Netflix’s new cheaper plan with ads doesn’t work on Apple TV at launch

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Netflix’s more affordable Basic with Ads plan goes live today in several countries, but there’s one popular streaming platform where you won’t be able to access it on day one: it’s not supported on the Apple TV. Thankfully, this is only temporary and should be resolved in the near future.

As noted by 9to5Mac, Netflix has a support page up that directly confirms as much. It simply says, “Basic with Ads isn’t supported on Apple TV,” without any details as to why that’s the case. Plenty of other AVOD (advertising-based video on demand) services are present on tvOS, and since Basic with Ads works on iPhones and iPads, this doesn’t seem to be the result of a wider spat between Apple and Netflix. A Netflix spokesperson confirmed to 9to5Mac...

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Netflix’s $6.99 per month ad tier is now live

Now you can get Netflix cheaper — but with ads. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Netflix with ads is finally here. After resisting ads in its streaming service, the company is rolling out its Netflix Basic with Ads in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the UK, the US, and on November 10th, Spain. It costs $6.99 per month in the US.

On Basic with Ads, you’ll see an “average” of four to five ads every hour, COO Greg Peters wrote in a blog post about the tier in October. Ads will be 15 or 30 seconds long, and you’ll see them before and during the things you watch, though you can’t skip or fast-forward through them. (You can pause ads.) Netflix is partnering with Microsoft as its “global advertising technology and sales partner” for the new tier.

Like with the ad-free Basic tier, TV...

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Europe is warming faster than any other continent

A pedestrian uses an umbrella to protect herself from the sun, at Canary Wharf, during a heatwave in London, UK, on Monday, July 18th, 2022. | Jose Sarmento Matos/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Europe is heating up faster than any other continent in the world, a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) finds. Since 1991, temperatures in Europe have risen more than twice as fast as global average temperatures. That’s brought extreme swings in weather, from devastating floods to deadly heatwaves.

The consequences are brutal, despite Europe having more resources than many other parts of the world to cope with climate change. For example, three in four people in Europe have access to early warning systems for disasters exacerbated by climate change. In comparison, the United Nations recently found that half of the world lacks adequate early warning systems.

“Europe presents a live picture of a warming world and...

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The best entertainment of 2022

Peter Weller in Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet Of Curiosities. | Image: Netflix

We all know the feeling: you sit down in front of the TV, exhausted after a long day, only to become absolutely paralyzed by choice. There’s so much to watch and play that settling on one single thing to do can be a challenge. So we’re here to make your evenings a little less stressful. Throughout 2022 this page will be regularly updated with all of our favorite entertainment experiences — everything from the latest hit on Netflix to that open-world game people can’t stop talking about — to make those moments of choice that much easier. If you see a show, game, or movie in this collection, know that it’s an experience we fully recommend.

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Level locks had a secret Thread radio this whole time

The Level Lock Plus and Level’s other locks will soon work with many more smart home platforms. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Level’s entire lineup of Bluetooth smart locks — best known for hardly looking like smart locks at all — have had hardware support for Thread this whole time and will soon be updated to support Matter over Thread. You love to see it.

Level’s smart locks, which include the Bolt, Lock, Lock Touch, and the just-reviewed Lock Plus with Home Key, are clever and discreet — the Bolt fits entirely within the cutout of your existing deadbolt. But they were Bluetooth-only, and smart home integration and out-of-home control were limited to Apple Home (with a Bluetooth connection to a HomePod Mini or Apple TV) and Ring (if connected to a Sidewalk Bridge like the Ring Video Doorbell Pro). With such limited platform support, Level’s locks have been...

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Level Lock Plus review: Home Key now, Thread soon

Home Key makes Level Home’s latest ‘invisible’ smart lock even more compelling for Apple users. And once it’s updated with Thread, it’ll be a strong option for everyone else too.

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God of War Ragnarök has six different graphics modes on PS5 alone

Atreus and Kratos in God of War Ragnarök. | Screenshot: God of War Ragnarök

Depending on what features your TV supports, there are as many as six different graphical modes you can use to play Sony’s upcoming God of War Ragnarök on PS5. That’s according to a promotional image released by its developer, Santa Monica Studio, which shows the different options available to you depending on whether you prefer a higher frame rate or a higher resolution and whether you have a 120Hz TV that supports variable refresh rates (VRR).

