Airlines would have to give out refunds for busted Wi-Fi under proposed rule

Airlines would have to provide more transparency about all the fees you pay to fly under new proposed rules. | Photo by AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

Airlines would have to refund passengers for services they paid for that aren’t actually provided, like broken Wi-Fi, under new rules proposed by the Biden administration. Also, airlines and travel search websites would have to disclose upfront any added fees for changing or canceling your flight and for checked or carry-on baggage.

The new rules are part of a slate of changes the US Department of Transportation is proposing to make flying more transparent and consumer-friendly after a particularly rocky summer travel season, in which flight cancellations spiked. The administration has previously sought stricter rules for passenger refunds, arguing that it wants to make air travel more competitive.

Airlines have moved in recent years to...

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It’s never been easier to be an artist — or harder to become a star

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Erica Lubman, an indie artist who goes by the moniker Boy Jr., is objectively good at TikTok. She has amassed more than 300,000 followers with her tongue-in-cheek songs and videos spoofing indie rock culture. Those followers have translated into ticket sales for live shows and millions of streams. But even when Lubman gets praise on videos that get half a million views — for her songwriting, for her humor — she is realistic about how fickle TikTok can be.

“I appreciate those comments a ton,” Lubman said. “But there’s a really good chance you won’t see another video from me for months because your TikTok algorithm is going to just show you other things and you’re gonna forget about me.”

On paper, it should be a golden age for music....

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The Apple Watch SE is a first-time buyer’s smartwatch

Apple’s entry-level Watch is exactly just that. Get it if you’ve never had an Apple Watch, or give it to your kids. Otherwise, get a Series watch.

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Ancestry will tell users which side of the family their matches come from

Ancestry has an enormous genetic database. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Customers of the consumer genetics and genealogy company Ancestry will soon be able to see which side of the family any DNA matches found through the service come from. The new feature, launching this week, builds on the SideView technology the company announced in April.

“We’re really excited to see what users can do with this parental matches feature,” says Caitlyn Bruns, a population geneticist at Ancestry. “I do think it will really help unlock an understanding of how you’re connected with your matches.”

The feature will let users more easily see where matches fall on their family tree. Previously, people could manually place people on one side of their family as they learned more about their matches. Now, it’ll happen...

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Apple begins manufacturing the iPhone 14 in India

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple has started assembling the iPhone 14 in India, according to reports from TechCrunch and Bloomberg. This marks the first time Apple has shifted production from China to India this quickly after the launch of a new iPhone.

As noted by TechCrunch, Apple’s using Foxconn’s facilities in Sriperumbudur, India, to produce the device. While Apple has produced its flagship iPhones in India in the past, it’s typically done so well after the phone’s initial launch. The company only just started making the iPhone 13 in India in April, and it’s done the same with other models of the iPhone, including the iPhone 12 and 11.

We first heard that Apple planned on closing the gap between the time it takes to switch production from China to India back...

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It seems people still really, really love Avatar

James Cameron’s Avatar nets an additional $30 million at the theater, over 13 years since its original 2009 release. | Image: 20th Century Fox

The remastered rerelease of James Cameron’s Avatar is set to earn Disney an additional $30 million in global ticket sales since last week, ranking domestically in third place at the box office behind Don’t Worry Darling and The Woman King.

The 4K HDR version of Avatar was rereleased to theaters in the US on Friday, September 23rd, after the original 2009 movie was quietly pulled from Disney Plus in order to encourage people back to the theater and build hype for its upcoming sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water.

Avatar was rereleased to theaters to build up hype for its upcoming sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water

Comscore estimates that the rerelease of Avatar brought in $20.5 million internationally and $10 million in the US, bringing the...

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AMD’s Ryzen 7900X arrives to take on Intel’s 12900K

2022’s Intel versus AMD battle has only just begun

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Asian America learns how to hit back

The desperate, confused, righteous campaign to stop Asian hate

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Turn anyone into a Pokémon with this AI art model

From left to right, top to bottom: Lady Gaga, Boris Johnson, Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel, Donald Trump, Plato.

A fun little AI art widget named Text-to-Pokémon lets you plug in any name or description you like and (you guessed it) generate a Pokémon matching your prompt.

The model’s output isn’t flawless, but it’s incredibly entertaining all the same. You can try punching in the names of celebrities or politicians (see “Boris Johnson” and “Vladimir Putin” in the image above), or just general descriptions of the sort of Pokémon that would tickle your personal fancy (the one below is my “skeleton priest”).

(A little tip for using the tool more efficiently: make sure you select “4” from the “num_outputs” drop down menu to get four images per prompt rather than just one.)

