Blink’s new Mini Pan Tilt adds robotics to its compact home security camera

The Blink Mini camera attached to the new Pan Tilt mount. | Image: Amazon

Blink’s giving its blocky Mini security camera a new robot body. The new Mini Pan Tilt is a very literally named mounting accessory that converts your existing Blink Mini camera from a stationary device into a controllable camera that lets you look around the room.

Setup sounds like it’ll be easy for the Pan Tilt: you connect the Mini camera to the mount, plug in the Micro USB cord, and the camera now has 360-degree movement from the Blink app. You can even install it on a tripod or wall mount (not included), or you can just place it on a table.

You can preorder the Mini Pan Tilt mount today on Amazon for $29.99. There’s also a bundle that gets you the mount as well as a Blink Mini camera if you don’t have one already for $59.99.

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The 11 biggest announcements at Amazon’s hardware launch event

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon just held its fall hardware launch event, where it revealed a ton of new tech, including a new Kindle Scribe, an updated Fire TV cube, and a second-generation Echo Auto device. Here’s a roundup of some of the most exciting announcements that came out of Amazon’s event.

The new Kindle Scribe comes with a stylus

Image: Amazon

Amazon’s new Kindle Scribe has an E-Ink display.

Kindles aren’t just for reading anymore — the newest Kindle is an E-Ink tablet that you can use for reading and writing. It comes with a 10.2-inch screen with 300ppi, along with a Basic Pen or Premium Pen option for the stylus.

The Premium Pen costs $30 more and comes with a customizable shortcut button and a sensor for an eraser. With...

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COVID-19 tests will no longer get emergency treatment at the FDA

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Since the start of the pandemic, the Food and Drug Administration has signed off on 430 COVID-19 tests through its emergency use authorization powers — rules that let the agency push tests and drugs out the door more quickly during an emergency. Now, over two years later, the agency is backing off that system and will treat most COVID-19 tests just like other medical tests. In a statement Tuesday, the FDA said that most new COVID-19 tests will have to go through the normal, non-emergency test review process.

“For most new tests, shifting to traditional premarket review would best meet the public health needs at the current stage of the COVID-19 public health emergency,” said Jeff Shuren, director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and...

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Google wants to make Maps much more immersive

Illustration: The Verge

If you open up Google Maps right now, I’m guessing you’ll probably search for where you want to go using a traditional 2D map. But Google has some ideas to help you discover the world around you in a far more immersive way, and it showed off some of what it’s working on at its Search On event on Wednesday.

One of those new features is what Google calls Immersive View, which it first demonstrated at this year’s Google I/O. On its face, it’s essentially a 3D aerial view of a certain area or location — think Apple Maps’ Flyover feature — but Immersive View also lets you go a level deeper by checking out weather, traffic, and even drill down to explore individual buildings. During Wednesday’s show, Google Maps VP and GM Chris Phillips gave a...

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Whale Safe project trials mic’d buoys with AI scanning to help prevent ship strikes

Buoys equipped with onboard computers could use AI to help save humpback whales in the US from ship collisions. | Photo by Tim Graham / Getty Images

AI software monitoring sounds from within bright yellow buoys could reduce whale deaths by identifying whale species and pod locations. Scientists then verify the data and relay that information to any ships passing nearby, helping them to avoid the animals. The Whale Safe project was launched by Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory and partners, with the first Whale Safe systems already deployed in the Santa Barbara Channel near the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Each buoy carries an onboard computer that records whale sounds using an underwater microphone. An AI algorithm then detects the clicks and squeals of specific whale species before transmitting the data via satellite every two hours, where a scientist will review the...

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Google’s impressive multisearch tool will be available in a lot more languages

The Verge

Google’s impressive multisearch tool, which lets you search using both an image and some text, will be expanding to more than 70 global languages in the next few months, the company announced at its Search On event on Wednesday.

Multisearch uses Google Lens to make it easier to search for things that might be tricky to dig into with just text. Let’s say you see a jacket you like but want to find it in a different color. With multisearch, you can open up Google Lens in Google’s Android or iOS apps, snap a pic of the jacket, type out the color you want to find the jacket in, and search. By making multisearch available in many more languages, a lot more people will be able to use it; the tool initially rolled out in April in a US-only beta,...

