The biggest news from Minecraft Live 2022

Art for the Minecraft Dungeons Halloween update. | Image: Mojang

Minecraft Live is back for another year, and, just like with past livestreams, the 2022 edition had some notable developments for fans of the inescapable sandbox game. That includes a look ahead at the next major update for the main version of Minecraft as well as details on spinoffs like Dungeons and Legends. If you couldn’t catch the event, ahem, live, here’s the big stuff you missed.

Image: Mojang

Look at those camels.

Minecraft 1.20 will be focused on self-expression

The next big Minecraft update, which brings the game up to version 1.20, doesn’t have a name or a date attached to it yet — and that’s on purpose. At Minecraft Live, the team spoke about keeping expectations in check by not revealing the full...

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Meta’s Horizon Worlds VR platform is reportedly struggling to keep users

Image: Meta

Horizon Worlds, Meta’s social universe set in virtual reality (VR), is reportedly struggling to gain and keep users. According to internal documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal, Horizon Worlds currently has around 200,000 monthly active users, a dip from the 300,000-user milestone Meta confirmed it hit back in February.

Horizon Worlds lets users create (or visit) spaces where they can hang out, play games, meet other people, and chat with friends. The platform’s userbase actually increased tenfold following its expansion to all Quest users in the US and Canada last December, something the popularity of Meta’s Quest 2 headset during last year’s holiday shopping season likely contributed to as well.

But now it looks like Meta’s...

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Google’s Pixel 6 is only $20 more than it was during Amazon’s recent Prime Day event

Google’s Pixel 6 was a great value at $599, but a $200 discount makes it even more attractive. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

As expected, the sun has set on Amazon’s Prime Early Access sale, along with the litany of counter sales running elsewhere. Despite this, however, there are still plenty of solid deals to check out at Amazon and Best Buy, many of which are holdouts from earlier in the week. Some of these products may not be available for their lowest prices ever, true, but they’re still worth a look if you missed them earlier this week.

A bit of housekeeping before we dig in, though. While there are plenty of other deals available today, you can also sign up for our sweepstakes for a chance to win a sack full of free gear hand-picked by The _Verge’_s deals team. Just head over to this page and sign up before the morning of October 19th to throw your hat in...

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One designer’s quest to build the world’s greatest desk accessories

Jeff Sheldon’s desk is a well-known thing on the internet – now he’s trying to upgrade it.

Ugmonk started as a T-shirt store — now founder Jeff Sheldon is trying to turn it into something much more ambitious. But as he knows, hardware is hard.

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The human threat to abortion seekers

Vincent Kilbride / The Verge

In the years before Roe v. Wade, an anonymous group of Chicago-area women known only as The Janes came together to provide safe, clandestine abortions to pregnant people in need. Over the course of several years, the group provided over 11,000 abortions. When they were finally busted by the police in 1972, it wasn’t because of police surveillance or the group’s anti-war activism or even their willingness to provide abortions to the pregnant family members of police officers. It was a family member of a Jane patient who tipped off the police.

“Some nosey bitch tried to snitch on someone who needed an abortion,” says Renee Bracey Sherman, founder and executive director of the abortion storytelling organization We Testify.

Fifty years...

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AT&T ‘committed to ensuring’ it never bribes lawmakers again after $23 million fine

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

AT&T Illinois will pay $23 million after it admitted to making payments to former Illinois Speaker of the House Michael J. Madigan’s political ally in return for his “vote and influence over a bill,” according to a Friday press release from the Department of Justice (via Ars Technica). The company will also have to cooperate with the government’s investigation into the alleged misconduct and will have to set up a compliance and ethics program that the government will receive reports on. If the company keeps up its end of the bargain, the government will dismiss its prosecution.

According to the DOJ, in 2017 AT&T paid one of Madigan’s allies $22,500 through a lobbying firm that it worked with. AT&T employees tried to make it seem as if...

