We’re in a golden age for skateboarding games

Session: Skate Sim. | Image: Crea-ture Studios

The last few years have been a wonderful time for skateboarding game fans. The highlight, of course, was the 2020 remaster of the first two Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games, but there’s also been the slick mobile take on shredding with Skate City and the ridiculously over-the-top OlliOlli World from earlier this year. What’s great is that each of these titles has its own distinct flavor, whether you want to get in a short session on your phone or grind through an alien landscape. Now, we have another take on virtual skateboarding — and it might be the most realistic I’ve ever played.

Session: Skate Sim is out now after a period of early access, and it’s something of a spiritual successor to the Skate series (which is itself making a comeback...

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Luka Dončić has been turned into a MetaHuman

This is a digital recreation of NBA star Luka Doncic. | Image: Epic Games

NBA star Luka Dončić is launching a digital alter ego created using Epic Games’ remarkable MetaHuman technology.

This is some seriously lifelike stuff — check out the pictures below. If I didn’t already know they were showing digital versions of Dončić, I honestly might not have been able to tell.

Image: Epic Games

Image: Epic Games

Image: Epic Games

Image: Epic Games

The virtual Dončić was built using Epic’s Unreal Engine 5 MetaHuman tech and “augmented with neural network technologies trained with real-world facial animations from Luka’s performance capture,” according to a press release. The alter ego, dubbed Luk.AI, will be taking over Dončić’s...

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Hacking gang sends ransom demand to LA school district

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The hackers who hit the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) with ransomware over Labor Day weekend have now issued a ransom payment demand, according to the district superintendent.

On Tuesday, superintendent Alberto Carvalho told the Los Angeles Times that a demand had been made but that the district had not responded. Carvalho declined to reveal the amount of money demanded.

The extortion attempt represents an inevitable escalation in the ransomware attack — which targeted the nation’s second-largest school district just as pupils began to return after the summer break — and raises questions over what sensitive information the hackers may have been able to obtain.

The extortion attempt represents an inevitable escalation

Though...

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Yale’s new keypad locks are smaller and smarter

Yale’s new smart lock line includes touchscreen, keypad, and keyed versions. | Image: Yale

Yale has revamped its smart lock lineup with four new keypad models: touchscreen or buttons, with or without a keyed lock. The new locks are smaller, sleeker, and all of them support Bluetooth and Apple Home out of the box. Thanks to Yale’s ingenious network cartridge modules, they can work with any other smart home platform, too — a Wi-Fi module is available now, Z-Wave is coming soon, and there’ll even be a Matter over Thread module. Best of all, the new modules are backward-compatible. If you have a Yale Assure lock already, Yale just gave it a new lease on life.

The Yale Assure 2 line starts at $159.99 and goes up to $259.99 (see sidebar for exact models and pricing). All four locks are around 30 percent smaller overall than the...

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Google’s more affordable Chromecast HD is available today for $30

The cheaper Chromecast looks identical to the 4K model. | Image: Google

Google’s less expensive no-4K streaming player is officially being announced today. As rumored, it’s called the Chromecast with Google TV HD and slots into the company’s lineup beneath the $49.99 4K-capable Chromecast with Google TV released in 2020. Leaving out support for Ultra HD and Dolby Atmos has helped Google shave the price down to $29.99, which is even less than the original $35 Chromecast that became an unexpected hit nearly a decade ago.

But times have changed, and instead of relying solely on casting for entertainment like it once did, Google has embraced a traditional lean-back experience with its Google TV platform and bundled remote control.

Like similar streaming products from Amazon and Roku that top out at 1080p...

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ByteDance’s new Pico headset is a Quest 2 competitor for Europe and Asia

The Pico 4 headset and controllers | Image: Pico

Pico, the Chinese startup acquired last year by TikTok parent company ByteDance, has a new virtual reality headset on the way. The Pico 4, which will sell starting at €429 (around $425) in several European and Asian countries, is described as a reasonably full-featured but affordable option for games and passive entertainment. A limited preorder opens in August, with general preorders starting in October and the device shipping on October 18th.

