Logitech’s new key light could almost pass for a regular desk lamp

The Litra Beam sitting above a monitor. | Photo by Jon Porter / The Verge

Logitech is introducing a new key light for streamers with a low-profile design that almost makes it look like a regular desk lamp. Rather than using a circular design like Elgato’s popular Ring Light or a square shape like the Key Light Air or Logitech’s own Litra Glow, the new $99.99 Litra Beam has a long, thin shape. The PC accessory manufacturer is announcing the light alongside a new $349.99 XLR microphone called the Blue Sona.

I could see the Litra Beam’s low-profile form factor appealing to anyone who’s streaming, podcasting, or making video calls in a communal part of their home. Although devices like Elgato’s Ring Light are excellent at keeping you illuminated while broadcasting, they take up a lot of space. In contrast, the...

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Logitech’s G Fits can mold their ear tips to deliver made-for-you sound

Look familiar? Yep, these are practically identical to the UE Fits. | Image: Logitech

Logitech thinks that console and PC gamers, not just audiophiles, might appreciate having custom-molded ear tips for enhanced bass and sound quality. The $229.99 G Fits, releasing in October, borrow the same party trick from the 2020 UE Fits: a one-time, 60-second setup that uses LEDs to heat and morph the ear tips to the shape of your inner ear.

It’s identical to how we laid it out in the UE Fits review, where Chris Welch notes that the companion mobile app will remind you to firmly hold each earbud in your ear and to stay calm with a relaxed jaw. “During molding, the tips warm up, which is an unusual sensation for something in your ears,” Chris says. It’s far from your average setup process for earbuds, but it leads to a custom (and...

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Logitech’s G Cloud Gaming Handheld arrives in October for $349.99

Logitech’s cloud gaming handheld has Xbox integration. | Image: Logitech

Logitech is officially announcing its G Cloud Gaming Handheld today after a teaser and a leak last month. The Android-powered $349.99 handheld will arrive in North America on October 17th, with access to the Google Play Store, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and Nvidia’s GeForce Now service. While you’ll be able to play Android mobile games, the focus is really on cloud gaming, and the handheld has been engineered this way to provide 12 hours or more of battery life.

The Cloud Gaming Handheld has a seven-inch 1080p IPS touchscreen with a 16:9 aspect ratio and 60Hz refresh rate. The white handheld includes two offset analog thumbsticks, a D-pad, and Y, B, A, and X buttons. There are also four buttons at the front: Logitech G, home, menu, and a context...

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The new Astro A30 headset can pull in audio from three gadgets at once

The A30 has an onboard mic, letting you chat on phone calls without bringing along its long, detachable boom mic. | Image: Logitech

Logitech has announced a new iteration of the Astro A30 wireless gaming headset, a product that’s gone without an update for several years. It’ll cost $229.99 when it releases in October. The new A30 looks like a modern take on the previous version (thankfully, it’s far less shiny), with the return of its customizable speaker tags that magnetically attach to each side as well as the square-ish shape of the speaker housings. The A30 will be available in matte navy or matte white, and each colorway has a cool (or chintzy, depending on your taste) chrome design effect beneath the replaceable speaker tags.

It’ll release with two models: one that includes a USB-A wireless transmitter that works with Xbox consoles, PC, macOS, and mobile, and...

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Your car should be able to tell if you’re too drunk or impaired to drive, NTSB says

NTSB wants cars that can detect drunk driving and automatically manage speed limits. | Photo by Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The National Transportation Safety Board, the federal agency responsible for investigating vehicle and aviation crashes, called on the government to require all new vehicles to include technology that would detect drunk or impaired driving.

The recommendation was made in light of a horrific crash that took place in Fresno County, California, on New Year’s Day 2021 that killed nine people, including seven children. The crash was caused by an impaired driver who was speeding.

​“Technology could’ve prevented this heartbreaking crash — just as it can prevent the tens of thousands of fatalities from impaired-driving and speeding-related crashes we see in the US annually,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy in a statement. “We need to...

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The Xbox button on Elite 2 controllers now supports RGB colors

RGB colors on Xbox Elite 2 controllers | Image: Microsoft

Microsoft now fully supports RGB colors on the Xbox button of its Elite 2 controllers. While platforms like Steam have offered color options for the Xbox button on Elite 2 controllers, Microsoft is now natively supporting this on its own Xbox consoles in a new September update issued today.