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Apple Store workers in Oklahoma vote to unionize

Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Workers at Apple’s Penn Square store in Oklahoma City have voted to unionize with the Communications Workers of America, with 56 yeses, and 32 nos. According to the National Labor Relations Board, which oversaw the election, all regular full-time and part-time employees at the store were eligible to vote, 95 in total.

The election was only the second one carried out for a US Apple store. In June, workers in Maryland voted to unionize in association with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Another election was scheduled to happen in Atlanta, but the CWA called it off, claiming that the company had made a fair election “impossible” by intimidating workers.

Apple has faced several complaints about anti-union...

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A tweet about hair relaxer kits connected models from the boxes with women who grew up seeing them

A burst of tweets from women who, as children, modeled for relaxer brands is one of the latest instances of the Black Twitter community finding an unexpected connection and reminiscing over a shared experience.

where are these girls today? show yourselves. https://t.co/WHSaNHL6Me

— ́ (@AshTheDonLeon) October 2, 2022

The discussion kicked off after @prettiestluxury tweeted a collage of models who posed on a box of no-lye relaxer saying, “I remember wanting to be the face of a hair relaxer so bad.” That was followed by a quote tweet asking these women to “show themselves,” which became the centerpiece of a wider trend.

Oh, they’re looking for us, here’s mine : https://t.co/kYqhSezIhB pic.twitter.com/QDSpZ6fqT0

— Nomsa Sasa...

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Former Nikola CEO found guilty of defrauding investors with lies about hydrogen truck

The company was accused of faking a video that showed its truck driving | Getty Images

Trevor Milton, founder and former CEO of electric and hydrogen vehicle company Nikola, has been found guilty on three counts of fraud after a jury decided that he lied to investors to increase the startup’s stock. An indictment filed in 2021 accused the company of staging a video that purportedly showed its Nikola One semi driving under its own power, when it was actually rolling down a hill.

Milton was also accused of misleading investors about where the batteries in its vehicles came from, the development process for its pickup truck, and about how far the vehicles were in development, according to Reuters. He stepped down from his role as CEO in September 2020.

Milton’s charges include one count of securities fraud, and two counts of...

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Spotify survey hints at $19.99 ‘Platinum’ plan that would include HiFi streaming

Nick Barclay / The Verge

Is Spotify’s long-delayed HiFi streaming tier finally nearing its debut? A survey served to at least one user suggests that the company hasn’t forgotten about it, and HiFi might be packaged into a new more expensive “Platinum” plan that would come with other perks.

Over on Reddit, a former Spotify subscriber shared screenshots of a survey that they were recently asked to take. The questionnaire asked whether they would rejoin / switch to the service based on new plan tiers. The usual free and individual options are shown, but the survey also mentions a $19.99 Platinum tier that would carry over the standard paid benefits while adding HiFi and extra features called Studio Sound, Headphone Tuner, Audio Insights, Library Pro, and Playlist...

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She-Hulk tried to save itself from Marvel’s finale formula by jumping the shark

She-Hulk having a little chat with the writers of her show in the real world. | Image: Disney Plus / Marvel Studios

She-Hulk’s season one finale was a tribute to John Byrne’s fourth wall-breaking comics and a rumination on how formulaic Marvel’s live-action stories tend to be

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The best iOS lock screen widget is made by Google

Google’s helpful iOS lock screen widgets are here. | Image: Google

Google announced widgets for the new iOS 16 lock screens last month when the OS left beta and went public, but they weren’t quite ready. Now, the company has just released the last of its promised widgets, including one extremely important shortcut: a Google Maps app search for nearby coffee shops. We can all stop searching for the most useful lock screen widget because this is it.

Before we get to that, there are, naturally, a lot of practical new widgets on offer. There’s a Gmail widget that can give you a glimpse of what’s in store for your workday and a Google Lens shortcut so you can quickly answer life’s burning questions, like “what kind of plant did I just buy?” There’s even a shortcut to Chrome’s cute little dino game, which...

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Google is now testing passkey support for Chrome and Android

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google announced on Wednesday morning that it has taken another step on the journey toward a passwordless future by rolling out support for passkey login to Android and Chrome. Passkeys, which let you use your phone or computer’s built-in authentication systems instead of a traditional password, have support from all the major tech companies, with Apple, Google, and Microsoft pledging to bring the feature to their OSes.