ByteDance teased the news of its new headset earlier this week, and the device broadly resembles earlier Pico products, with a self-contained standalone design that can also connect to a PC for high-end VR. But the Pico 4 is smaller and lighter than the Pico Neo3 Link that debuted in May, weighing...

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Apple AirPods Pro (second-gen) review: same look, better everything else

Redesigned inside but not out, the new AirPods Pro are destined to be another hit — even if the magic is waning

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DJI’s new smartphone gimbal aims to get you filming quicker than ever

The extension rod feature returns from the previous model. | Image: DJI

DJI has just announced the latest model in its lineup of smartphone gimbals, the Osmo Mobile 6. Like its predecessors, it’s designed to stabilize videos and photos taken with phones, but it features a new wheel control to make zooming and focusing easier and a status panel to show the gimbal’s battery life at a glance.

But perhaps the most interesting new feature is one that DJI is calling “Quick Launch.” It’s only available when using the gimbal with iPhones, but the idea is that the accessory can automatically generate a push notification to quickly launch the DJI camera app when it detects that a phone has been mounted. When combined with the magnetic mount introduced with the Osmo Mobile 4, it should help you get shooting quicker...

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How platforms turn boring

Nick Barclay / The Verge

TikTok is changing.

Even a year ago, my For You page was mostly stuff you could only see on TikTok, whether it was Vine refugees making comedy shorts or song memes like Here Comes The Boy. That stuff is still on the platform, but it’s largely fallen off my For You page, replaced by Tim Robinson sketches and funny animal videos. One account reposts Derry Girls clips with captions about the royal family; another (aptly named ViralHog) licenses viral video clips from local news or Reddit threads and then blasts them out to different platforms. Everything has the same warmed-over feel. For many of these accounts, the goal is to churn through enough content to build a following so they can flip the account into advertising mode for a quick...

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This RTX 4090 is so ridiculous it needs a ‘Dark Obelisk’ RGB support stick

Say hello to the Dark Obelisk. | Image: Galax

If you thought the prices of Nvidia’s new RTX 40-series cards were ridiculous, wait until you see all the third-party RTX 4090 designs. Ridiculous doesn’t even begin to describe the RTX 4090 Serious Gaming (yes, that’s the name) from Galax.

Let’s start with the packaging. Exhibit A:

Image: Galax

Did a hacker make this GPU?

Why is there a hacker on the box of this RTX 4090? Is this a member of Anonymous? Am I going to lose all my secret data if I install this GPU? Is my boss trying to test my cybersecurity skills so I won’t get phished? I really don’t know, but it gets better.

The RTX 4090 Serious Gaming includes triple 102mm fans that have increased by 5mm over its previous RTX 3090 models. That alone tells you...

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This new turntable can play music directly to a Sonos system

No wires necessary to get this turntable on your Sonos system. | Image: Victrola

Getting your vinyl playing on a Sonos system has never been necessarily hard; it just takes the right gear. You can plug a turntable into something like the Sonos Five, Amp, or Connect. Or if you’ve got a Bluetooth-enabled turntable, the Sonos Roam can beam that audio to the rest of your system. But obviously the ideal solution would be a turntable that transmits audio directly to a Sonos system with no extra hardware required. That’s exactly what the new Victrola Stream Carbon turntable offers.

Priced at $799, the Stream Carbon “requires no additional equipment for connecting to a Sonos ecosystem, allowing effortless setup and easy control with the Sonos app,” according to Victrola’s press release. Initial setup is done through the...

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How to use Focus modes in iOS 16

iOS 16 makes programming Focus modes less tedious. | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Apple added Focus modes last year in iOS 15 to help you stay on task. The idea was to keep you “in the moment” by filtering out apps or notifications that you don’t want popping up during specific times. In iOS 16, Apple has also added some new options to streamline the process. That includes the ability to silence notifications from specific apps or people, as well as link Focus modes with lock screens and watchfaces.

When you first start to set Focus up, it can seem a little daunting. There are a lot of choices and a lot of ways you can tweak it. In fact, it may take a while before you get the combination of settings that works best for your lifestyle. But in the end, it will be worth it — it will mean that you won’t be sidelined...