So if you want your gameplay to be as detailed as possible, then you’ll want the 4K / 30fps mode, but if you want it to be smooth, then there’s a 60fps option that can drop its resolution down as far as 1440p. But if you have a 120Hz television, then the quality mode changes to a 40fps target...

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Peloton CEO promises the company is ‘done’ with layoffs

Peloton continues to spin both its wheels and numbers. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy is an optimist. During the company’s Q1 2023 earnings call, McCarthy said that the company was done with layoffs and that the “ship was turning,” referencing a colorful metaphor he issued during Q4 2022 earnings. Wall Street investors may disagree. Peloton’s stock price fell by about 19 percent this morning after the company announced a weaker-than-expected holiday forecast.

On the product side, McCarthy noted that while customer satisfaction with the recently launched Guide was high, most people don’t know it exists. Meanwhile, the CEO heaped heavy praise on the Peloton Row, claiming that the device “reinvented the category.” He then noted that Row inventory would be constrained this year, even as demand was...

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The Verge’s Guide to Black Friday 2022

Illustration: The Verge

Black Friday, the annual deals extravaganza that closes out the year, typically falls the day after Thanksgiving in the US. However, with the onset of the pandemic and the meteoric rise of online shopping over the past two years, we’ve begun to see more and more retailers kick-start their sales well before the turkey has settled. Target and Best Buy, for instance, have already started to roll out their Black Friday savings, offering steep discounts on noise-canceling headphones, smart displays, OLED TVs, gaming laptops, and a bevy of popular gadgets.

However, regardless of when it starts — as well as the recency of shopping events like Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale and Target’s “Deal Days” promotion — Black Friday remains one of your...

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500 drones will form a giant Candy Crush ad above NYC tonight

Drone shows have proved a popular alternative to fireworks, though not everyone is happy about their potential for advertising. | Photo by Yang Bo/China News Service via Getty Images

Five hundred light-equipped drones are being launched into the sky above New York City this evening to form a giant flying advertisement for the Candy Crush mobile game. (via Gothamist).

The 10-minute-long choreographed performance has been organized for the game’s 10th anniversary and will “turn the sky into the largest screen on the planet,” according to Fernanda Romano, chief marketing officer at Candy Crush.

*powers on* pic.twitter.com/WEeo8RzQZn

— Candy Crush Sag-ARGHHHH (@CandyCrushSaga) October 24, 2022

Due to the city’s Avigation laws (which ban folks from flying a single drone in NYC, let alone 500), the drones will actually be launched from across the Hudson River in New Jersey but should be visible within a one-mile radius...

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Roku’s Streaming Stick 4K is selling for half off today

Roku’s Streaming Stick 4K is selling for just $24.99 instead of $49.99, which is a new all-time low. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Want to get a super early head start on your holiday shopping before Black Friday rolls around? Today’s deal on Roku’s Streaming Stick 4K is a present that will appeal to a wide range of people, given its support for all major streaming apps. It’s also a gift that won’t hurt your wallet, either, as it’s half off at Amazon, Target, and Best Buy, selling for $24.99 instead. That’s a new all-time low on the excellent, easy-to-use device, which organizes all of your streaming service apps into one big grid so they’re quickly accessible. So long as you don’t need support for Wi-Fi 6 and USB-C, this is a terrific streaming stick with a range of other perks, too, including support for Dolby Vision, Apple’s AirPlay 2, and compatibility with...

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Amazon announces a phased rollout of Matter to its Alexa smart home platform

Amazon’s latest smart speaker, the fifth-gen Echo Dot with Clock, will be a Matter controller next month. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Amazon will start its Matter journey slowly, bringing support for the new smart home standard to 17 Echo devices in December. But this first rollout will only be Matter over Wi-Fi (no Thread, yet), compatible only with Android phones, and cover just three device types: smart plugs, smart bulbs, and smart switches. Amazon announced the news at the Matter launch event in Amsterdam this week and says it will expand the rollout to iOS and Thread early next year, when it will also add more of the device types Matter supports.

