I’m convinced the AirPods Max active noise cancellation has gotten worse

I wish this button would toggle to the old ANC. | Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge

The active noise cancellation (ANC) in my one-week-old AirPods Max has gone soft. After updating to the latest firmware, version 4E71, I am convinced the ANC is no longer as strong or effective as it originally was out of the box. If you’re one of the folks who has experienced this frustrating issue (it’s been discussed on Reddit for months), I now understand the problem firsthand.

Both my wife and I often work from home, and for a few days, my AirPods Max excellently rendered her business calls inaudible to me, banished the corgi barks emanating from under my desk to the nether realms, and audibly shut out the high-rise construction site outside my apartment window. But now, the ANC sounds like what I’d describe as a librarian’s...

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Netflix drops lawsuit against The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical’s creators

Image: Netflix

Netflix has dismissed its copyright infringement lawsuit against Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, the creators behind The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical, as reported earlier by Variety and Deadline. A copy of the court filing obtained by Deadline indicates that Netflix moved to “dismiss this action with prejudice,” meaning that the streamer can’t reopen the case in the future.

The duo was scheduled to respond to Netflix’s complaint on Thursday, but that never happened, and Netflix dismissed the suit on Friday. It’s unclear if they reached a settlement with the streamer, but the two ended up canceling their September 20th concert at Royal Albert Hall in London last month, where they were supposed to perform their songs alongside the BBC...

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More of The Verge’s favorite coffee and tea gadgets

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Last year, we asked the staff of The Verge to tell us about their favorite coffee and tea brewers, grinders, and other paraphernalia. It’s a year later, and so we thought we’d find out what other caffeine delivery systems are used while our journalists are powering through their days.

If you’re also an enthusiast, we hope you’ll enjoy looking over some of the gadgets that we enjoy using for our daily infusions.

Preparation

Zojirushi Micom Water Boiler & Warmer

The idea of having pre-boiled water on tap in a machine might be sacrilege to some, but I can’t imagine my life without mine, especially in the winter. I drink iced coffee year-round, so I use this for making tea, oatmeal, rice porridge, and anything else that needs hot water.

T...

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LG is price-slashing 2022 OLED TVs at Best Buy

The C2 in today’s deal features one of LG’s “Evo” panels that boasts a higher brightness level than its previous-generation panel. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

At Best Buy, a host of LG electronics are seeing a discount through Saturday. This includes a few of its 2022 OLED TVs, some of which have received bigger price drops than I’ve seen occur before. Starting with the deal that’s the best value in terms of size and specs, LG’s 55-inch B2 OLED is $999.99 (originally $1,599.99). For context, Amazon is selling it for about $300 more at the time of publishing.

The B2 is LG’s midrange model; it has more features than the A-series OLED, but not as many as the C2 Evo model. Even so, movie, TV show, and gaming enthusiasts should find nearly everything they’re after with the B2, including a virtually infinite contrast ratio, the deepest of black color presentation, and a 120Hz refresh rate panel. On...

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Yale Assure Lock 2 review: a promising all-rounder

For $160, this sleek Bluetooth smart lock supports Apple Home and will auto-unlock for you as you walk up to your door. Yale’s Wi-Fi and Z-Wave modules add more smart home support for $80 each, but I’m waiting for the Matter version.

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Forget streaming and cable: baseball is best on the radio

Hey Google, bring me the sweet sounds of post-season Mariners baseball on the radio. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Friday Twitter, in case you missed it, featured an extremely dumb discourse involving cable, streaming services, the Yankees, and somehow, New York’s Attorney General. The gist is this: Aaron Judge was poised to tie (and maybe overtake?) Roger Maris’ American League record of 61 home runs in a season (he did not). The game against the Red Sox aired on Apple TV Plus rather than New York’s regional cable sports network, YES. Some people got mad about that — presumably people who own bars in New York and show baseball games — including the state Attorney General. Others rightly pointed out that watching a game on a paid cable service is in no way more accessible than watching on a free streaming app.

But here’s the thing: you don’t need...