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Meta ordered to pay Voxer $175 million for violating live-streaming patents

Meta has been ordered to pay almost $175 million in fines to app developer Voxer for violating live-streaming patents | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Meta has been ordered to pay Voxer — creator of the Walkie Talkie messaging app — over $174 million in damages after a jury in Texas federal court found the social media giant guilty of violating two live-streaming patents with Facebook Live and Instagram Live.

The patents in question were developed by Voxer co-founder Tom Katis, a US Army veteran seeking to fix the shortcomings he experienced in battlefield communications after his combat unit was ambushed in Kunar Province in 2003. Katis and his team began developing communications solutions in 2006, resulting in new technology that enabled the transmission of live voice and video communications. Voxer was then formed in 2007, and the Walkie Talkie app was launched in 2011.

Meta...

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Automatic emergency braking is not great at preventing crashes at normal speeds

AAA says the auto industry needs to update their testing protocols for AEB. | Image: AAA

Automatic emergency braking (AEB) is pretty good at preventing low-speed rear-end crashes but kind of sucks when vehicles are traveling at more normal speeds, according to new research from the American Automobile Association (AAA).

Starting September 2022, all new cars sold in the US are required to come standard with AEB, which uses forward-facing cameras and other sensors to automatically apply the brakes when a crash is imminent. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety estimates that AEB may help prevent 28,000 crashes and 12,000 injuries by 2025.

Using four common vehicles, AAA wanted to put AEB to the test to see how it’s progressed since first rolling out to production vehicles nearly 20 years ago. What they found was not that...

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Microsoft is redesigning Windows 11’s photos app again

Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft may have redesigned its photos app last year to better match the aesthetics of Windows 11, but now it’s testing a new version with a slightly new look and a few other improvements.

Perhaps the most noticeable change is a new gallery view, which offers a different way to browse through your photos. In a blog post, Microsoft’s Dave Grochocki says that the updated view is intended to simplify browsing, finding, managing, and consuming the photos you have in your collection. The new app will also offer improvements to the “Memories” feature, though Grochocki’s blog post doesn’t detail exactly what’s different.

Image: Microsoft

The new gallery view in Microsoft’s redesigned Photos app for Windows 11. You can...

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Larry Page’s flying car startup Kitty Hawk is shutting down

Heaviside was Kitty Hawk’s last eVTOL in development. | Image: Kitty Hawk

Kitty Hawk, the ambitious “flying car” startup funded by Google co-founder Larry Page, is winding down, which the company confirmed in a brief post on LinkedIn earlier today.

According to a report from Insider, sources inside the company said Kitty Hawk had already shut down work on the 100-mile-capable Heaviside vehicle. Insider also reports that Page had become increasingly hands-off from the company but said he was more closely involved with its shift to research and development after the end of the Heaviside project.

Although Kitty Hawk is shuttering development of its own aircraft, at least one project will live on in its joint venture company with Boeing: Wisk Aero. “Today’s news does not impact Wisk. We remain in a strong...

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NASA loads Artemis I rocket with fuel in major troubleshooting test

At the base of the Space Launch System, repair crews work to replace a seal on September 8th, 2022. | Photo by NASA / Chad Siwik

Today, NASA got its next-generation Moon rocket all tanked up with nowhere to go. Liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen fuel were loaded into the Space Launch System (SLS) today in an hours-long test of its troublesome fueling system.

It was what NASA called a “kinder, gentler” fueling procedure that was being tested after a hydrogen leak stymied the second launch attempt of the rocket and the Artemis I mission on September 3rd. The new procedures were “designed to transition temperature and pressures slowly during tanking to reduce the likelihood of leaks that could be caused by rapid changes in temperature or pressure,” NASA said in a blog post.

“I am extremely encouraged by the test today,” said Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, launch...

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Google’s making it even easier to remove your personal info from search

The Verge

Google’s “Results about you” tool, meant to simplify the process of removing search results that contain personally identifying information, is starting to roll out to some users, according to a report from 9to5Google. Google announced the feature earlier this year during its I/O conference, saying that it’d be coming to the Google app.