The company, which is a founding member of the new smart home interoperability standard, also announced that Matter device makers will need to go through Amazon’s Works With Alexa program to get the WWA badge on their...

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We’re getting our first look at Matter devices today, and here’s what’s coming next

The CSA is hosting an event in Amsterdam this week to celebrate the launch of the new smart home standard Matter. | Illustration: The Verge

Matter was finally released last month, and now, we are getting our first look at the devices that will work with the new smart home interoperability standard. At a Matter launch event in Amsterdam hosted by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), the organization announced that over 190 products are now certified or close to gaining certification in the first Matter categories. These include smart lighting, smart plugs, smart thermostats, smart shades, smart sensors, and smart locks. That’s a relatively small number in the infinite pool of smart home devices, but it's a good start.

Today, the CSA announced four new device categories that are coming next, in addition to cameras, home appliances, robot vacuums, and more advanced energy...

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Pixel Watch versus Samsung Galaxy Watch 5: which is the best Wear OS watch?

Welcome to Versus.

It’s been a while, but we’re back to pitting our favorite tech and gadgets in a head-to-head battle to determine the pros and cons of each. For our first episode, we’re diving straight into the Google Pixel Watch and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5.

Wear OS 3 is a work in progress, but naturally, these are the two big-name flagships you can currently buy. While Google and Samsung did join forces to create Wear OS 3, the companies have slightly different visions for how the unified platform should work. So while you’ve got two smartwatches running the same software, the experience and UI aren’t the same. Under the hood, the two watches are also running on different chips with an assortment of varying sensors.

Does the...

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I can’t believe I waited this long to get a smartwatch

The life-changing magic of adopting a decade-old technology. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

I’ve used every new flagship phone from Apple, Samsung, and Google this year, and they’re great! But they’re also boring. They’re impressive feats of engineering and software smarts, but they’re mostly incremental upgrades. And none of them has changed my day-to-day life as much as finally getting a smartwatch.

I know. I’m an extremely late adopter. Even as they popped up all around me as friends bought them over the past… er, decade… I didn’t think smartwatch life was for me. Why give your phone another way to beg for your attention? Besides, my phone and I had a good thing going, and I didn’t want to introduce another piece of technology into the relationship.

Then I had a kid. Suddenly, I always seemed to be holding a baby, or...

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Eve’s sensors and smart plugs will be among the first Matter-compatible devices

The latest generation of the Eve Motion is gaining Matter support next month.

Thanks to its forward planning and early adoption of Thread, smart home device maker Eve System will be among the first companies with Matter devices. It’s making a free update available to its Thread-enabled Eve Energy smart plug, Eve Door & Window sensors, and Eve Motion sensor on December 12th to support Matter. The company announced this at a Matter launch event in Amsterdam and confirmed that the rest of its Thread lineup will receive the updates over the next year. Additionally, Eve products with Matter already built in will start shipping in Q1 of 2023.

Also coming in the first half of 2023 is the company’s first-ever Android app. This will mean those with Android phones can add and control Eve devices in their smart home. Until...

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Tuca & Bertie has been canceled by Adult Swim

Tuca and Bertie driving in a car. | Image: Adult Swim

Adult Swim swooped in to bring Lisa Hanawalt’s Tuca & Bertie back from the dead following Netflix’s move to cancel the animated series in 2019 after just one season. After spending two seasons on its new network, though, Adult Swim is following in Netflix’s footsteps and pulling the plug on the show about two bird-women trying to make it in the big city.

Hanawalt took to her Twitter account last night to announce Adult Swim’s decision to cancel Tuca & Bertie and thank her fans for their vocal support of the show, which likely played a role in its initial resurrection. Hanawalt said that her time with Adult Swim had been “very creatively fulfilling” and sang the praises of the network’s executives for giving her the time and space to make...

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All the smart home news from the Matter launch event

Image: Connectivity Standards Alliance

The smart home is entering a new phase of interoperability, and these are the first product announcements

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For some, Amazon Music’s big Prime expansion comes with big frustrations

Illustration: The Verge

This week, Amazon announced that it would open up its entire catalog of streaming music to Prime subscribers instead of the limited, downsized library they’d previously had access to. The number skyrocketed from 2 million songs up to 100 million. On its face, that sounds like great news. Who wouldn’t want more songs without spending anything extra on top of their Prime subscription? Normally, you’d need to pay separately for Amazon Music Unlimited to get the same enormous selection.