Essentially, passkeys are a credential stored on a device, like your phone or computer, that confirms to a website or application that you are who you say you are (though Google is still working on the passkey API for native Android apps). You verify your identity to the device, and it can then securely log in to sites...

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Louisiana kicks off one of the US’s biggest carbon capture projects yet

The CF Industries fertilizer complex in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, on June 30th, 2022. | Photo by Emily Kask for The Washington Post via Getty Images

A massive effort to capture the pollution causing climate change is marching forward in Louisiana, and it’sbecoming a major flashpoint in the debate over how to clean up an “energy state” speckled with fossil fuel and petrochemical plants.

This week, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards announced an “unprecedented” collaboration between two oil and gas giants, ExxonMobil and EnLink Midstream, and leading ammonia producer CF Industries. In what they’re calling the “largest-of-its-kind commercial agreement,” the three companies will attemptto capture 2 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, transport the gas across the state, and bury it underground.

Three companies will attemptto capture 2 million tons of carbon dioxide...

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Meta’s Instant Articles for Facebook will be going away

Support will reportedly end in April 2023. | Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta will be ending support for its Instant Articles format in the Facebook app next year, Axios reports. The quick-loading article format first launched in 2015, but Meta is moving away from it as part of a broader pullback from news-focused products. The company has told its media partners that in six months (or April 2023), Facebook will no longer support Instant Articles, according to Meta spokesperson Erin Miller. After support ends, news links on Facebook will take a user to a publisher’s mobile site.

In recent months, Meta has been walking back some of its investments in news. The company shifted resources away from Facebook’s News tab and Bulletin newsletter product earlier this year and, just this month, said that it would be s...

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How to force quit an app in Windows

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

We all want everything to work just fine all the time. But sometimes they just don’t. Your Windows app slows down. You get the dreaded “this program is not responding” pop-up. Your whole computer freezes.

In cases like this, the best option is often to force quit the unresponsive app. This means your computer will force the program to close, regardless of what it’s in the middle of doing or trying to do. There are several ways you can do this on a Windows PC. Here they are.

• Press Alt + F4 (and maybe also Fn, depending on how your Function row is programmed). This will close whatever application you currently have selected.

Simple as this.

• Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete and select Task Manager or Ctrl + Shift + Esc to...

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Nvidia says it’s ‘unlaunching’ the 12GB RTX 4080 after backlash

Image: Nvidia

Nvidia is pausing the launch of its upcoming 12GB RTX 4080 graphics card. After originally unveiling the 12GB RTX 4080 last month alongside a much more powerful 16GB model, Nvidia now admits it messed up with the naming. “The RTX 4080 12GB is a fantastic graphics card, but it’s not named right,” says Nvidia in a blog post. “Having two GPUs with the 4080 designation is confusing.”

Nvidia is now pausing the launch of the 12GB RTX 4080 model but will still go ahead and launch the 16GB version on November 16th.

Criticism had been building over Nvidia’s decision to label the 12GB model as an RTX 4080, particularly when the 16GB model was so different. The RTX 4080 12GB was supposed to start at $899 and include 7,680 CUDA Cores, a 2.31GHz...

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How a fleet of robots could help solve the Great Lakes plastic pollution problem

Plastic floating in one of the Great Lakes. | Image: Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup

Waste capture devices collect thousands of pieces of trash in the Great Lakes each day. Can they also motivate humans to stop putting waste in the water in the first place?

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The Pixel Watch doesn’t offically support wireless charging for a reason

It took me 10 attempts to get this shot. You’ll have much better luck if you remove the straps, but even then I wouldn’t call it reliable. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

Google’s official line is that the Pixel Watch does not support Qi charging or reverse charging from a phone. However, in the last few days, many users have anecdotally reported that these wireless charging methods do, in fact, work. Curious, I tried it out for myself, and I’m sorry to say that, while it does sort of work, it’s simply not reliable.