Xbox owners can pick from 16 million different hues for the Xbox button on Elite 2 controllers and even different saturation levels. It comes just as Microsoft starts shipping its new $129.99 Xbox Elite 2 Core controller today.

Image: Microsoft

You can pick from 16 million different colors.

Alongside the controller customization, the September Xbox dashboard update also includes a redesigned Full library view that includes...

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Vampire Survivors’ new higher price is still worth sinking your teeth into

Vampire Survivors is slightly increasing its price ahead of leaving early access. | Image: Poncle

When it was announced that Vampire Survivors — a darling of the indie gaming community — is increasing its price on September 21st ahead of its V1.0 release, some folks may have expected the worst. Thankfully, its developer, studio Poncle, has now announced that the game’s list price on Steam will increase by a paltry $2, bringing it to $4.99 starting at 6PM ET.

That means there’s still time to grab the game for $2.99, the price it’s been since entering early access back in December 2021. Studio Poncle says that the decision to increase prices ahead of the game’s full release was to “keep the option open to eventually enter some of the usual seasonal sales.” The game is also available on PC Game Pass, with no mention of any plans to...

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Ted Lasso’s AFC Richmond is coming to FIFA 23

Image: EA

EA has announced a number of deals about major teams and leagues being featured in the newest — and final — FIFA game. Now, we have news of a fake team — AFC Richmond, the fictional club from Ted Lasso, will be playable in FIFA 23. The team will be available in a handful of modes, including career mode, where you can take on the role of a polygonal Ted Lasso as manager. The club’s stadium, Nelson Road, will even be featured in the game.

Human actor Brett Goldstein, who plays Roy Kent in the show, said in a statement, “It is so f***ing cool to be in FIFA. I’m not sure this is going to help dispel the CGI rumors but f*** it, totally worth it.” FIFA 23 is due to launch on September 30th on PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and Stadia. It’ll be the...

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Here are the best AirPods deals you can get right now

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

If you know where to look, there are often some great discounts available on Apple’s popular — yet oftentimes expensive — AirPods. Since Apple launched the third-gen AirPods last year, we’ve seen the starting price of the second-gen, entry-level model drop from $159 to $129. And now that you can buy the second-gen AirPods Pro, we’ll likely start seeing discounts on the last-gen Pro and other models, including the over-ear AirPods Max.

If you can’t wait until then, though, fret not: we’re already beginning to see some good discounts ahead of the holiday season and with the arrival of the second-gen AirPods Pro. Below, we’ve curated the best deals currently available on each model, including the entry-level AirPods, the AirPods Pro, the...

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Framework’s new Chromebook is upgradable and customizable

A Chromebook for the DIY-minded. | Image: Google

Framework and Google have announced the new Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition. As the name implies, this is an upgradable, customizable Chromebook from the same company that put out the Framework laptop last year.

User-upgradable laptops are rare enough already, but user-upgradable Chromebooks are nigh unheard of. While the size of the audience for such a device may remain to be seen, it’s certainly a step in the right direction for repairability in the laptop space as a whole.

Thin and customizable.

Multiple parts of the Framework are user-customizable, though it’s not clear whether every part that’s adjustable on the Windows Framework can be adjusted on the Chromebook as well. Each part has a QR code on it which,...

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Kia plans to build EVs in the US to comply with new federal tax credit

Photo by Roberto Baldwin for The Verge

Kia is planning to manufacture its electric vehicles in the US, according to South Korean media sources Maeil Business and SBS (via The EV Officials). The automaker currently builds its flagship electric car and North American sales hit, the Kia EV6, in South Korea at its Hwasung plant. But now, Kia will shift some of its EV assembly to the US by 2024, according to the report.

Manufacturing EVs in the US would allow Kia to qualify for new incentives that were included in the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, which requires automakers to build EVs in North America to qualify.

Kia and Hyundai combined hold the second-highest EV market share after Tesla

Kia and its parent company, Hyundai, had threatened legal action against the US...

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NASA’s deep space telescope is having instrument trouble caused by “increased friction”

NASA paused observations with one of the JWST modes. | Photo Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

There’s a kink in one of the instruments in NASA’s powerful James Web Space Telescope, the agency said Tuesday. After around two months of sending back beautiful, precise photos from deep in space, the team behind the telescope detected an issue with one of the four observing modes on JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). Observations using that mode are on pause while the team learns more.

MIRI, the telescope’s mid-infrared instrument, can see wavelengths of light invisible to the human eye. It’s good for seeing clear details of things like newly forming stars. It was used to take the image of the galaxy group “Stephan’s Quintet,” for example.