But it turns out there are people who are very angry about the changes that Amazon made in the course of beefing up its catalog for Prime customers. As a total, lifelong music geek, I can relate to anyone freaking out because a service they were familiar...

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Philips Hue Bridge is now Matter certified

Image: Philips Hue

The Philips Hue Bridge is now Matter certified. Although parent company Signify hasn’t announced anything yet, the Hue Bridge was published in the Connectivity Standards Alliance’s Matter certification database early Thursday morning, just as the Matter launch event kicked off in Amsterdam.

The listing confirms that the Hue Bridge will support Matter with a software update. Once the firmware arrives, it will make “all existing and new Hue lights and accessories automatically Matter-enabled, too (except the Hue Sync Box and dial of the Tap dial switch),” reads the database listing.

Like Aqara, Ikea, and others, Signify will be leaning heavily on its bridge for years to come in order to help Hue device owners extract maximum value from...

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Now Life360’s location monitoring app will keep tabs on your Tile trackers, too

See your family’s Tile trackers within the Life360 app. | Image: Life360

Family locator and safety service company Life360 is adding the ability to display Tile tracker locations in its app. The new feature’s rollout starts today, and it will let subscribers view not only their family members on a map but also the locations of their Tile-tagged items so they can keep everything and everyone in check. All users should get the update in the next few weeks.

Once it’s available on their account, Life360 users will be able to link new and existing Tile Bluetooth trackers and choose the family and friend circles that can access the location for things like keys, wallets, water bottles, medicine bags, and more.

In a press release, Life360 CEO and co-founder Chris Hulls said that linking Tile to Life360’s app adds...

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Nanoleaf announces the first Matter-over-Thread light bulbs

Nanoleaf’s new bulbs will support Thread and Matter. | Image: Nanoleaf

Nanoleaf has announced the addition of four new Matter-compatible smart bulbs and light strips to its Essentials smart lighting line. The Thread-enabled LED lights will launch in Q1 of 2023 and include a light strip and A19, GU10, and BR30 bulbs, making them some of the first to support Matter directly without a bridge.

Pricing will range from $19.99 to $99.99, and all the new products will be RGBW, capable of displaying over 16 million color options, including tunable whites with color temperatures ranging from 2700–6500K. The company made the announcement at the Matter launch event in Amsterdam this week.

“The bulbs and light strip will use Matter over Thread — with a Bluetooth fallback.”

Matter compatibility means the lights can be...

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How to watch AMD’s next-gen RDNA 3 GPU event

Image: AMD

It’s November 3rd, which means it’s RDNA 3 day. AMD is ready to unveil its next line of powerful GPUs to the world in a livestream that promises “the next generation of AMD graphics” powered by AMD’s RDNA 3 architecture. After months of teases and a Ryzen 7000 CPU launch, we’re about to see how AMD will compete with Nvidia’s RTX 40 series.

Leaks have already shown at least one of the Radeon 7000 GPUs we’re expecting to see today, showing what’s likely the RX 7900 (successor to the current RX 6900). AMD has already said it won’t be using the new 12VHPWR connectors that are found on Nvidia’s RTX 40 series, which have caused some controversy, with owners of RTX 4090 cards reporting the power cables melting or burning. Nvidia says it’s...

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Why did images of early pregnancy cause such a social media firestorm?

An image of early pregnancies from five weeks (bottom left) to eight weeks (top right). The tissue has been rinsed of blood and the menstrual lining has been removed, leaving only the gestational sac. | MYA Network/Dr. Joan Fleischman, MD, MPA

Most people don’t know what early pregnancy actually looks like. That complicates abortion discussions.

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Snapchat’s latest AR shopping experience lets you try and buy eyewear from Amazon

The new Amazon fashion shopping lenses allow Snapchat users to try on eyewear and then buy products via an on-screen link. | Image: Snap

Snap and Amazon Fashion are partnering up to provide Snapchat users with the ability to try on branded glasses and sunglasses using augmented reality filters.

