Meross’ new smart plug is one of the first Matter devices you can buy

The Meross Smart Wi-Fi Plug Mini may be one of the first Matter devices you can buy. | Image: Meross

While Matter has officially launched, you still can’t buy a Matter-compatible device to use with the new smart home standard. Today, smart home device maker Meross announced its Matter Smart Wi-Fi Plug Mini, its first Matter-enabled smart plug. You can preorder it now for its release on December 31st.

This might be the very first device you can buy with the Matter logo on it, indicating that it's ready to go with Matter out of the box. While some companies have announced updates to existing products — including Eve and Wiz, who have said they will roll out firmware upgrades this year to their existing products — most have said devices with Matter built-in won’t be available to buy until next year.

Image: Meross

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Epic says more than half of all announced next-gen games are made on Unreal Engine

Looks Cyberpunk_-y._ | Image: Epic Games

Over half of all announced games for next-gen game consoles are being developed using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine suite of developer tools, Epic VP of engineering Nick Penwarden said in an interview with The Verge.

While that’s a small improvement from the previous 48 percent figure CEO Tim Sweeney shared in April at the launch of Unreal Engine 5, both numbers demonstrate the growing popularity of Unreal Engine for developing PS5 and Xbox Series X / S games. And it’s perhaps not too surprising that the number is trending up given that both the PS5 and Xbox Series X / S are now two years old and much easier to buy.

Penwarden didn’t specify how many developers are using which versions of Unreal Engine but noted he’s been “pleasantly...

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Steve Jobs’ raggedy old sandals just sold for $200,000 at an auction

The auction listing says the shoes retain “the imprint of Steve Jobs’ feet, which had been shaped after years of use.” | Image: Julien’s Auctions

One (lucky?) bidder just paid $218,750 to get their hands on a pair of raggedy old sandals worn by Steve Jobs (via CNN). Oh, and the 360-degree non-fungible token (NFT) that goes with it.

The sandals, a pair of Birkenstock Arizonas, were apparently worn by Jobs back in the 1970s and ’80s when he first started Apple. They were recovered from the trash (as you might’ve guessed) by Jobs’ estate manager, Mark Sheff, and then put up for sale at Julien’s Auctions on Friday.

Image: Julien’s Auctions

The old Birkenstocks were recovered from the trash by Jobs’ house manager.

When talking about how he acquired the sandals in a 2016 article from Business Insider, Sheff explains that Jobs “kept very few things,” so he...

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The scary truth about AI copyright is nobody knows what will happen next

Illustration: Max-o-matic

The last year has seen a boom in AI models that create art, music, and code by learning from others’ work. But as these tools become more prominent, unanswered legal questions could shape the future of the field.

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You can save $50 on the Xbox Series S

The Xbox Series S is on sale for $249.99 at Adorama. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Black Friday is next week, which means we’re about to see a lot of great deals drop and inevitably disappear within seconds. That’s why it’s not the worst idea to start your holiday shopping before the madness begins. If you want to do so while saving, you can’t go wrong gifting a gamer a discounted Xbox Series S. Right now, you can buy Microsoft’s miniature console for just $249.99 ($50 off)at Adorama, which is one of its better prices to date.

If your loved one lives in a small apartment or home, the Xbox Series S is a particularly ideal console to consider purchasing, one that’s much smaller than the more expensive Series X. Though it lacks a disc drive, you can use it to play the same digital games as the Series X, albeit at 2560 x...

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Phil Spencer really wants you to know that native Call of Duty will stay on PlayStation

Photo illustration by William Joel / The Verge.

The CEO of Microsoft Gaming thinks King is the crown jewel of the Activision empire.

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Nvidia RTX 4080 review: performance, for a price

Nvidia is back with another new 40-series card. The RTX 4080 can deliver impressive 4K gaming compared to the RTX 30-series.

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Wyze is getting into the mesh router business

The Wyze Mesh Router Pro. | Image: Wyze

Budget smart home company Wyze has announced a pair of mesh Wi-Fi routers — the Wyze Mesh Router and Wyze Mesh Router Pro. The Pro version is a tri-band Wi-Fi 6E model with support for faster speeds and connectivity with more devices, while the other is a dual-band Wi-Fi 6 router.

With a starting price of $173.99 plus shipping for a single base station (rising to $273.99 for a two-pack), the Wyze Mesh Router Pro looks set to be among the most affordable Wi-Fi 6E-compatible mesh routers on the market. It’s got a lower price than Google’s recently announced Nest Wifi Pro (which starts at $199), Eero’s Pro 6E ($299), and the two-pack variant is a hair more affordable than TP-Link’s Deco XE75 ($299.99 for a two-pack).