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI/Handout via Xinhua

Images of Stephan’s...

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Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of legal challenges

Only human-drawn illustrations allowed. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Getty Images has banned the upload and sale of illustrations generated using AI art tools like DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion. It’s the latest and largest user-generated content platform to introduce such a ban, following similar decisions by sites including Newgrounds, PurplePort, and FurAffinity.

Getty Images CEO Craig Peters told The Verge that the ban was prompted by concerns about the legality of AI-generated content and a desire to protect the site’s customers.

“There are real concerns with respect to the copyright of outputs from these models”

“There are real concerns with respect to the copyright of outputs from these models and unaddressed rights issues with respect to the imagery, the image metadata and those...

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Win a mystery bag of free stuff from The Verge and The Strategist

The bag itself is a Timbuk2 Vert Backpack in two-tone light blue / black. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Superman and Batman. Cable and Deadpool. Spider-Man and Wolverine. These are some of the most storied and treasured — if sometimes unlikely — team-ups the world has ever seen. Well, we’ve got another one to add to the list because The Verge and The Strategist are teaming up to offer you a chance to win a backpack filled with nifty tech toys and gadgets.

This is one of the biggest sweepstakes we’ve ever offered before, which is only fitting when you’ve got two publications that run the gamut of coverage for tech, culture, and savvy internet shopping. We’ve compiled a bunch of swag and free tech and jam-packed them into a sleek, light blue Timbuk2 Vert Backpack. The value of this giveaway totals out to about $937, including the bag, which...

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Visualizing how cool it is to be green

People relax underneath a blossoming tree during a warm spring day in Central Park in Manhattan. | Photo by Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images

Thanks to a couple satellite images from NASA, we can see how cool it is to be green — literally. The maps below show that the greenest parts of the Northeastern US with the most lush vegetation have lower surface temperatures. Conversely, the least green regions align almost perfectly with the hottest areas.

That’s because trees and plants are crucial for calming down the phenomenon called the urban heat island effect. All the asphalt and big buildings in an urban jungle trap heat. As a result, cities tend to be several degrees hotter than surrounding areas. Within a city, more industrial areas tend to be even hotter. That tends to make heatwaves even more dangerous for low-income households and communities of color, particularly...

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In Strange World’s new trailer, sci-fi adventuring is a family affair

Image: Disney

The first trailer for Disney’s Strange World introduced us to its pulp sci-fi style of adventuring — and now we have a better look at the family who will actually be doing the exploring.

The latest clip from the film reveals three generations of explorers led by a reluctant Searcher Clade (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is living in the shadow of his famous father (Dennis Quaid) while traveling with his adventure-obsessed teenage son (Jaboukie Young-White). Also along for the ride are Gabrielle Union as an ace pilot and Lucy Liu as some kind of presidential figure.

Just as important, the trailer gives a closer look at some of the weird sci-fi elements of the movie, including flying schools of jellyfish-like creatures, bright pink dinosaurs, and a...

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Ring Fit Adventure for the Nintendo Switch is down to just $55 today

Gyms may have reopened, but Ring Fit Adventure remains a good excuse to stay in. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Are you, like me, wanting to get fit but don’t want to, well, actually leave the comfort of your home for the gym? Thankfully, Ring Fit Adventure poses a fun alternative for us ~~lazy~~ energetically challenged folks. The fitness-based RPG encourages you to work out as you explore, fight enemies with exercise reps, and collect items without ever stepping foot outside of your home. What’s more, the clever Nintendo Switch title allows you to adjust the difficulty and track your form, thus ensuring you’re working out correctly.

Right now, you can buy the game with a Ring-Con controller and a leg strap at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy for $54.99 instead of $79.99, which matches the title’s all-time low. Just note the game doesn’t work...

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Facebook is experimenting with letting users help write speech rules

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

In June, I wrote that to build trust, platforms should try a little more democracy. Instead of relying solely on their own employees, advisory councils, and oversight boards, I wrote, tech companies should involve actual users in the process. Citing the work Aviv Ovadya, a technologist who recently published a paper on what he calls “platform democracy,” I suggested that social networks could build trust by inviting average people into the policymaking process.

I didn’t know it at the time, but Meta had recently finished a series of experiments which tried to do just that. From February to April, the company gathered together three groups across five different countries to answer the question: what should Meta do about problematic...

