Meet the CO2 battery cozying up with a wind energy giant

Energy Dome’s CO2 battery. | Image: Energy Dome

There’s a new CO2 battery in the energy game, and it just might be the assist turbines need to harness the full power of the wind. The technology uses carbon dioxide to store energy in the form of pressure and heat. It’s a relatively straightforward solution that gives the CO2 battery some more flexibility than more traditional alternatives, like lithium-ion batteries.

Lithium-ion batteries have become ubiquitous companions to solar panels. But the new CO2 battery could have an edge when it comes to storing energy from winds, which can be even more temperamental than the sun. Energy Dome, the company that developed the CO2 battery, announced a new partnership with global wind giant Ørsted last month.

The two companies plan to run a...

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What does Mark Zuckerberg think ‘open’ means?

Laura Normand / The Verge

Mark Zuckerberg wants to own the future of computing — but not alone. That’s the intended takeaway from this year’s Meta (formerly Facebook, formerlier Oculus) Connect, where the Meta CEO described his plans for a new computing platform. “In each generation of computing that I’ve seen so far — PCs, mobile — there’s basically an open ecosystem and there’s a closed ecosystem,” Zuckerberg said. “I strongly believe that an open, interoperable metaverse built by many different developers and companies is going to be better for everyone.”

“Openness” is typically considered a good thing in computing. It can promote competition and let people use tech in creative ways the designers didn’t expect. But Zuckerberg’s definition of an “open...

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The company that owns Shein will pay New York state $1.9 million for data breach

Illustration by Beatrice Sala

The company behind ultra fast fashion brands Shein and Romwe will pay New York state $1.9 million over a data breach affecting millions of customers. The fine stems from charges that Zoetop failed to secure customers’ data, didn’t properly inform customers of a data breach, and tried to keep the extent of the leak quiet.

The penalty comes after an investigation by the Office of the Attorney General into a 2018 hack in which credit card and personal information, like names, emails, and hashed passwords, was stolen. The data breach affected 39 million Shein and 7 million Romwe accounts, including more than 800,000 accounts belonging to New Yorkers.

Romwe reset passwords more than a year after it was hacked and told customers they’d simply...

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Steam’s revamped mobile app is available for everyone on Android and iOS

The Verge

Valve just updated the Steam mobile app on Android and iOS, and it’s vastly different (in a good way) than the previous version. In addition to a new redesign, it comes with a couple of new features that are supposed to make it easier to sign in on Steam without having to enter a Steam Guard code.

For one, the app lets you view your entire game library, which appears in a grid-like format, showing game covers and titles that you can sort through with the included filters. You remotely update and download games on your PC and receive notifications for sales, friend requests, and more.

The app also introduces a new “store browsing experience for mobile screens,” as well as a way to search for and purchase games, complete...

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Alex Jones must pay over $964 million for Sandy Hook lies, court rules

Photo by Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images

A Connecticut jury has ordered Infowars host Alex Jones to pay $964.2 million for defaming the families of eight mass shooting victims and an FBI agent in his second penalty this year. The decision came after a tumultuous trial that saw Jones declare he was “done saying I’m sorry” for spreading false claims about the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The damages are split between 15 plaintiffs and range between $120 million and $28.8 million apiece.

Jones was sued for defamation by a group of families who had relatives killed at Sandy Hook. As with a previous case in Jones’ home state of Texas, Jones lost the case by default for refusing to cooperate, so the trial determined the damages he owed. A third trial is set to...

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25 deals from Amazon’s fall Prime Day event that make for great gifts

Amazon’s latest Kindle Paperwhite starts at $99.99 and makes for a good gift for book lovers. | Image: Chaim Gartenberg

Looking to get a head start on your holiday shopping? Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale offers an excellent opportunity to do so ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There are currently a bunch of fun gifts you can buy that are on sale at record lows, whether you’re looking to gift a pair of the new AirPods Pro or an instant camera like Fujifilm’s Instax Mini 11. If you’re in need of ideas, we’ve curated a guide to some of the best deals on popular presents you can buy right now. What’s more, Best Buy, Target, and Walmart are matching Amazon’s prices in many instances, meaning you don’t need to be a Prime member to take advantage of the discounts elsewhere.

Also, if you want to check out even more deals besides the ones we’ve listed...

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Microsoft’s Surface Pro 9 is the latest major gadget to ditch the headphone jack

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Today marks another chapter in the slow demise of the headphone jack. Microsoft has quietly removed the 3.5mm connector from its brand-new Surface Pro 9. The change is confirmed on the tech specs page, which no longer lists a headphone jack among the device’s “connections.” But it’s very much present on the same page for the Surface Pro 8.

This seems to be the direct result of Microsoft bringing the Intel and Arm versions of the Surface Pro 9 together in the same chassis. The Surface Pro X has never had a 3.5mm jack, so now, the Intel hardware is coming in line with that design direction.