The Wyze Mesh Router...

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Descript’s revamped video editing Storyboard feature launches for all users

A screenshot of the new Storyboard UI. | Image: Descript

Descript started life as an audio editing app but has slowly added more video editing tools over the years. Now, the app has launched one of its biggest updates yet and is putting video editing front and center with a new mode named Storyboard. The company has been testing Storyboard in beta for months, but it’s now available to all users.

As ever, Descript’s key differentiator compared to traditional apps is its take on the standard editing timeline. Instead of presenting content and effects as a series of blocks in a visual timeline (which can get hellishly busy), the app uses AI to transcribe speech from audio and video and lets users edit this content just like they would a Word document. You just delete sentences from the...

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Elgato’s new Stream Deck joins the knob mob

The Elgato Stream Deck Plus has fewer buttons than the standard Stream Deck but has some cool knobs. | Image: Elgato

Elgato, the company responsible for my strange addiction to putting more buttons on my desk, has just launched its latest streaming accessory, the Elgato Stream Deck Plus, which is currently available on the Elgato store and Amazon for $199.99, $70 less than the Razer Stream Controller but $50 more than the Stream Deck MK. 2. Just like its predecessors, the Stream Deck Plus has an array of buttons that can be mapped to a variety of functions and plugins available through the Elgato Stream Deck software, but this version is equipped with a set of four knobs and an LED screen.

If you’ve used a Stream Deck before, you know what to expect. The buttons feel similar to those on previous iterations of the Stream Deck but are just a little bit...

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Clippy is the star of Microsoft’s latest ugly sweater

Clippy is back to make or break your holidays. | Image: Microsoft

Clippy has returned this year to appear on Microsoft’s latest ugly sweater. The Microsoft Office assistant that was both hated and loved is the latest in a series of Windows-themed ugly sweaters from Microsoft and will be available from the company’s Xbox Gear Shop today, priced at $74.99.

That’s quite the price to pay to spread some holiday cheer, but all proceeds will be donated to the College Success Foundation this year, alongside a $100,000 donation from Microsoft.

Image: Microsoft

Nobody can see Clippy from behind.

This is Microsoft’s fifth year of Windows-themed ugly sweaters and the third year the company has been selling them to the general public. “It started back in 2017, we had posted three made-up...

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Here’s what it’s like to use Apple’s Emergency SOS via satellite

You can also send your location via satellite in the Find My app.

You don’t have to hold your arm up to get a signal, though there is a lot of turning around and waiting when trying to connect to satellites.

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Microsoft’s Xbox chief settles the Call of Duty PlayStation debate once and for all

Image: Activision

Bored of hearing about whether Microsoft will keep Call of Duty on PlayStation or not? Good, because so is Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer. In an interview on Decoder, a show hosted by The Verge’s Nilay Patel, Spencer has settled the debate over the future of Call of Duty on PlayStation once and for all.

“It’s not about at some point I pull the rug underneath PlayStation 7’s legs and it’s ‘ahaha you just didn’t write the contract long enough,’” says Spencer. “There’s no contract that could be written that says forever.”

Spencer has spent weeks responding to questions over whether Microsoft would make Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox if the company’s proposed $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard goes through.

The Verge...

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Aqara’s new smart feeder can give your pet control of its bowl

Aqara’s new automatic pet feeder works with smart home automations and voice commands. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Smart home company Aqara is bringing some connected fun to your pets. The new $99.99 Aqara Smart Pet Feeder C1 can feed your cat or dog on a schedule, remotely using its app, by a voice command with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple’s Siri, or based on motion when connected with an Aqara motion sensor.

There are plenty of automatic pet feeders out there, but very few can integrate with smart home devices to create useful automations for feeding your pet. The C1 uses Zigbee 3.0 and requires an Aqara smart home hub (starting at $30) to connect to the internet and Aqara’s app to set up those automations.

For example, you can have an Aqara indoor camera start recording when the food is dispensed so you can check and see if your...

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The Garmin Bounce is an LTE smartwatch to help parents track their kids

The Garmin Bounce is the company’s first LTE watch for kids. | Image: Garmin

Garmin already has a ton of colorful fitness trackers for kids, but today, it’s launching the $149.99 Bounce — its first LTE smartwatch for kids. The device is meant to help parents keep an eye on their kids without having to shell out for a smartphone or manage what their kids are doing with it.

Bounce includes both built-in GPS and LTE. On top of tracking their child’s whereabouts, Bounce allows parents to set alerts for whenever their child leaves a designated area. Children can also send their current location to their parents via a notification in the Garmin Jr. app. Like Apple’s Family Setup on the Apple Watch, parents can activate a do-not-disturb mode during school hours.