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NY AG tries to explain how Apple’s free Yankees stream is worse than cable TV

Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images

Yankees star Aaron Judge could break a home run record at Friday’s game against the Boston Red Sox, and you’ll be able to watch the game for free through Apple TV’s Friday Night Baseball broadcast. But in tweets ahead of the game, New York Attorney General Letitia James confusingly called for the game to be brought over to New York’s local Yankee Entertainment and Sports Network (YES) cable network, and after slightly walking that back, called the steps to watch Apple’s broadcast “burdens.”

The whole saga started with a tweet from James at 12:04PM ET.

Millions of New Yorkers paid their cable bills expecting to see live sports programming. Denying them the chance to watch Aaron Judge step up to the plate to make history tonight is...

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NASA’s Artemis I launch faces a new obstacle: the weather

NASA’s SLS on the pad on September 3rd, 2022 | Photo by Joe Burbank / Orlando Sentinel / Tribune News Service via Getty Images

I’ve got good news and bad news for fans of big NASA space launches.

The good news is that after repeated delays and a nail-biting test of a leaky fuel system, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) could make its big debut as soon as Tuesday. The bad news is currently named Tropical Depression Nine. It’s a developing storm in the Caribbean with the potential to become a major hurricane and a trajectory that is currently headed toward Florida.

There is just a 20 percent chance that the weather on September 27th will cooperate, according to a Friday forecast from the Space Force’s 45th weather squadron, which is in charge of determining whether or not the weather is good enough to launch.

This particular launch will be the start of Artemis I,...

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I used OpenAI’s new tech to transcribe audio right on my laptop

The benefits of AI without the drawbacks of the cloud. | Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

OpenAI, the company behind image-generation and meme-spawning program DALL-E and the powerful text autocomplete engine GPT-3, has launched a new, open-source neural network meant to transcribe audio into written text (via TechCrunch). It’s called Whisper, and the company says it “approaches human level robustness and accuracy on English speech recognition” and that it can also automatically recognize, transcribe, and translate other languages like Spanish, Italian, and Japanese.

As someone who’s constantly recording and transcribing interviews, I was immediately hyped about this news — I thought I’d be able to write my own app to securely transcribe audio right from my computer. While cloud-based services like Otter.ai and Trint work for...

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The US wants to become a hydrogen production powerhouse

One of the world’s first plants for the production of green hydrogen in Wesseling, Germany, on July 2nd, 2021. | Photo by INA FASSBENDER/AFP via Getty Images

Ramping up production of hydrogen fuel is now a high priority for the Biden administration as it tries to put an end to the fossil fuel pollution causing climate change. The Department of Energy wants to produce 10 million metric tons of “clean” hydrogen by 2030, according to a draft National Clean Hydrogen Strategy and Roadmap released yesterday.

About 10 million metric tons of hydrogen is already produced in the US each year, but that’s mostly “gray” hydrogen made with dirty natural gas. The shift would be to pair that natural gas with controversial technologies that capture carbon dioxide emissions as well as make more hydrogen using renewable energy sources and nuclear energy.

“A high priority technology for this administration”

C...

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Trombone Champ’s developer thinks more games need to go all in on comedy

The “NASTY!” message when you flub a note is inspired. | Image: Holy Wow Studios

Trombone Champ has been the star of my timeline this week; I’m constantly running into absurd renditions of songs like “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” But in a conversation with Dan Vecchitto, the founder of Trombone Champ developer Holy Wow Studios, he brought up something I think is a major factor in the game’s success: we just don’t see a lot of comedy in gaming right now.

Games have been pushing the boundaries of capital-S Serious Storytelling for some time with series like The Last of Us. Others remain popular because of their high-skill and high-stress competitive multiplayer. But we just don’t see many games that embrace their own comedy in the way that Trombone Champ does.

While there are a growing number of games that are...

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Apple says old and new AirPods Pro ear tips are incompatible because of mesh density

The original AirPods Pro tips (left) have denser mesh than the new second-gen tips (right). | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

In my review of the new second-generation AirPods Pro, I pointed out that the inner mesh / filter of the ear tips is slightly different than those belonging to the original earbuds. As it turns out, that’s part of why Apple advises against using first-gen tips on the new model and vice versa. As MacRumors noticed, the company has updated its support page on AirPods Pro ear tips with a new section that says “ear tips have been designed specifically for their AirPods Pro generation, to deliver the highest-fidelity audio experience.”