But I’d argue it’s a more controversial omission this time. Why? The new universal outer enclosure is essentially the same size as that of the Surface...

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Microsoft takes the gloves off as it battles Sony for its Activision acquisition

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft isn’t happy with Sony and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority. The UK regulator signaled an in-depth review of Microsoft’s $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard last month, and the CMA has now published its full 76-page report (PDF) on its findings. The CMA says it has concerns that Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard deal could lessen competition in game consoles, subscriptions, and cloud gaming, but Microsoft thinks the regulator has simply been listening to Sony’s lawyers too much.

Microsoft pleaded for its deal on the day of the Phase 2 decision last month, but now the gloves are well and truly off. Microsoft describes the CMA’s concerns as “misplaced” and says that the regulator “adopts Sony’s complaints...

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Signal is ‘starting to phase out SMS support’ from its Android app

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Signal is beginning to phase out support for sending and receiving standard text messages from its Android app after years of supporting the ability to have them alongside your Signal messages, which are end-to-end encrypted and sent using data. The company says that if you have its app set as your default SMS and MMS client, you’ll have to pick a new app to handle those duties.

According to a Wednesday blog post, users will have “several months to transition away from SMS in Signal” and to migrate their messages to a new app. Of course, the post also recommends trying to convert the people you were texting into Signal users. If you do use the feature (you can check by going to Signal’s settings screen, then to Chats > SMS and MMS and...

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Two never-published NES games are up for auction on eBay

Photo by TENGKU BAHAR / AFP via Getty Images

The Video Game History Foundation is raising money to win the auction and share these never-before-seen games with the public

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren demands details on Texas crypto mining energy consumption

Getty

Democrats are pressing Texas energy regulators to disclose how much energy crypto mining companies consume from the state’s vulnerable power grid nearly a year after it failed during an extreme winter storm.

In the Wednesday letter, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and six other Democrats pressed Texas grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, for information detailing how much electricity crypto mining operations have consumed and how much carbon dioxide emissions they’ve released over the last six years.

“I’ve been working for the last year to make sure the public understands the economic and climate risks from crypto,” Warren said in a statement to The Verge on Wednesday. “Cryptominers’ energy use rivals that of entire...

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Samsung Knox Matrix plans ‘private blockchain’ security for appliances, phones, and TVs

Samsung’s Knox Matrix is supposed to secure your devices through “multi-layered monitoring.” | Image: Samsung

Samsung’s rolling out a new way to keep smart devices secure, and it apparently involves putting them on the blockchain. At the Samsung Developer Conference today, the company announced the Samsung Knox Matrix, a not-yet-released security solution that will include a “private blockchain system” to protect Galaxy devices, TVs, appliances, and more.

Samsung is vague about how it will all work but says Knox Matrix protects the smart home ecosystem with “multi-layered mutual monitoring.”

The company also claims Knox Matrix can share credentials from one device to another while securing the information shared between them to make logins more convenient without reducing security. Samsung’s example suggests that, with Knox Matrix, your phone’s...

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Google Pixel Watch review: it’s a smarter Fitbit

The Pixel Watch is a fair attempt at a first-gen smartwatch, but Google has quite a few growing pains to address

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Samsung and Google make it easier to share your smart home with Matter

Samsung reveals how Matter’s multi-admin feature will work with SmartThings. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Ahead of its annual developer conference, Samsung has revealed details about how Matter smart home devices will work on its Samsung Galaxy phones and tablets. The company announced you’ll soon be able to use Galaxy devices to onboard Matter-compatible devices to both SmartThings and Google Home ecosystems.

The interoperability with Google Home is building on top of Matter’s multi-admin feature. Multi-admin is a key part of the Matter specification that all devices and platforms are required to support. It allows a device in one ecosystem to be shared with and controlled by another. So, for example, an Amazon smart thermostat could be controlled by the Apple Home app or Apple’s Siri voice assistant if everything is Matter-enabled.

E...

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The Polestar 3 is an electric SUV that trades fancy distractions for raw technological prowess

The Swedish-Chinese automaker is out to compete in the highly lucrative SUV market in the US. | Image: Polestar

The Swedish-Chinese automaker’s third EV will have 300 miles of range, a starting price of $83,900, and a host of high-powered tech from suppliers like Google, Qualcomm, Luminar, Nvidia, and more

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Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro review: better and better

They’re not quite the super-helpful, ultra-intelligent phones that Google wants them to be, but the latest Pixel devices are more competitive than ever

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This 100W USB-C cable with a built-in power meter is just $9.79 for Prime Day

More accessories could use names that make us think of soup or cartoon beagles. | Image: SooPii

Amazon Prime Early Access deals come in all shapes and sizes, and sometimes they come from brands with silly names that make us chuckle like children. Case in point: the SooPii 100W four-foot USB-C cable, which is on sale for just $9.79 at Amazon. This deal is exclusive to Prime members, but it knocks $4.20 (nice) off this handy, black cable. There’s also a red version for the same $9.79, which represents a steeper discount of $9.20 — because the color red looks cool, and cool colors cost more, I guess. If a four-foot-long cable is too short for you, there’s also a 6.6-foot version in black or red for $12.79 ($3.20 off).