Snapchat’s 363 million daily active users now have access to thousands of glasses, goggles, and sunglasses from the likes of Maui Jim, Persol, Oakley, and Costa Del Mar through the apps’ AR feature. The AR lenses don’t just overlay eyewear: in some cases, on-theme accessories are added, like knitted hats and frosted backdrops for Oakley’s line of ski sunglasses.

Image: Snap

Some filters on the shopping experience include additional overlays such as hats, eyelashes, and themed backgrounds.

Snapchat users can find the new Amazon AR shopping lenses on the...

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Mercedes-Benz won’t follow Tesla into the robotaxi game

Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz CTO Markus Schäfer is energized by his visit to Silicon Valley. The executive is at the automaker’s Sunnyvale, California, research and development center to meet with his team and local tech companies.

“Very, very interesting discussions were had about potential partnerships in the future,” Schäfer tells The Verge as we sit down for a chat about the future of Mercedes-Benz. The company is in the midst of a supercharged transformation into an EV platform while working to become the first automaker to have a passenger vehicle for sale in the United States with Level 3 driver-assistance technology. The system allows the driver to not pay attention to the road or control the vehicle under very select circumstances — typically...

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Huawei’s new foldable Pocket S combines a familiar design with a lower price

The Pocket S in green, gold, and rose gold. | Image: Huawei

Almost a year after Huawei announced its first clamshell foldable in the form of the P50 Pocket, it’s back with a followup. The new device is called the Huawei Pocket S, and it maintains the same foldable form-factor as the P50 with circular notification display and camera bumps on its outside. But the new phone comes with one fewer external cameras, a lower-end processor, and a lower starting price of ¥5,988 (around $818) versus ¥8,988 (around $1,228) for the P50 Pocket.

That price means the Pocket S neatly undercuts its main foldable clamshell competitor, Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 4 (which was priced at around ¥7,499, or $1,025, in China, according to Gizmochina). But continuing US sanctions against Huawei mean the Pocket S faces...

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Patreon’s long-awaited video hosting feature is finally rolling out to creators

Image: Patreon

Patreon is officially launching its own video hosting feature, nearly a year after it was first teased.

The update marks a major shift in how creators on Patreon can share video content with fans. Previously, creators had to upload videos to third-party platforms like YouTube and Vimeo and then embed video players or share links with subscribers. Uploading to a third-party app had its wrinkles, however, like videos being shared outside of paying subscribers.

The native and ad-free Patreon player allows creators to upload their content directly to the platform, select thumbnails for their videos, and view audience data like view count. Creators will also be able to select who can view the video without worrying whether links will be...

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Aqara’s Matter transition begins in December with free hub update

Over 40 existing Aqara devices will be Matter compatible after the Hub M2 is updated in December. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge

Aqara just lifted the veil on its smart home roadmap at the Matter launch event in Amsterdam. It starts with a free software update in December for the Hub M2 to make many of Aqara’s existing Zigbee devices Matter compatible. That will be followed by the release of Aqara’s first two Matter-over-Thread devices in early 2023 and a new multi-protocol hub coming sometime in the future.

Starting in December, the maker of low-cost smart home devices will issue an over-the-air update to the Aqara Hub M2 to make over 40 of Aqara’s existing Zigbee devices Matter compatible when attached to the hub. That list will eventually expand to support more than 160 of the company’s Zigbee devices. Aqara’s other hubs, including the Hub M1S/M1S Gen 2, Hub...

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WhatsApp gets better for big groups with new Communities and 32-person video chats

Communities are like Discord, but for WhatsApp. | The Verge

Meta is rolling out a few changes to WhatsApp that will make the app better to use for large circles of people, including the wide rollout of Communities.

Communities are designed to house multiple related groups within bigger organizations of people, such as a neighborhood or a workplace. Think something like Slack or Discord, but with a WhatsApp spin (including end-to-end encrypted messages), and admins can share updates with an entire community through an announcements channel. The company first began testing Communities out in April, and now they’re rolling out to everyone.

Image: Meta

Multiple groups can be included in one Community.

Meta is also introducing some new features that could improve day-to-day...

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