“As a result, use the ear tips that come with your AirPods Pro. AirPods Pro (1st generation) ear tips have noticeably denser mesh than AirPods Pro (2nd generation) ear tips,” Apple’s support site reads.

Could...

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The best gaming headset deals you can get right now

Logitech’s budget-friendly G435 boasts color and comfort, as well as a host of solid features. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

A good gaming headset is practically a necessity these days. Clean and precise audio is essential for competitive gaming, allowing you to pinpoint your enemies and communicate effectively with your teammates. Moreover, recent developments in spatial audio and virtual surround sound have allowed headsets to meet — and occasionally surpass — more expensive audio setups, allowing even the most budget-conscious gamer to obtain a competitive edge at a fraction of the price.

While you could always invest in a massive pair of speakers, they’re likely to earn you the dubious distinction of the worst roommate of the decade. Thankfully, the right headset will allow you to keep the running and gunning to yourself, which is why we’ve rounded up a...

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It sure looks like we’re getting new MacBook Pros in October

You have to admit these guys were getting old. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple plans to release new MacBook models in the fourth quarter of this year, according to a new report from DigiTimes. DigiTimes also reported last week that suppliers are “gearing up” for shipments of the upcoming products.

The report corroborates a number of rumors that have surfaced over this summer and makes the prospect of an October MacBook release look increasingly likely.

In June, just days after Apple dropped this year’s M2-powered MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, Bloomberg reported that updated 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models could ship by early 2023. These MacBooks are unlikely to look much different from their predecessors but are expected to include more powerful M2 Max chips with 12 CPU cores and up to 38 GPU cores.

T...

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Leak suggests the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro are keeping their great prices

We already know what they look like, but we don’t know for sure how much the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro will cost. | Image: Google

It feels like it shouldn’t be news when the price of something doesn’t go up, but that’s where we are in the year 2022. We’re paying roughly a thousand percent more for a loaf of bread than we were this time last year, but a couple of price tags that may be staying the same during inflation-o-rama are the ones on the upcoming Google Pixel 7 and 7 Pro. Android Police founder Artem Russakovskii tweeted the alleged prices for the devices: $599 for the Pixel 7 and $899 for the Pixel 7 Pro.

That’s not just noteworthy because the price of everything everywhere is going up. If true, it’s particularly good news because the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro were already priced really well, to begin with — both the iPhone 14 and Galaxy S22 start at $799. Google...

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T-Mobile adds domestic United flights to its free in-flight Wi-Fi roster

T-Mobile continues adding perks to its Magenta and Magenta Max plans. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

T-Mobile is broadening its free in-flight Wi-Fi promotion by adding domestic United Airlines flights to the offer. Subscribers to T-Mobile’s Magenta Max and Magenta post-paid plans have already had access to a similar deal on Alaska Airlines and Delta flights, but now United is also in the mix.

It’s part of T-Mobile’s ongoing push to add more incentives to its top-end plans, like free Apple TV Plus, the prospect of future SpaceX Starlink connectivity, and 5GB of high-speed data while traveling abroad. The latter is part of T-Mobile’s “Coverage Beyond” campaign, of which this in-flight Wi-Fi program is a component. T-Mobile wants to capitalize on increased travel now that the pandemic is “over” and more destinations are opening up...

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FDA makes it easier for harm reduction groups to purchase lifesaving naloxone

Photo by Scott Olson / Getty Images

Harm reduction programs will soon be able to more easily bulk buy medication that can treat opioid overdoses, thanks to new guidance from the Food and Drug Administration. The guidance centers around naloxone, which reverses overdoses. Advocacy groups have been pushing for this change, which will make it much easier for them to distribute the lifesaving drug.

Naloxone is currently a prescription drug at the federal level, even though state-level laws make it so people don’t need a prescription to obtain it. But because of the federal rules, manufacturers normally have to follow specific requirements around how they can distribute the drug. Those guidelines made it hard for harm reduction groups, which work to prevent overdoses, to get...

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San Francisco police can now watch private surveillance cameras in real time

Photo By Paul Chinn/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

Police in San Francisco got a boost to their surveillance powers this week after the city’s board of supervisors voted on Tuesday to grant the police department access to private surveillance cameras in real time.