But hang on, Sloopy, there’s a bit more you should know about this cable. While it’s super convenient for charging,...

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The Xbox app for Windows now runs natively on Arm devices with Xbox Cloud Gaming

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft is delivering a new ARM64 version of the Xbox app for Windows today. It means the Xbox app will run natively on Surface Pro X and other Arm-powered devices as well as Microsoft’s latest SQ3-powered Surface Pro 9, which was announced earlier today.

Microsoft confirmed the new Xbox app for Arm in a blog post today. While the Xbox app will now run smoothly on Arm-powered Windows hardware, games are another matter. There still aren’t many Windows games that are compiled natively for Arm, so you’ll either need to take advantage of the built-in emulation here or just stream games from elsewhere.

Image: Microsoft

The Xbox app on Windows on Arm.

Thankfully, Microsoft has added Xbox Cloud Gaming support to the...

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How cell carriers prepared for and responded to Hurricane Ian

Mobile cell towers, drones, and helicopters. | Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

On September 28th, Hurricane Ian hit southwest Florida, lashing the area with category four winds and proceeding to cross through the state and then into the Carolinas and Virginia. As someone with friends, family, and co-workers dotted throughout the sunshine state, I’m used to the fear that comes with seeing photos of familiar places inundated with water and the uncertainty of not knowing when you can expect to hear from the people you care about. Even relatively minor storms can temporarily knock out power and cell service; hurricanes can do so for days or weeks, extending the time spent waiting for the “I’m okay” texts or phone calls.

Ian took out its fair share of towers in Florida; according to the Federal Communications...

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Microsoft Edge’s Workspaces feature lets you share a group of tabs with a single link

Workspaces groups together tabs and lets you share them with a single link. | Image: Microsoft

Workspaces is a new feature coming to Microsoft Edge designed to make it easier to organize and share the dozens of browser tabs that you use on a daily basis. The feature has been popping up in Edge’s early preview builds for over a year now, but Microsoft is offering more detail on it today as part of its Ignite conference alongside new security and shopping features for its browser.

Screenshots of Workspaces in preview show how users can create groups of tabs by clicking an icon to the left of the tab row. They can add tabs and name and color-code each group. They can then access, edit, and open previously created groups from that same icon. If you’ve ever used a tab manager add-on like OneTab, then Workspaces seems like a neat,...

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Microsoft Places is a new app to keep track of your hybrid team

Image: Microsoft

As part of today’s Ignite conference, Microsoft is launching a new workplace app specifically designed to help with the challenges of hybrid working. The app is called Microsoft Places, and the company says it’s launching “soon” in beta.

A screenshot of the app published by Microsoft today shows a dashboard view that tracks what percentage of your team is due to be in the office on a given day and lets you list where you’re working in a given week. As well as tracking people’s locations, the app is also designed to help you organize your work around them by giving “insights and guidance” on travel time as well as helping people navigate to work locations within offices themselves.

Image: Microsoft

A dashboard...

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The Verge’s favorite spooky Halloween entertainment

Scene from The Strangers (2008) | Image: Rogue Pictures

It’s October, which means that all the Halloween lawn and store decorations are out, as are all the holiday TV specials, horror movies, and terrifying games. Which to choose for a really good scare?

We asked The Verge staff members to tell us about their favorite ways to generate chills, and they came up with a wide variety of Halloween-ish entertainment. Some of their choices are subtly tension-building, some are truly frightening, some are really nasty, and some are just great camp horror.

Whatever types of frights you’re into, you should find something here to help you celebrate what may be our favorite fall holiday.

Novels and short stories

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

I first encountered Shirley Jackson’s strange and...

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New Microsoft 365 app replaces Microsoft’s Office app with new features and design

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft is rebranding its built-in Office apps on Windows to Microsoft 365. While the existing app is mainly used for quick access to Office apps, this new Microsoft 365 one is designed to really leverage Microsoft’s Graph network to provide additional apps, relevant documents, and a feed of meetings and information that might be useful to plan a day ahead.

This new app won’t be limited to Microsoft’s commercial customers either, as consumers and students will also be able to take advantage of it. It will include the regular access to Office apps, a feed of recent documents and files, and the ability to browse by meetings.

It also now includes all Microsoft apps, not just Office ones, and there’s even a section for third-party apps...