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Alexa is getting some much-needed smart home upgrades

Amazon’s smart displays like the Echo Show 10 (pictured) will soon be able to display multiple security camera feeds. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Amidst a slew of new hardware announcements today, Amazon is also announcing a host of new capabilities for Alexa, including a handful of new smart home features. The company hasn’t announced exact release dates for the updates, but its press release says it hopes to roll them out “over the coming months.”

It might sound like a small change, but one of the more significant upgrades is the ability to quickly and easily schedule smart home device actions for moments in the future. Although it’s previously been possible to schedule actions via the Alexa app, now the process is a lot simpler, thanks to voice commands like “Alexa, turn off the lights in 10 minutes,” or “Alexa, turn on the fan at 6pm.”

Smart displays can now show feeds from...

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CNN lays off audio staffers as it shifts podcast strategy

Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Welcome to the Wednesday edition of Hot Pod. You can blame Rosh Hashanah for my tardiness. We have a lot to get into today, but first, some shameless self-promotion! I made an episode of The Vergecast about how the rise of streaming has changed music creation and what it means to be a star. Making podcasts is fun, who knew?

Today, CNN is laying off some of its audio staff, Spotify is trying to stem the flow of white supremacist music, and iHeart is buying illegitimate downloads through mobile games.

CNN lays off audio staffers

CNN is cutting some of its podcast staff as it refocuses its audio business, according to a laid-off employee. Alexander McCall, who worked as a product manager at CNN Audio, tweeted yesterday that he and other...

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Amazon’s Halo Rise is a bedside light to track your sleep and wake you up

Image: Amazon

Amazon has announced the Halo Rise, a bedside device meant to track your sleep and wake you up in the morning using lights and a “small alarm speaker,” as a press release describes it. The company says the Rise uses “contactless” technology, meaning you don’t have to put on something like a fitness tracker or smartwatch for it to work.

The company says that “it doesn’t have any cameras or microphones” but that it tracks movement and your breathing patterns using “built-in sensor technology.” (The company hasn’t described exactly how this works yet, but it seems plausible that it’s using something similar to the ultrasound tech found in some Echo devices.) If you sleep with a partner, Amazon says it should be able to pick out your...

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Echo speakers can now be Eero mesh Wi-Fi extenders

Echo speakers will join the newest Echo Dot speakers as Eero Wi-Fi range extenders for an Eero.

If you’ve been eyeing your Echo smart speaker for a while now and wondering if it could do something more than just play music or set a timer for your toast, I have good news. Amazon is turning it into an extender for your Eero mesh Wi-Fi network.

The capability to push your Wi-Fi a few hundred feet further around your home and make it easier to connect smart home devices like outdoor cameras and that streaming media stick in the spare bedroom is a feature of Amazon’s new Echo Dot and Echo Dot with Clock speakers, announced today.

But the feature is also coming to the fourth-gen Echo speakers on October 20th and to all fourth-gen Echo Dot models via a software update “in the coming months,” Nick Weaver, CEO and co-founder of Eero, told T...

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BMW is building a new custom voice assistant for its cars based on Amazon’s Alexa

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

BMW owners have been able to use Amazon’s Alexa as their in-car voice assistant since 2018. But the automaker announced that it will be taking things a step further, using Amazon’s Alexa core technology to build its own custom voice assistant.

The voice assistant will be built using Amazon’s Alexa Custom Assistant, a service that lets automakers and device manufacturers build their own digital assistants using the company’s Alexa technology.

BMW will be able to create its own wake words and custom voices and capabilities using Alexa as a foundation to “enable an even more natural dialogue between driver and vehicle,” the automaker said. This is especially crucial to help reduce distractions for drivers who may need help adjusting the...