The vote, which passed 7–4, approved a one-year pilot program that will allow police to monitor footage from private cameras across the city with the camera owners’ consent. The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) will not have continuous access to the cameras but will be able to tap into the network under certain conditions, such as during the investigation of crimes including misdemeanors and property crimes. The SFPD will also be able to access private camera footage during large-scale public events such as protests, even...

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How to unpair an Apple Watch

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

If you’re lucky enough to be unboxing a new Apple Watch this week, you might be wondering how to disconnect your old one from your iPhone. Unless you plan on using two watches — it’s a thing — you’ll want to unpair it so you can hand it down to a friend or family member or sell it.

It’s important to unpair your watch and not just erase it because if you don’t go through the unpair process, Apple’s Activation Lock will kick in. This is a good thing if you’ve actually lost your watch but a bad thing if you are looking to sell or pass on your watch or use it with a new iPhone.

Another thing: if you’re unlucky enough to have lost your iPhone, you will still need to unpair your watch in order to pair it with your new phone. Here, we’ll go...

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TikTok users will now be able to downvote comments

Nick Barclay / The Verge

TikTok is rolling out a feature that allows users to downvote comments, the company announced today.

The button will appear next to likes on individual comments under videos in the form of a thumbs-down icon that users can click. The feature, first announced as a test back in April, will now be available to users globally, according to TikTok. Users can undo their downvote by clicking the button again, and only the person doing the downvoting will be able to see that they’ve done so.

Image: TikTok

The total number of downvotes won’t be visible.

Unlike the amount of likes a comment receives, the number of downvotes isn’t visible publicly, suggesting downvotes will serve more as a back-end moderation tool,...

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Vergecast: Apple Watch Ultra review, next-gen GPUs, and more gadgets

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Every Wednesday and Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where our editors make sense of the week’s most important technology news. On Fridays, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel, editor-at-large David Pierce, and managing editor Alex Cranz discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.

On today’s show, wearables reviewer Victoria Song joins Nilay, David, and Alex to discuss her review of the Apple Watch Ultra: how the large screen fits on a wrist, how customizable the action button is, and whether she has become “Ultra-pilled.”

You can listen to the full show — which also has what’s happening in the world of gadgets, GPUs, and cloud gaming — here or in your...

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Mercedes-Benz’s electric G-Wagen is coming in mid-2024, chairman says

A concept version of the EQG was unveiled in 2021. | Images: Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz’s electric G-Wagen will arrive in mid-2024, the company’s chairman Ola Källenius said during a roundtable with reporters this week, according to Autoblog.

Källenius also said he drove a prototype version of the electric SUV at the company’s testing facility in Graz, Austria, and came away convinced that the future of off-road adventure is electric.

When Mercedes first unveiled a concept version of the electric SUV in September 2021, the company wouldn’t confirm any production plans. In fact, Källenius himself said in 2019 that he wasn’t sure whether the G-Wagen would have much of a future at all. Now it seems like an electric version of the boxy off-roader is on its way.

(This isn’t entirely new information; Källenius...

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London police arrest teen hacking suspect but won’t confirm GTA 6, Uber links

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The City of London police report they’ve arrested a 17-year-old in Oxfordshire on suspicion of hacking and said he remains in custody, without releasing any other details.

Police declined to say what incident the arrest was in connection with, but many of the details line up with recent high-profile hacks. This spring, the City of London police arrested and released seven teenagers in connection with an investigation into the Lapsus$ hacking group. Today’s arrest also comes just days after two security breaches believed to be connected to Lapsus$, with the leak of early Grand Theft Auto 6 footage due to a “network intrusion” and a security breach at Uber that caused it to take several internal systems offline for a while.

On the...

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Roborock’s S7 Plus mop and robot vacuum hybrid is $270 off

The Roborock S7 Plus has reached a new record low. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

If you plan to catch up on cleaning this weekend, you can do so a lot faster with today’s excellent robot vacuum deal. Regularly $949.98, Amazon is selling Roborock’s S7 Plus robot vacuum for just $679.48 — an all-time low — when you apply the on-page coupon and use promo code S7PLUS4SD at checkout.

