reviews team has been making an effort to get rid of some of the ancient products we have lying around our office. We have donated or thrown away some truly prehistoric gadgets. But there was one device that, the second I laid eyes on it, I knew I needed to rescue. It was the Razer Firefly, a seven-year-old mouse pad with a glowing RGB lightstrip around the edge. It was a beautifully silly and extra device, and I knew it was made for me.

I have now been using the Razer Firefly at my desk in The Verge’s Manhattan office for several weeks. It offers 16.8 million customizable color options. It sits at my side all day, flashing purple, pink, red, yellow, blue, and everything in between. “But what does it do?” various...

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Constantine sequel brings back Keanu Reeves for more occult detective work

Keanu Reeves in the 2005 film Constantine. | Screenshot: Warner Bros.

John Constantine’s demonic detective work isn’t over just yet. Keanu Reeves is set to return as the titular demonologist and exorcist in a sequel to the 2005 film Constantine, according to reports from Deadline and Variety.

Both outlets confirmed that Warner Bros. is working on a follow-up film, which also brings back writer Akiva Goldsman and director Francis Lawrence, who initially made his debut with Constantine, but has since gone on to helm movies like The Hunger Games and I Am Legend. Goldsman’s Weed Road Pictures will produce the film alongside J.J. Abrams and Hannah Minghella.

Other versions of the DC comic book character Constantine have since appeared in NBC’s adaption that ran from 2014 to 2015, and, more recently, in...

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Knives Out, Weird Al, and more: eight great movies from TIFF 2022

Lee Jung-jae and Jung Woo-sung in Hunt_._ | Image: TIFF

A huge range of movies were in Toronto this year

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Adobe’s Figma acquisition is a $20 billion bet to control the entire creative market

Adobe’s acquisition of Figma is a big deal in the world of creative apps. | Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Over the past several years, Figma has built its name as a forward-thinking and collaborative design platform and a formidable competitor to Adobe, the giant in the creative apps market. That rivalry ended on Thursday when Adobe announced that it has struck a $20 billion deal to acquire Figma.

The acquisition will allow Adobe to incorporate Figma’s popular design tools into its widely-used portfolio of creative apps. But the acquisition also means that Adobe will once again be taking a major competitor off the market and bringing it under its own umbrella, to the dismay of many designers who rely on the tool and are wary of another critical platform joining the company’s Creative Cloud service. And they have a point: with Figma off the...

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DIY replacement screens and batteries for iPhones and Pixels are 20 percent off at iFixit

A cracked screen doesn’t mean you need to pony up for a new phone. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

You know, just because it’s new phone season doesn’t mean you actually need to buy a new phone. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the new hotness, like the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4’s unique experience or the iPhone 14 Pro’s quirky new dynamic island, but maybe your current phone is perfectly fine if it just gets some overdue TLC (or perhaps some DIY love).

If you’ve got an older iPhone or Pixel phone with a cracked screen or rapidly depleting battery, iFixit is running a 20 percent-off sale on repairs kits through September 30th to help you bring it back up to spec yourself. This promo covers all of iFixit’s screen and battery repair kits on iPhones and Pixels as recent as last year’s iPhone 13 and Pixel 6. For example, a battery replacement...

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TP-Link’s latest smart light strip goes with everything

The Tapo L930 has gradient RGB and tunable white light, and works with Apple Home, Google, and Alexa for under $50

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