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The latest Echo Dot smart speakers are smarter and bassier

The newest generation of Echo Dot is louder and brighter and also a Wi-Fi extender. | Image: Amazon

At its annual fall event, Amazon showed off its brand-new Echo Dot and Echo Dot with Clock. The fifth generation of the smaller spherical speakers has been seriously souped-up. While they sport the same look, they have a completely redesigned audio architecture under the hood that delivers two times the bass of the prior model.

Plus, the Alexa-powered smart speakers now use Amazon’s AZ2 neural edge processor that allows them to do more actions locally. There’s also a new temperature sensor, new tap gesture controls, and the Dots can double as Wi-Fi extenders for an Eero Mesh system.

Additionally, the popular Echo Dot with Clock model has had its LED dot display upgraded. It’s now brighter and, with a higher resolution, can offer up...

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Amazon’s new Echo Auto is smaller and easier to mount in your car

The new Echo Auto is smaller and easier to mount in your car than the original model. It also looks nicer. | Image: Amazon

Amazon has announced an update to the Echo Auto that it originally launched back in 2018. The new Echo Auto is a wholly new design, with a smaller footprint, fabric covering, and easier mounting options. It will sell for $54.99.

The idea behind the Echo Auto is to put Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant in your car if your vehicle doesn’t have it integrated natively like some modern cars. Effectively a microphone with some smarts, the Echo Auto pairs to your phone over Bluetooth and then can connect to your car’s audio system over Bluetooth or through a 3.5mm audio cable. Power is supplied by your car’s USB port.

The new Echo Auto has five microphones, down from the original’s eight. Amazon’s vice president of Alexa devices, Nedim Fresko,...

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SEC sues MoviePass executives for lying about its completely unsustainable business model

The original, now-defunct MoviePass card. | Photo by Bryan Bishop / The Verge

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sued three executives involved with MoviePass, alleging they lied repeatedly about whether their subscription service could become profitable.

Former MoviePass CEO J. Mitchell Lowe and Theodore Farnsworth — former CEO of majority stakeholder Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc. — allegedly made false claims to the public and in regulatory filings, attempting to conceal the subscription theater ticket service’s dire economic prospects. That included falsely claiming that heavy users had tripped security flags or been randomly selected for extra measures to stop them from using MoviePass, when in reality, these users were simply putting stress on an unsustainable business model.

“Faced with...

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TCL’s 65-inch 5-Series TV is $150 off today at Amazon and Best Buy

The 65-inch TCL QLED TV includes Dolby Vision, HDR10 Plus, and AMD FreeSync | Image: TCL

Finding a QLED TV with Dolby Vision, HDR10 Plus, and AMD FreeSync compatibility isn’t difficult, but it's not often that we find those features in a TV this affordable. Thankfully, you can currently get the 65-inch TCL 5-Series for $549.99 at Amazon and Best Buy, the lowest price yet on a model that typically costs $699.99. This 2022 configuration of TCL’s 5-Series QLED comes with the Roku streaming platform built in, giving you access to all of your favorite shows and services. However, Amazon and Best Buy also have a configuration that’s equipped with all the same features but uses Google TV for the same price.

The 5-Series combines a vivid 4K panel with variable refresh rate technology, Dolby Vision, HDR10 Plus, and AMD FreeSync...

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Square launches support for Apple’s Tap to Pay technology

Image: Square

Square now lets merchants use Apple’s Tap to Pay feature to process transactions. In a press release, the company announced that sellers with a compatible iPhone can use Square’s Point of Sale (POS) app to accept contactless payments.

Apple first rolled out Tap to Pay on the iPhone XS and newer in February. The feature transforms the iPhone into a contactless payment terminal, letting users tap their iPhone or an NFC-supported credit/debit card against the seller’s device to complete a transaction. It also supports Google and Samsung Pay for users on Android. Stripe was the first payment company to launch support for the feature, with Square rolling out a limited beta program in June. Square says sellers with an iPhone 11 or newer that...