Image: Text-to-Pokémon

A “skeleton priest” Pokémon...

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Oxenfree 2 hit by another delay as release date slips to next year

Image: Night School Studio

Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals has been delayed to 2023, its developer Night School Studio has announced. “To make Oxenfree II truly special and add more localizations, we’re moving our release window to 2023,” the developer’s statement reads. “Thank you for your patience, support, and understanding. We can’t wait to share the game with you. Stay tuned!”

This is the second major delay to have hit the sequel to the acclaimed 2016 adventure horror game. Lost Signals was originally announced in 2021 and planned for release later that year. But just a few short months later the game’s developers announced a delay to “early 2022.” No specific reason was given for the delays beyond ensuring the game is “the experience we believe it should be.”

An...

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Hands on with AptX Lossless, the new tech promising CD-quality audio over Bluetooth

Testing out AptX Lossless with Apple Music and the NuraTrue Pro.

The NuraTrue Pro are the first earbuds to support Qualcomm’s new codec

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Fitbit users will be forced to migrate to Google accounts by 2025

A Google account will be required for Fitbit by 2025, following the search giants acquisition of the health tech brand. | The Verge

Following Google’s acquisition of Fitbit and its rebranding of the health tech company as ‘Fitbit by Google,’ the search giant is moving to tightly integrate its services with Fitbit’s own. A Google account will be required for “some uses” of Fitbit devices and features from 2023, with plans to have all existing Fitbit accounts migrated to Google accounts by 2025.

An updated support page says that creating a new Fitbit account and activating new Fitbit devices and features will require a Google account from 2023. Existing Fitbit account holders will be able to move over to a Google account or remain with their existing Fitbit login until “at least early 2025,” at which point support for Fitbit accounts will be terminated. The FAQ states...

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How to watch NASA crash a spacecraft into an asteroid on Monday

An illustration of DART headed towards Dimorphos | NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

When NASA smashes a spacecraft into an asteroid on Monday, people on Earth will get an extremely close look at the action.

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) is headed for its final destination, the surface of an asteroid called Dimorphos, which it will crash into at speeds of over 14,000 miles per hour. Researchers are hoping that the collision will change the asteroid’s orbit, speeding it up just a tiny bit.

Neither Dimorphos, nor its larger companion, Didymos, pose any danger to Earth, but the experiment is designed to test whether or not a similar impact could make a difference if scientists ever discovered an asteroid that posed an imminent threat to life on Earth.

DART will be on its own during its final approach. The...

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Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale will take place on October 11th and 12th

A new Prime Day is on the Horizon | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The rumors were true: Amazon’s holding a second Prime-exclusive sales event starting on Tuesday, October 11th at 3AM ET / 12AM PT and running through Wednesday, October 12th. We first heard about the possibility of another day of deals back in June, but now Amazon has made it official — the only difference is that it’s calling the event Prime Early Access Sale instead of Prime Day.

Besides the name, it doesn’t look like too much is changing between the two events. Just like Amazon Prime Day, the Prime Early Access Sale should still bring some of the best deals of the year out to play, as well as feature sales on Amazon devices in addition to a wealth of other cool tech. So, if you’ve waited this long to buy a new pair of noise-canceling...

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Football claims another Microsoft Surface tablet

That poor Surface tablet.

Microsoft Surface tablets have been taking a beating at football events these past two weekends. During the Buffalo Bills game against the Miami Dolphins this afternoon, Bills offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey took his frustration out on his tablet as the Dolphins secured a win during the final moments of the game.

Dorsey’s reaction may have been warranted, although he probably could’ve chosen another outlet for his anger (like a stress ball perhaps?). The Bills had a chance to run one more play to win the game, but the team ultimately ran out of time, losing to the Dolphins 19-21. When cameras turned to the booth where he was watching the game, Dorsey ripped off his headset and tossed his hat before he picked up the tablet and started...

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NASA is about to crash a spacecraft into an asteroid

An illustration of the DART spacecraft and the asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos | NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

Dimorphos is a lump of space rock so far away from Earth that we don’t even know what it looks like — and on Monday, we’re going to smash it with a spacecraft. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will be traveling at more than 14,000 miles per hour when it hits the asteroid, in what has to be one of the most metal science experiments of all time.

DART is a NASA effort to see if it can change an asteroid’s movement in space. It’s being billed as the world’s first “planetary defense test mission” — a test run to see if we have what it takes to avert a serious asteroid impact on Earth sometime in the future. You know, just in case.

To be extremely clear, neither Dimorphos, or its larger companion Didymos, pose any threat to...

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DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket is having some issues again

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket hasn’t had a very good start to the football season. For the past two weekends in a row, subscribers have struggled to get their streams to work, and this weekend is no exception.