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Microsoft Teams Premium arrives with meeting recaps and live translations

Microsoft Teams Premium. | Image: Microsoft

Microsoft is launching Microsoft Teams Premium today, a new offering designed to boost its chat and collaboration app with some AI-powered smart features. The biggest addition is a new meeting recap feature that essentially adds an AI virtual assistant to each meeting to share highlights and automatically capture all of the important parts. It’s like having your own assistant to take notes for you, even if you’re not there.

“Today you get a meeting recap, after a meeting you get a recording and the transcript so you can get all that information, but you spend a lot of time sorting through the information to find ‘what’s pertinent or relevant to me,’” explains Nicole Herskowitz, general manager for Microsoft Teams, in an interview with T...

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How to hide apps from your iPhone’s homescreen

If you get annoyed with the number of apps that crowd your iPhone’s homescreen, you probably welcomed a feature that originally came with iOS 14: the App Library, which gathers all of your apps into various categories and displays them on a separate page to the right of your homepages.

The App Library not only adds some automatic organization to your iPhone’s homepages but also allows you to clean up your homescreen by hiding as many apps as you want. You can keep your favorites front and center and get the more utilitarian or less used apps out of the way. (In fact, one way to keep a clean screen is to have all your newly installed apps appear in your App Library only. We offer directions on how to do that here.)

If you want to...

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The best deals of Amazon’s fall Prime Day event

Nicholas Barclay / The Verge

We’re back for day two of Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale, its second Prime Day event of 2022. That means it’s the last chance to take advantage of many of these deals. Our entire team is continuing to scour Amazon’s catalog high and low to find the best tech deals for you, including the great ones, and even some of the “hey, that ain’t bad” variety.

While it’s possible some of these deals may linger a little longer than the official end date, most of them will expire tonight, and may possibly not return until Black Friday and Cyber Monday come around next month. So, get a head start on your holiday shopping, and pick up that big-ticket item you’ve been patiently waiting for, or jump on a fun impulse purchase (we won’t tell anyone).

B...

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Warner Bros. Television’s massive job cuts worsen WBD’s diversity problem

Image: The Verge

Warner Bros. Television is laying off 82 of its employees, making up around 19 percent of its workforce, according to reports from Deadline and Variety. The studio has also chosen not to fill 43 open positions — making up 125 (or 26 percent) of its jobs in total — with those in unscripted, scripted, and animation most affected.

This most recent round of layoffs comes as Warner Bros. looks to cut costs following its megamerger with Discovery led by CEO David Zaslav. In August, Warner Bros. Discovery eliminated about 70 positions at HBO Max as part of a massive restructuring that also killed the nearly completed Batgirl film and shelved dozens of other shows and movies from the streaming service. As part of the merge, HBO Max and Discovery...

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Everyone walks differently — so this exoskeleton adjusts on the fly

A close-up view of a portable ankle exoskeleton that helps someone walk | Image: Stanford University

A new robotic, boot-like exoskeleton uses wearable sensors to adjust to each person who wears it, markinga significant step forward for robotics. The device, described in a study published today, helps solve one of the big challenges in developing systems that help people walk: that everyone walks differently.

“This exoskeleton personalizes assistance as people walk normally through the real world,” said Steve Collins, associate professor of mechanical engineering and head of the Stanford Biomechatronics Laboratory.

Exoskeletons as a concept aren’t new — researchers think they could help people with mobility issues or remove some of the strain from walking for people in jobs that require constant movement. But so far, devices that...

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Apple shows Windows some love with new Music, TV, and iCloud photos integration

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple Music is finally arriving in the Microsoft Store today. Xbox users will be able to access it immediately, and it will also arrive on Windows next year. Both Apple Music and Apple TV will be available in preview versions soon for Windows, allowing Apple subscribers to access music and TV shows natively on Windows without having to use web versions or the pre-existing iTunes app. Microsoft is also integrating iCloud photos into its built-in Photos app on Windows 11.

A new update will see iCloud photos appear in the main Windows Photos app, making it easy for iPhone owners to find photos from their devices on a Windows PC or laptop. All Windows users need to do is install Apple’s latest iCloud Windows app to get this integration.

...

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Why Meta’s CTO is bullish on VR

The front of the Meta Quest Pro headset. | Photo by Alex Heath / The Verge

One mild sunny day last week, I made my first visit to Meta’s campus in Burlingame, CA, to experience the company’s latest big swing in its efforts to build a metaverse. The centerpiece of the day, as well as Tuesday morning’s keynote address at the Connect conference, is the Meta Quest Pro: a $1,499 standalone mixed reality headset, shipping October 25th, that the company hopes will spur a new wave of adoption by professionals and businesses.

Yesterday I wrote about what Meta had to prove at Connect: that the metaverse is not only happening, but happening now, and that Meta is better positioned to capture the upside of the coming platform shift than anyone else. Indeed, that was the core theme of Tuesday’s keynote, as CEO Mark...

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