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Amazon’s Kindle Scribe is an E Ink tablet for reading and writing

The Kindle Scribe is as much a notebook as a book reader. | Image: Amazon

The newest Kindle is the first truly new Kindle in years. It’s called the Kindle Scribe, and it’s both a reading device and a writing one. With a 10.2-inch E Ink screen, a stylus that attaches to the side of the device, and a bunch of new software, the $339.99 Scribe is trying to be as much a tablet as an ebook reader. It’s available for preorder today, and Amazon promises it’ll be out before the holidays. It’s also the kind of device people have been waiting for Amazon to make for years.

Kevin Keith, a vice president of product and marketing at Amazon, says the display is the reason the Scribe took so long. “This is the first 300ppi, front-lit display that has an adjustable warm light,” he says over Amazon’s Chime conferencing system,...

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Amazon product launch event live blog

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The company’s annual September events are usually a marathon of new product launches. We’ll be covering the announcements live.

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Web apps on Windows are getting closer to their native counterparts

More welcome changes to the Windows experience on the horizon. | Image: Microsoft

Progressive web apps on Windows look more like native Windows apps than ever before. Thanks to a new feature that Microsoft just announced, the Window Controls Overlay, developers can now customize the title bar of their PWAs.

Previously, web apps did not have access to this feature, which could lead to empty space, clashing colors, and other oddities that made some PWAs look decidedly un-app-like. The new feature should help developers fix these problems. Web apps now have access to the “full surface area” of their app window, excluding only the buttons in the top-right corner — minimize, etc. remain untouchable.

“Recently, with many new web capabilities in the Chromium browser engine and UX changes in Microsoft Edge and on Windows,...

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Marvel’s upcoming Blade movie has lost its director

The Blade production logo. | Image: Marvel Studios

Though Marvel’s upcoming Blade reboot starring Mahershala Ali was meant to start production this year ahead of its debut next fall, the movie’s just hit something of a significant hiccup with the unexpected departure of director Bassam Tariq.

In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter last night, Marvel attributed Tariq’s Blade exit to “continued shifts in our production schedule” and thanked him for his contributions to the project thus far. In his own statements, Tariq echoed the studio’s sentiments about their working relationship having been a good one and expressed his eagerness “to see where the next director takes the film.”

Details about the new Blade have been surprisingly sparse since the project was first announced to much...

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EA shows off its Monster Hunter-style game called Wild Hearts

Earlier this month, EA announced that it was partnering with Dynasty Warriors studio Omega Force on a Monster Hunter-style action game. Today, the companies finally showed off the first trailer for the title, which has been dubbed Wild Hearts (not to be confused with the excellent indie game Sayonara Wild Hearts). It’s described as “an epic adventure set in a fantasy world inspired by feudal Japan,” and the first footage shows gameplay that looks faster than Monster Hunter, with inventive traps, sweeping locales, and some truly vicious beasts. The game will be playable solo or via “seamless co-op.”

Here’s the basic premise, per EA:

Wild Hearts takes place in Azuma, a fantasy landscape inspired by feudal Japan, that is now rampaged by the...

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What to expect from the Google Pixel launch event

Image: Google

We’re getting even closer to the launch of the Pixel 7 phone and Pixel Watch, with Google’s fall launch event set to take place on Thursday, October 6th, at 10AM ET.

While we have an idea of what to expect, Google may still have a few surprises in store. Here’s everything we’re looking forward to at the upcoming Google Pixel event.

The Google Pixel 7 and 7 Pro to arrive with incremental upgrades

There wouldn’t be a Pixel launch event without a new generation of Pixel smartphones. We’re going to see what Google has in store for the Google Pixel 7 and 7 Pro, which Google offered a brief glimpse of during I/O back in May.

At the event, Google showed off renders of the devices, which each come with an aluminum camera bar and the upgraded...

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What Figma plans to do inside Adobe

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Believe it or not, Dylan Field tells me over Zoom this week, when he started Figma he was only thinking about one thing: making cool design tools. In was 2012, and Field and co-founder Evan Wallace had the idea of building design software for the web browser — making the design process live, interactive, and collaborative — in ways it hadn’t really been in software before.

The idea was much easier to imagine than it was to build. Figma was building in stealth mode for three years before its first public preview, but the hard technical work paid off. Figma was a hit with designers almost immediately, as the real-time collaboration it enabled made design processes — particularly software design processes — much more efficient than they had...