Even before today’s games started, users began complaining about numerous issues, with many saying that they can’t log into their accounts on the Sunday Ticket website or app and others having problems loading the streams. Those who are able to access the stream are reporting quality issues.

Somehow Sunday Ticket is acting worse than last week. Truly depressing. @DIRECTV

— Alex Reno (@alex_reno) September 25, 2022

DirecTV hasn’t issued any statement about whether it’s working to fix the stream, and the company didn’t immediately...

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The iPhone 15 ‘Ultra’ could replace the Pro Max

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

Apple could introduce a new naming scheme when it releases the iPhone 15 next year, replacing the current “Pro Max” branding with “Ultra.” This is according to Apple tracker Mark Gurman, who also expects the iPhone 15 to come with some “bigger changes,” including USB-C.

The Pro Max name first appeared with the iPhone 11 in 2019, and adding Ultra branding to the iPhone lineup wouldn’t be all that surprising. Apple already launched the new Watch Ultra with the moniker earlier this month, and added the name to its M1 Ultra processor. Apple also introduced a minor change to its naming scheme with the iPhone 14, bringing back the seemingly retired “Plus” name to the iPhone 14 Plus.

The iPhone 14 isn’t even a month old yet, but other rumors...

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Apple Pay Later is reportedly facing ‘technical and engineering’ issues

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple Pay Later is facing some “significant” setbacks that could delay its launch until next year, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The feature is Apple’s version of a buy now, pay later (BNPL) service, letting you make a payment through Apple Pay and then pay it back in four installments without interest.

Apple said its Pay Later feature would arrive with iOS 16 when it first announced the program at WWDC in June. But now that iOS 16 is out, Apple Pay Later hasn’t made an appearance, and the fine print on Apple’s iOS 16 page vaguely says it’s “coming in a future update.” As Gurman points out, Apple Pay Later is the only unreleased iOS 16 feature on the page that doesn’t include a timeframe for when we might expect its...

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Acer Predator Triton 500 SE review: I expected more

The Triton 500 SE is an expensive gaming laptop that doesn’t flex its hardware enough

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James Earl Jones lets AI take over the voice of Darth Vader

Darth Vader in Disney Plus’ Obi Wan. | Image: Lucasfilm

James Earl Jones has been the iconic voice of Darth Vader since the beginning of Star Wars, but at 91 years old, it seems he’s ready to have the work done for him. According to a report from Vanity Fair (via Deadline), Jones signed over the rights to his archival voice work, allowing the Ukrainian startup Respeecher to leverage AI technology and recreate the sound of his voice in Disney Plus’ Obi-Wan Kenobi.

To do this, Respeecher uses sound bites to “clone” an actor’s voice, allowing a studio to record new lines without having the actor present. Matthew Wood, Skywalker Sound’s supervising sound editor, told Vanity Fair that he presented Jones with the option once he “mentioned he was looking into winding down” the role of Darth Vader....

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The biggest news and trailers from Netflix’s Tudum event

Henry Cavill and Freya Allan in The Witcher. | Image: Netflix

Big names like The Witcher, Knives Out, Enola Holmes, and Bridgerton all made appearances on the livestream

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They Cloned Tyrone’s onto something wild in its first trailer

Teyonah Parris as Yo-yo, Jamie Foxx as Slick, and John Boyega as Fontaine. | Netflix

In Netflix’s upcoming sci-fi comedy feature The Cloned Tyronefrom director Juel Taylor, everybody with even the slightest bit of common sense knows that Black people have plenty of reasons not to trust the government or the police stalking their neighborhoods. Some of those reasons, like police brutality and harassment, are obvious. But the real threat everyone’s facing in They Cloned Tyrone’s first trailer is a bit more hidden and insidious because it’s the sort of thing few people would be inclined to believe.

They Cloned Tyrone tells the story of Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), Slick (Jamie Foxx), and Fontaine (John Boyega), three unlikely friends who are brought together by their shared discovery of a massive, secret governmental...

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Netflix’s new Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery clip is full of devious puzzles

Image: Netflix

At the beginning of the month Netflix gave us our first taste of the first Knives Out sequel, and at its Tudum event the streamer showed off another clip — this one focused on some very complex puzzle boxes that double as a party invite. The brief clip showed off the mixture of humor and mystery that you’d expect from another Knives Out.

Glass Onion is an important movie for Netflix, and not just because it’s a centerpiece of the company’s holiday schedule. The company reportedly paid more than $400 million for two sequels to Rian Johnson’s original whodunit, and Glass Onion also features a star-studded cast including the likes of Janelle Monáe, Leslie Odom Jr., David Bautista, Jessica Henwick, Kathryn Hahn, Kate Hudson, and Edward...