Roborock’s S7 Plus is our favorite mop and robot vacuum hybrid, one that’s even capable of keeping your carpets dry by lifting up its mop to vacuum them. Other nice features include the ability to clean specific rooms and support for Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri, so you can make requests with your voice. Plus, the robot vacuum comes with an auto-emptying cleaning and charging station. It admittedly doesn’t have great battery life...

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Elon Musk has an actual free speech issue on his hands

Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

It’s been five months since Elon Musk agreed to buy Twitter, so it’s easy to forget that, in those first heady days, this was all supposed to be about free speech. We’re long past that now. But Musk showed at least a glimmer of interest in it again this week, albeit in a completely different piece of his empire: the Starlink internet satellites.

Since its October trial is fast approaching, let’s talk about the Twitter case first. After failing to delay the trial but successfully adding a slew of new claims to it, Musk is preparing (or not, who knows!) to answer Twitter’s questions in a deposition scheduled for September 26th and 27th. The Chancery Daily Twitter account has helpfully listed some more pending interviews, mostly of...

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Netflix is on a good run with anime lately

Thermae Romae Novae. | Image: Netflix

Recent releases like Thermae Romae Novae, Drifting Home, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and Uncle From Another World show a lot of promise for the streamer

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Here are the best Apple Watch deals right now

The Series 8 starts at $399, and it offers the most comprehensive set of features and sensors (outside of the $799 Ultra). | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Thinking about picking up a new Apple Watch? The timing is always right to find at least one model selling at a deep discount. In fact, Apple recently launched its latest batch of smartwatches for 2022, including the $399 Series 8, the new $249 SE, and the first-ever $799 Ultra, which is aimed at outdoor enthusiasts and swimmers. There are now more Apple Watch models on the market than ever before, so you have plenty to choose from.

But with all of those options, which one should you pick? If you can decide based on specs, here’s a handy breakdown to make it easy to see what one model offers over another. But generally speaking, try to buy the newest watch you can afford so that it continues to receive software updates from Apple. The...

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France announces minimum €3 book delivery fee to help booksellers compete with Amazon

Photo by Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images

The French government has announced it will introduce a minimum charge for book deliveries of €3 (about $2.92) in order to help small booksellers compete with retailing giant Amazon, reports Reuters. The minimum fee will only apply to orders under €35 (about $34.12).

It’s the latest measure by the French government to balance competition in the book sector and follows a decades-long tradition of protectionist laws. Since 1981, France has mandated fixed prices for books, with a maximum discount of 5 percent, and in 2010 expanded this law to cover ebooks. In 2014, the French government banned the free deliveries of books, to which Amazon responded by charging customers a single cent (€0.01) for delivery.

In an effort to close this...

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How to use the Apple Watch Ultra’s Action button

The Action button adds another layer of personalization | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

The Apple Watch Ultra introduced one of the most significant design tweaks to the Apple Watch since its inception — the Action button. While every other Apple Watch has two physical controls, the Action button is a third that’s meant to help outdoor athletes pause workouts, turn on the flashlight, call for help with a siren, and more. The main logic is that, unlike touchscreens, physical buttons are immune to sweaty fingers and gloves.

While it’s likely the Action button will evolve over time, at launch, it’s essentially a set of preselected shortcuts or “actions.” Your options are Workout, Stopwatch, Waypoint, Backtrack, Dive, Flashlight, and Shortcuts. Some of these actions have secondary functions dubbed “gestures.” Within each...

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The world’s largest carbon removal project yet is headed for Wyoming

A rendering of an aerial view of CarbonCapture’s direct air capture modules. | Image: CarbonCapture

A couple of climate tech startups plan to suck a hell of a lot of carbon dioxide out of the air and trap it underground in Wyoming. The goal of the new endeavor, called Project Bison, is to build a new facility capable of drawing down 5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2030. The CO2 can then be stored deep within the Earth, keeping it out of the atmosphere, where it would have continued to heat up the planet.

A Los Angeles-based company called CarbonCapture is building the facility, called a direct air capture (DAC) plant, that is expected to start operations as early as next year. It’ll start small and work up to 5 million metric tons a year. If all goes smoothly by 2030, the operation will be orders of magnitude larger...

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