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All the news from Amazon’s September 2022 product launch event

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Get the latest news on Amazon’s brands from the event

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Turnstile is Cloudflare’s latest attempt to rid the web of CAPTCHAs

Image: Cloudflare

Cloudflare is testing a new kind of CAPTCHA that tests your browser instead of you. The company calls it Turnstile, and it’s designed to spare us from performing those mundane click-the-traffic-light kinds of tasks to verify you’re a human and not a bot.

Turnstile is being presented as “a user-friendly, privacy preserving alternative” to CAPTCHA. According to a press release, it will get rid of the interactive challenges used to verify people, which Cloudflare says normally take an average of 32 seconds to pass, and reduce the entire process to one second.

An interaction-free test that reduces confirmation time to one second

Instead of presenting a visual puzzle to a user, Turnstile applies one of many browser challenges that it rotates...

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What to expect from Tesla’s AI Day event

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

On September 30th, Elon Musk will kick off Tesla’s AI Day to outline the company’s path to fully autonomous vehicles. But this year, Tesla’s cars are expected to take a backseat to a robot named Optimus.

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Amazon is about to announce a bunch of new products

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon has some new products on the way. The company is holding an invite-only, virtual event today, where it’s expected to introduce products from across its lineup of brands.

Chances are, there’s going to be a lot to see. Amazon is unusually good at keeping its upcoming releases under wraps, and it usually uses its annual September event to announce a lot of new products. Those could come from Amazon’s own product lineup — which includes the Kindle, Fire TV, and Echo — and from some of its acquired brands, like Eero, Ring, and Blink.

The Echo is the big one to keep an eye on. It’s been a while since we saw new updates for the Echo, which last saw a new version of its standard and Dot models in 2020. The Kindle just saw a major update...

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Instagram test feature lets you post text statuses for your followers

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Instagram’s test of a new feature that lets you post a text note to your followers appears to be getting a wider rollout, XDA Developers reports. When available, the feature displays in the messages section of the app, below the search bar. “Share what’s on your mind…” the prompt in the text box reads, according to a screenshot posted by XDA. “People won’t be notified when you leave a note. They can see your note for 24 hours and reply with a message.”

TechCrunch reported in June that the feature was being tested with a limited selection of users, but the fact that XDA has the feature working on multiple devices suggests its availability is expanding. Notes can be up to 60 characters in length, according to TechCrunch.

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The Wacom Cintiq Pro 27 introduces slim bezels and a customizable pen

Image: Wacom

Wacom has announced the Cintiq Pro 27, its latest pen display for creative professionals such as photo editors and digital artists. It takes on a new look more similar to that of a traditional computer monitor, and features a compact design with slim bezels, 4K resolution, HDR support, and a customizable pen.

The Cintiq Pro 27 comes in at $3,500 and is available to buy now direct through Wacom or third-party retailers. That price frustratingly doesn’t include a stand, which is required now that Wacom has removed the retractable legs found on older Cintiq models. The official Wacom Cintiq Pro 27 Stand will set you back an additional $500, and is fully adjustable, supporting 20 degrees of display rotation. If you’re not keen on Wacom...

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Logitech announces its first mechanical keyboard specifically for the Mac

Logitech’s new MX Mechanical Mini for Mac, and MX Master 3S for Mac. | Image: Logitech

Logitech’s MX Mechanical Mini for Mac is the company’s first mechanical keyboard that’s “optimized for Mac.” As its name suggests, the keyboard is a tweaked version of the MX Mechanical Mini that Logitech released earlier this year, with a couple of Mac-specific features. It’s part of a quartet of new Mac accessories the company is announcing today which also include the MX Master 3S for Mac mouse, the Lift for Mac ergonomic mouse, and the K380 Bluetooth Keyboard for Mac.

Specifically, the Apple features of the MX Mechanical Mini for Mac include the removal of the Windows and Alt legends on the original MX Mechanical Mini, leaving only the macOS Option and Command keys. Alongside its dark gray version it’s also available in a new light...

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