First off, I decided to try charging the Pixel Watch using my Pixel 7 Pro review unit. I turned on the Battery Sharing feature, plopped the watch on the back of the phone, and it worked! For a grand total of 10 seconds. While the charging animation popped up, it never actually maintained a stable-enough connection to meaningfully charge. Sometimes I got it to work for as long as a minute, but...

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Google now labels ads as ‘Sponsored’ in mobile search results

Google’s new mobile search results, complete with reformatted favicons, site names, and the new “Sponsored” tag. | Image: Google

Google is changing how it formats search results on mobile, the company announced today. Paid results will now carry a larger “Sponsored” tag rather than the simple “Ad” tag they had before, and each website’s name is now listed at the top of each search result. The “size and shape” of each website’s favicons are also getting updated to make them easier to see. The new search results format is rolling out now on mobile, and Google says it plans to test a “similar experience” for desktop searches “soon.”

In its blog post, the company explains that the new “Sponsored” tag is being introduced to ensure that “ads are clearly labeled” with a tag that’s “prominent and clear across different types of paid content.” Meanwhile, showing site names...

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Apple’s mixed reality headset reportedly lets you make payments with your eyes

Apple’s Face ID has long provided biometric logins for the iPhone. | Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge

Apple’s rumored virtual and augmented reality headset will reportedly use iris scanning tech for logins and payments, according to The Information. The report, which cites two people involved in developing the headset, says the scanning is supposed to make it easier for multiple people to use the headset with their own accounts.

The eye-scanning system echoes iOS tools like Apple’s fingerprint or Face ID logins, and it would take advantage of the device’s many cameras. It would also help differentiate Apple’s offering from its main competitor: the Meta Quest Pro, which the company formerly known as Facebook announced earlier this week. The Quest Pro features inward-facing cameras that can track eye and face motion, but it doesn’t (at...

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A Paramount Plus annual subscription is 50 percent off with a free Fire TV Stick Lite

Paramount Plus may not be the most popular streaming service, but it has lots of live soccer. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

We may still be picking ourselves up from the Prime Day hangover, but don’t fret, we’ve gotten some rest, fresh pots of coffee, and more deals. For example, you can get half off an annual subscription to Paramount Plus along with a free Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite streaming dongle. This deal makes the 12-month Essential ad-supported plan just $24.99 (normally $49.99) and the Premium mostly ad-free plan $49.99 (normally $99.99). Plus, you get that Fire TV Stick Lite, capable of streaming up to 1080p, which is a value of $29.99.

This promo is based around the UEFA Champions League, which is in the midst of its group stages right now, and a one-year subscription would cover you well beyond the scheduled June 10th final in 2023. But if you’re...

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Decision to Leave is a gloriously frustrating mystery

Park Hae-il and Tang Wei in Decision to Leave | Image: CJ ENM

Park Chan-wook, the director behind Oldboy and The Handmaiden, returns with a film that’s part whodunit, part ill-fated romance

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How to choose your YouTube handle

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Handles, usually indicated by an @ sign in front of a name or nickname, are useful for people who want to create an identity, indicate their opinions, or make a joke — and many social networks, such as Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook, have adopted it. Now, finally, YouTube is as well — and not just for its established creators.

Until recently, the only people who had YouTube handles — individual URLs that allow people to find your videos — were those who had at least 100 subscribers. The rest of us were using URLs that went something like youtube.com/user/your.handle. Now, YouTube is rolling out handles to all its users — @ names that will be used to identify you in channel pages, Shorts, and other YouTube areas.

YouTube is sending out...

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How to use Low Power Mode on the Apple Watch

Low Power Mode was introduced in watchOS 9 with the Apple Watch Ultra in mind. | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

The Apple Watch has never been known for having long battery life. Case in point: Apple never budged from the 18-hour battery life estimate until it launched the Apple Watch Ultra. But with watchOS 9, the company has introduced a new Low Power Mode to help extend the time between charges.