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Volvo’s EX90 electric SUV will have laser sensors and cameras that can detect drunk driving

Volvo’s Concept Recharge, released in 2021, is meant to preview the upcoming EX90 SUV. | Image: Volvo

Volvo announced that it will unveil its new flagship electric vehicle, the EX90 SUV, on November 9th. The EX90 is meant to replace the company’s current flagship, the gas-powered XC90 SUV, as Volvo transitions to an all-electric car manufacturer by 2030.

In the run-up before the announcement, the Swedish automaker teased a number of interesting features, including long-range lidar and in-car sensors to detect when a driver may be distracted or intoxicated.

The new technology, some of which will come standard in the vehicle, is designed to boost Volvo’s reputation for safety at a time when the auto industry is leaning more on high-powered sensors and AI-powered software to prevent fatal traffic collisions.

Volvo says the new EV will...

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Apple Watch Ultra review: an aspirational debut

A new player has entered the multisport watch game

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Amazon’s 2022 Fire HD 8 tablets get a little faster, and a $10 price hike

The Amazon Fire HD 8 in blue. | Image: Amazon

Amazon is announcing a quartet of new 8-inch Fire tablets today led by the Fire HD 8, which the company claims is 30 percent faster than its predecessor from 2020. Its starting price is also $10 more expensive at $99.99 this time around. Alongside the Fire HD 8, the ecommerce giant is also announcing new Fire HD 8 Plus, Fire HD 8 Kids, and Fire HD 8 Kids Pro tablets. They’re all available for preorder today for $10 more than before and will ship next month.

Aside from the speed increase, with the new Fire HD 8 being powered by an unspecified six-core rather than a quad-core processor this time around, the new tablet’s specs are very similar to the 2020 model. (Amusingly, Amazon alsosaid its 2020 model was 30 percent faster than its p...

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Now you can touch Alexa on Fire tablets, too

Tap to activate Alexa is coming to Fire tablets, including the new Fire HD 8 and 8 Plus. | Image: Amazon

Amazon is bringing more accessibility features to its Fire tablets — including the new Fire HD 8 and Fire HD 8 Plus announced today — adding support for Tap to Alexa, compatibility with Bluetooth switch access controllers, and launching a new Text to Speech feature.

Tap to Alexa is an accessibility feature that lets you interact with the voice assistant using touch rather than voice. Previously only an option on Echo Show devices (speakers with touchscreens), it’s now available on Amazon’s Fire tablets, eighth-generation or newer, in the US, UK, Germany, and Japan.

With Tap to Alexa enabled, a small “tap” icon sits on the screen that, when tapped, opens a dashboard of common commands. These include Stop, Timer, Alarm, Weather, Traffic,...

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Netgear’s new Nighthawk USB dongle can add 6GHz Wi-Fi to your PC for $89.99

The Netgear Wi-Fi 6E USB adapter comes with a docking station for better placement. | Image: Netgear

Netgear is releasing its most capable networking USB dongle yet, the first one that can add the latest Wi-Fi 6E standard to many modern PCs. The company’s new $89.99 Nighthawk A8000 is a USB 3.0 adapter that can easily add interference-free 6GHz wireless connectivity to laptops or desktops.

While plenty of laptops and devices have been released in the past year that are capable of Wi-Fi 6 (5GHz), only the latest ones are shipping with higher bandwidth Wi-Fi 6E. If you’ve already upgraded your router, then the Nighthawk will connect your existing devices to a dedicated 6GHz lane. It still runs at a maximum 1,200Mbps, just like 5GHz Wi-Fi, but it’s more likely to consistently hit those high speeds on the new frequency.

I...

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Twitch is cutting how much its biggest streamers earn from subscriptions

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitch is reducing how much money it shares with some of the biggest streamers on the platform.

Right now, the majority of partnered streamers receive a 50 / 50 revenue share on subscriptions to their channel. That means 50 percent of net revenue goes to Twitch, while 50 percent goes to the streamer themselves. However, Twitch has negotiated premium subscription terms with some bigger streamers that give them a 70 / 30 revenue split, and that split is what’s going to change.

The changes kick in on June 1st, 2023

Under the new policy, streamers with premium terms will keep 70 percent of their subscription revenue on the first $100,000 earned. But after that, the share will go down to a 50 / 50 split. The changes kick into effect on June...