Google already had a way to remove search results that contained your home address, email address, or phone number, along with a host of other types of potentially dangerous or damaging information. That system wasn’t necessarily the easiest to access or use, though. If you found a search result that linked to your sensitive information, you’d have to go to a support page and fill out a form containing...

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How to customize your iPhone’s app icons

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Have you ever wanted to make your iPhone your own, with your individualized style and flair? Sure, you can change your homescreen wallpaper. But if you really want to personalize your phone, why not create your own app icons?

It’s doable, using Apple’s built-in Shortcuts app. You actually won’t be replacing the icons that the apps came with — rather, you’ll be creating separate shortcuts that lead to the app. It’s a tedious and time-consuming process, but in the end, you can have a fully customized iPhone homescreen.

Here’s how you do it:

• Before you begin, it’s a good idea to find an icon for your new shortcut. There are a bunch of icon sources online (Flaticon, for example), or if you’re artistic and / or ambitious, you can create...

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The best streaming service deals available right now

You can stream House of the Dragon on HBO Max and save for a limited time only. | Image: HBO

Football is upon us, everything pumpkin spice is here, and the days are slowly — very slowly, this Southern Californian might add — but steadily getting colder. This means a lot of us are beginning to spend more time indoors and will do so even more as fall officially settles in and we begin bingeing spinoffs like Andorand House of the Dragonalong with an abundance of fall programming. And while it’s true that most streaming services don’t cost very much, we all know that those monthly subscription fees have a way of adding up in the long run. Before you know it, you’re spending as much on streaming as you would on cable.

If you’re trying to cut down on your expenses (and who isn’t these days?), you don’t necessarily need to...

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TikTok’s BeReal clone app is gaining traction outside the US

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

TikTok Now, a standalone BeReal copycat app, is now available in markets outside the US, TechCrunch reports. The TikTok Now feature was first announced last week and is built into the TikTok app for US users.

The app has gained traction in the days following its release on September 18th. Analytics firm Sensor Tower tells The Verge that TikTok Now ranks in the top 10 social networking apps in 39 countries as of today and that it’s in the top 100 apps overall in 24 countries.

TikTok Now sends a notification to users once a day, prompting them to snap a photo or video within a certain timeframe to share with friends, and just like the ascendant BeReal, users can’t see what their friends have posted until they share their own content....

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Instagram’s finally working on protecting users from unsolicited nude photos

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Instagram is working on a way to protect users from receiving unsolicited nude photos in their DMs. Instagram’s parent company, Meta, confirmed to The Verge that the feature was in development after an app researcher published an early image of the tool.

Meta says the optional user controls, which are still in the early stages of development, will help people shield themselves from nude photos as well as other unwanted messages.

The tech giant likened these controls to its “Hidden Words” feature, which allows users to automatically filter direct message requests containing offensive content.

#Instagram is working on nudity protection for chats

ℹ️ Technology on your device covers photos that may contain nudity in chats. Instagram...

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Sega Dreamcast’s iconic memory card is making a (fundraised) comeback

The company making the VM2 plans to release white- or black-colored models. | Image: Dreamware Enterprises

You can find all sorts of strange tech on Indiegogo, but this fundraiser for an improved version of the virtual memory unit (VMU) for the Sega Dreamcast is one of the zanier gadgets I’ve heard about this year (via Notebookcheck). The company, Dreamware Enterprises, is in the process of developing the VM2, which it calls a “next-gen VMU for the Dreamcast.” It’s a one-to-one recreation of a niche accessory made for a failed console that it plans to release in black or white in the summer of 2023.

Some of the improvements seem great, like a higher-resolution LCD screen with backlighting, microSD card storage for offloading and injecting saves, a rechargeable battery with USB-C charging, and mini-game support. It’ll ship with PC...