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Oxenfree is now available as a Netflix game

Oxenfree. | Image: Netflix

Yet another beloved indie game is now available on Netflix. At its Tudum event today, Netflix announced that the supernatural thriller Oxenfree, which first launched in 2016, is now playable through its fledgling games service. The Netflix version of Oxenfree is available as a free download to Netflix subscribers on both iOS and Android, and features subtitle support for more than 30 languages.

Netflix has steadily been adding excellent games like Into the Breach, Before Your Eyes, and Lucky Luna to its mobile gaming offerings, but Oxenfree is particularly notable because Netflix acquired its developer, Night School Studio, last year. Oxenfree also feels like a good fit for Netflix, with its focus on storytelling and a vibe that’ll...

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The Witcher’s third season won’t be here until summer 2023

Freya Allan as Ciri. | Netflix

When Netflix announced during last year’s Tudum that a third season of The Witcher was already on the way, there was some hope that maybe, just maybe Henry Cavill’s Geralt of Rivia would be back on our screens slaying demons in time for the upcoming holiday season. Unfortunately, that’s not going to be the case, and there’s going to be a bit of a wait, but not an especially long one.

While there was no new footage from The Witcher’s third season shown at this year’s Tudum presentation, Cavill and co-stars Anya Chalotra, and Freya Allan a made brief appearances to share some teaser art and to announce that the series will return in 2023.

(art)

Taken at face value, there isn’t all that much to glean from the teaser art, which features the...

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Netflix’s The Witcher: Blood Origin prequel series is coming this December

Laurence O’Fuarain as Fjall, Sophia Brown as Éile, and Michelle Yeoh as Scian. | Netflix

While the third season of Netflix’s live-action Witcher series still doesn’t have an actual premiere date, the wait for Declan de Barra and Lauren Schmidt Hissrich’s upcoming The Witcher: Blood Origin prequel series is almost over.

Netflix’s The Witcher: Blood Origin hits Netflix on December 25th. And while we didn’t get a new trailer for the series — which tells the story of the very first witcher, long before Geralt’s iconic adventures — we did learn that Minnie Driver will be joining the cast, where she’ll star alongside the likes of Michelle Yeoh.

While you wait, you can check out the very first teaser for the series right here — and a brand new poster below.

Worlds will collide.

The Witcher: Blood Origin premieres this December. #...

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Guillermo del Toro’s magical Pinocchio process video is utterly mesmerizing

Guillermo del Toro taking a peek at a miniature set featuring Pinocchio sleeping or not yet alive in Geppetto’s workshop. | Netflix

Once upon a time, it seemed as if Netflix’s upcoming stop-motion Pinocchio from co-directors Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson’s might in a bit of competition with Disney’s “live-action” spin on the classic story from Robert Zeemckis. But that all changed when del Toro stopped by Netflix’s annual Tudum event to give everyone a closer look into the labor-intensive, mesmerizing, and magical process that brought his Pinocchio to life.

In the new video, which features a number of different Pinocchio scenes in the midst of production, del Toro opens up a bit about what all he wanted to bring to his take on the fairytale, and why he insisted that the bulk of its animation was done by hand.

While there’s also quite a bit of digital...

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NASA scraps Artemis I launch due to potential hurricane threat

NASA’s Artemis I launch has already been delayed several times. | Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images

NASA called off its Artemis I launch scheduled for September 27th as Tropical Storm Ian continues to intensify, potentially strengthening into a major hurricane that strikes Florida next week. The agency still hasn’t decided whether to roll back the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket to the Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) but indicates it will make a final decision on Sunday.

“During a meeting Saturday morning, teams decided to stand down on preparing for the Tuesday launch date to allow them to configure systems for rolling back the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft to the Vehicle Assembly Building,” NASA states. The agency adds that engineers “deferred a final decision about the roll to Sunday,” which...

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Enola Holmes 2’s new trailer shows a budding detective in action

Image: Netflix

Netflix has a fairly full lineup of movies this holiday season, and leading the way is the sequel to Enola Holmes. At the streamer’s big Tudum event today, it revealed a new trailer for the film, which shows the budding detective starting to lay down a foundation for her crime-solving career — though naturally things don’t seem to be going so well. The sequel was first announced last year, and it sees much of the cast returning; Millie Bobby Brown plays Enola, Henry Cavill is her older brother Sherlock, and Helena Bonham Carter is their mother. Harry Bradbeer is also back to direct.

According to Netflix, Enola Holmes 2 will feature “a mystery of historic proportions,” and the new trailer shows how the case will see Enola and Sherlock...

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