Previously, the Apple Watch had a Power Reserve mode, which shut off any functions aside from your ability to tell time and turned your smartwatch into a “dumb” one until you could get it onto a charger. This new mode is different — it’s more like the iPhone’s Low Power Mode. When enabled, you’ll still be able to use your Apple Watch, but certain power-hungry features will be turned off or limited to conserve the battery.

What Low Power Mode does

On...

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Is Microsoft giving up on the Surface Headphones?

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Microsoft introduced several new devices this week including the Surface Pro 9, Surface Laptop 5, and Surface Studio 2 Plus. They’re all fairly iterative updates; you know that’s true when Microsoft’s hype videos emphasize new colors and integrated 5G connectivity (for the Arm-powered Pro 9) as the most exciting “new” features. We finally got a release date for the helpful accessibility kit, at least.

But Microsoft didn’t have anything new to share about its personal audio lineup. It’s been two years since the company announced the Surface Headphones 2. And those arrived around two years after the original pair in 2018. But the October hardware event came and went without any news of Surface Headphones 3. So if two years was the cadence...

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It’s time to rethink how we fight election misinformation

Vincent Kilbride / The Verge

Last month, all four major online social platforms — Meta, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok — released their plans for combating misinformation and disinformation in the weeks leading up to the 2022 US midterms.

Meta will have voting alerts, real-time fact-checking in both English and Spanish, and as it did in 2020, it will also be banning “new political, electoral and social issue ads” during the week leading up to the election. Twitter is focusing on “prebunks,” proactively fact-checking content in users’ feeds based on search terms and hashtags and will have election-themed Explore pages. YouTube is rolling out information widgets on search pages for candidates. And TikTok will have curated election hashtags full of vetted information...

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Big Tech employees are TikToking on the job — and their bosses don’t always like it

Jarett Sitter / The Verge

A day in the life of a 20-something on TikTok who works in tech might look something like this: start the day with free breakfast and a latte. Immediately go out for a multihour lunch break. Return to the office and wander around the spacious, light-filled space, visiting the nap room or the Harry Potter-themed meeting space. “Finish up work.” Then head out at 5PM.

A LinkedIn employee’s workday includes making face masks for “a little self-care moment,” followed by eucalyptus hand towels and kombucha in the office. A Google employee’s day involves scooters, rooftop views, hanging out with a dog, and meeting up with co-workers.

This is the “tech girlie” side of TikTok, where lifestyle vlogging has given rise to a cottage industry of...

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iOS 16 quietly added native Dvorak keyboard support, delighting weirdos like me

Apple’s native iOS keyboard in Dvorak layout. | Screenshot by Jon Porter / The Verge

Here’s a fun iOS 16 feature that’s almost completely slipped under our radar: native support for the Dvorak keyboard layout. Ars Technica reported this week that the touch-typing optimized keyboard can now be selected in Apple’s software alongside the more traditional QWERTY, AZERTY, and QWERTZ layouts. Previously, Dvorak on iOS has only been available via an external physical keyboard, or third-party software.

Although I’ve gone on the record as being a proud Dvorak user for over a decade, when it comes to touchscreen keyboards I’ve always been happy with QWERTY. The main benefit of Dvorak is the way it shares the workload equally between all of your fingers when touch-typing. It places all the vowels on the left side of the keyboard’s...

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Valve’s latest Steam Deck update introduces longer custom boot animations

Valve’s latest beta Steam Deck update enables users to set longer custom startup videos on the handheld. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Valve released its latest Steam Deck beta update yesterday, which includes longer boot animations among the usual array of bug fixes and optimizations. Now, the maximum length of a boot sequence has been increased from 10 seconds to 30 seconds, opening up the possibility for users to create longer custom startups.

Some users discovered they could create their own sequences prior to any native support, which as Rock Paper Shotgun reports, have ranged from nostalgic:

Mother Interface from Alien (with sound) fromSteamDeckBootVids

To, well, whatever this is:

ummm...
you probably should ignore my steam deck boot vid pic.twitter.com/eVFfpwzdrJ

— Everdraed (@Everdraed) October 9, 2022

Rather than attempt to...

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