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Microsoft is testing a way to mute the Xbox startup sound

I can hear the sound in my head just by looking at the console. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

I really like my Xbox Series X. It’s a nice-looking, quiet console that puts hundreds of games at my fingertips thanks to Xbox Game Pass. But every time I turn my Xbox on, I scramble to turn down the volume so that the console’s startup sound doesn’t alert everyone in a 50-mile radius that I want to play some Fortnite.

Thankfully, Microsoft is testing an Xbox software update that will let you mute the console’s startup sound, so I hopefully won’t have to worry about the sound sometime soon. The new preview update will be rolled out to Alpha ring members of the Xbox Insider program beginning on Wednesday. If you have the preview, you can mute the startup sounds by going to Settings > General > Volume & audio output > Additional options.

W...

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How to use Action mode on the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro

Here’s how to best use one of the iPhone 14’s new camera features. | Samar Haddad / The Verge

One of the new camera features offered by the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro is a somewhat self-explained Action mode. It’s a feature you can enable in video mode to supercharge stabilization for very intense motion, like running behind someone and recording their workout or chasing your kid around a playground, which is its own kind of workout. It’s easy to use, but there are a couple of things to know so you can get the most out of it.

I followed these steps on an iPhone 14 Pro running iOS 16.0, but they’re the same on the standard iPhone 14.

How to start using Action mode

Getting started with Action mode is easy:

• Open the native camera app.
• Switch to video mode.
• Tap the running person icon in the top left of the screen.

You’re now in Action...

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How to automatically change your Slack status when you have a meeting

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

A lot of people work remotely these days, which makes work apps like Slack crucial for good communication. Slack status updates provide a particularly helpful and easy way to let colleagues know you’re busy — for example, when you’re in a meeting and can’t see each other in person.

You can manually update your status with a few clicks of a button, but that takes time and is easy to forget. Alternatively, you can sync your Slack status to your online calendar, and Slack will automatically update your status for you. In this article, we’ll show you how to connect it to Google Calendar, though you can sync it to other calendars like Microsoft Outlook as well.

How to sync your Slack status to Google calendar from your desktop or laptop

• C...

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The best budget laptop of 2022

Photography by Monica Chin / The Verge

The best cheap laptops from HP, Lenovo, and more.

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Microsoft announces a Surface event for October 12th

New Surface devices are on the way. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

Microsoft is holding a Surface event next month. The software giant is officially labeling the event “Microsoft Fall 2022 Event,” where it says it plans to “talk about devices.” The Microsoft event will kick off at 10AM ET on October 12th, just before Microsoft’s Ignite conference begins.

Microsoft’s invite to the event includes a wallpaper-like image with watercolors and “save the date” written by what is likely a Surface Pen. The invite comes just hours after rumors of Surface Pro 9 and Surface Laptop 5 devices emerged. Microsoft is reportedly planning to offer a Surface Pro 9 with the option of Arm or Intel processors, potentially meaning the end of the Surface Pro X line.

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft’s devices...

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I tried replacing Google with TikTok, and it worked better than I thought

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

TikTok is the new Google. Or so some people say. As TikTok grows, Google, in particular, has begun to describe the app as a whole new way of creating and consuming the internet and maybe an existential threat to its own search engine. Prabhakar Raghavan, the SVP of search at Google, said in July that “something like almost 40 percent of young people, when they are looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search, they go to TikTok or Instagram.” More recently, The New York Times and others have talked to young internet users and found that, in fact, they’re turning to TikTok for more and more of what you might call Google-able things.

On one hand, there’s nothing particularly surprising about this: the internet is...

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A hacker used 2K Games’ support desk to send gamers malware

The Verge

Hackers have really been targeting the gaming industry this week — and seem to have focused on companies linked to Take-Two Interactive.

On Tuesday, game publisher 2K Games notified the public that an “unauthorized third party” had compromised its help desk platform and used it to send malicious links to customers. The disclosure came just one day after Rockstar confirmed that development footage from GTA VI was stolen and leaked by a hacker who had broken into its network and downloaded confidential data.

There’s no sign (yet) that the 2K hack is linked to the earlier breach of Rockstar, but both Rockstar and 2K are owned by Take-Two Interactive, making it an especially damaging week for the parent company’s security record.

Hey...

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