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Designers worry Adobe won’t let Figma flourish

Figma’s new ownership sparks an outcry within the digital design community. | Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge

The world of creative technology was rocked last week by news that industry giant Adobe had acquired Figma, makers of a hugely popular suite of UI and UX design tools, for a whopping $20 billion. The response from designers was immediate — and for the most part, extremely negative.

Figma has been hailed as an underdog success story, having been designed from the bottom up with approachability and teamwork in mind. It offers premium features such as real-time collaboration on a free-to-use basis and browser-based accessibility that allows entire teams of people to work together across platforms from potentially any device. It’s also one of the strongest rivals to Adobe XD, Adobe’s own UX / UI design application, which hasn’t been able to...

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TikTok plans to ban all political fundraising on its platform

Nick Barclay / The Verge

Starting Wednesday, TikTok is expanding its elections rules to make it harder for politicians and political groups to fundraise using the platform — and plans to ban all fundraising activity soon. The changes come only six weeks before the November midterm elections.

In a blog post, TikTok’s president of global business solutions, Blake Chandlee, said the company would immediately turn off all advertising and monetization features, like gifting and tipping, for politicians and parties on the platform. Additionally, accounts belonging to governments, politicians, and political parties will have to apply for verification.

TikTok expects to roll out a sweeping ban on campaign fundraising

“By prohibiting campaign fundraising and limiting...

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Watch LG’s tragically-canceled rollable get put through its paces

LG’s unreleased rollable. | Image: 뻘짓연구소

More than a year after LG unceremoniously exited the smartphone business and abandoned plans to release a rollable smartphone, a lengthy hands-on video has given us a comprehensive look at the unreleased device. LG’s rollable cropped up in a short clip earlier this year, but this new video is far more comprehensive, showing off the phone’s design and features from every angle.

What I find most surprising is just how finished the device looks. Although LG had said it wanted to release it before the end of 2021, I’d always assumed this was an ambition rather than a concrete plan. But this hands-on video appears to show a device that’s almost ready to be shipped to stores, complete with final-looking retail packaging and a case accessory. X...

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Nvidia’s RTX 6000 ADA professional GPU can create worlds and destroy wallets

The Nvidia RTX 6000 ADA professional GPU isn’t your run-of-the-mill gaming card. | Image: Nvidia

Nvidia has announced the RTX 6000 48GB graphics card, the latest model to join its family of workstation-focused GPUs designed for content creators and enterprise-grade graphics. Nvidia describes the RTX 6000 as the perfect tool for creating content for the metaverse alongside Nvidia Omniverse Enterprise, thanks to its Ada Lovelace generation AI, massively increased raytracing and CUDA cores, and programmable shader technology.

While the recently announced GeForce RTX 4090 is the top-end Ada Lovelace generation card for most consumers, the Lovelace-powered RTX 6000 dominates it in regards to raw power. It has 18,176 CUDA cores compared to the RTX 4090’s 16,384, and will ship with 48GB of GDDR6 ECC memory — double that of the RTX 4090’s...

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Microsoft Surface rumors heat up ahead of rumored October event

Last year’s Surface Pro 8. | Image by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Microsoft is widely expected to launch its next generation of Surface devices at an event next month, and over the past week an increasing number of rumors have shed light on what form they could take. Top of the list is a new 2-in-1 device — the Surface Pro 9 — as well as the latest Surface Laptop 5.

WinFuture reports that both are expected to be available with 12th Gen Intel CPUs, up from the 11th Gen models seen in last year’s Surface Pro 8 and Surface Laptop 4. Specifically, it expects to see an Intel Core i5-1235U in the entry level models and a Core i7-1255U at the higher end, which should offer single-core performance increases of up to 22 percent and 12 percent respectively. Storage is expected to top out at 1TB, while up to 16GB...

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Twitch to ban Stake.com streams and other unlicensed gambling content

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

As the conversation concerning Twitch and the platform’s allowance of gambling streams continues to swirl, the platform has struck its first blow. In a tweet on Tuesday evening, Twitch stated that it will ban “streaming of gambling sites that include slots, roulette, or dice games” in a policy update effective October 18th.

An update on gambling on Twitch. pic.twitter.com/lckNTY9Edo

— Twitch (@Twitch) September 20, 2022

Critically, Twitch is not banning all gambling, nor even all streaming of the gambling forms mentioned above. There will be a carveout permitting sports betting, fantasy sports, and poker, while the streaming of slots, roulette, and dice is only prohibited if the websites streamed aren’t “licensed in the U.S. or other...

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