Aside from location tracking, Bounce also supports...

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Amazon Clinic launches as a message-based virtual care service

Amazon Clinic is a new message-based virtual healthcare service that offers accessible treatments for a variety of common health concerns. | Image: Amazon

Amazon has launched Amazon Clinic, a message-based online healthcare service that offers treatments for over 20 “common health conditions” such as allergies, dandruff, hair loss, birth control, erectile dysfunction, and acne.

Amazon Clinic requires customers to select the condition they require treatment for and then choose a preferred provider from an available list of licensed telehealth providers. After completing an intake questionnaire, customers can connect with clinicians for a consultation via a secure message-based portal. A personalized treatment plan will then be provided via the portal alongside any necessary prescriptions, which can be filled at any pharmacy of the customer’s choosing — including Amazon Pharmacy.

...

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Buying ads on Twitter is ‘high-risk’ according to the world’s biggest ad agency

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter may be in big trouble when it comes to generating advertising revenue: GroupM, part of WPP, the world’s biggest ad company — and Twitter’s biggest spender — is reportedly telling its clients that buying ads on the platform is “high-risk,” according to Platformer and Digiday. That makes it the third advertising juggernaut telling massive corporations that they might want to take their money elsewhere, after IPG and Omnicom Media Group both recommended pausing advertisements on the platform.

GroupM works with companies like Google, L’Oréal, Bayer, Nestle, Unilever, Coke, and Mars. If you’ve ever seen that graphic about how a few brands make pretty much everything you buy at the grocery store, you’ll notice a lot of Venn diagram...

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Elon Musk ignored Twitter’s internal warnings about his paid verification scheme

Laura Normand / The Verge

Employees and advertisers keep telling him about the risks of the changes he’s making to Twitter — but he’s not listening

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Nike is still trying to make NFTs happen with .Swoosh

Image: Nike

Nike’s still planning to get in on the non-fungible token (NFT) game, even though the NFT market is plummeting and the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume went bankrupt last week. The company’s launching what it calls .Swoosh, a Web3 platform that will eventually let users buy, sell, and trade virtual shoes and apparel.

Nike didn’t offer too many details about what exactly to expect but suggests that you will one day be able to use its assets as wearable items in digital games and “other immersive experiences.” While signups for the platform open on November 18th, don’t expect to actually buy anything: .Swoosh’s first digital collection doesn’t come out until next January. Once that happens, Nike says it’ll let creators...

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The tech industry’s moment of reckoning: layoffs and hiring freezes

Companies have been cutting costs.

Over the past few months, the economy has started to turn, and tech workers are being hit hard. Meta, Twitter, and more have fired thousands, and others are slowing or freezing hiring.

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California updates proposal on solar incentives that reduces costs but pays less

A solar panel installation by Californian solar company Sunrun. | Photo by Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

The California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC) new solar energy proposal removes a previously proposed monthly grid tax that could’ve added hundreds of dollars per year to the cost of solar installations (via Reuters).

The CPUC was looking to slash solar incentives for customers of investor-owned utilities and, in December, proposed charging a monthly fee of $8 per kilowatt to connect new solar customers to the grid. As pointed out by my colleague Justine Calma, some industry groups opposed the plan saying it “would end California’s solar boom,” which has made it the state with more rooftop solar than anywhere else in the US.

The CPUC responded by removing the monthly grid fee from its proposal.

At the same time, the CPUC is also...

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TP-Link is going straight to Wi-Fi 7 with its latest generation of routers

The new Archer BE900 has a touchscreen and LED lights that can display stats and fun things like emoji. | Image: TP-Link

Before you can even get tired of hearing about Wi-Fi 6 and 6E, TP-Link is announcing a slew of new “world’s first” Wi-Fi 7 routers based on the upcoming IEEE specification. The company is revamping its whole product line, including its main Archer router line, home mesh Deco products, and even its business products.

Wi-Fi 7, known technically as 802.11BE, is the upcoming successor to Wi-Fi 6 and 6E with obvious improvements like faster speeds and reduced latency, and it can enable a device to connect to two spectrums at a time (5Ghz and 6Ghz simultaneously) using Multi-Link Operation (MLO). Like previous generations, it will support backward compatibility for Wi-Fi 6, 5, and older devices but will need you to purchase new devices to take...

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NASA’s Space Launch System rocket weathers the storm

The Orion capsule and Space Launch System on November 13th, 2022. | Photo by Red Huber/Getty Images

NASA’s Artemis I mission is still set to launch this week after its Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft were buffeted by high winds during Hurricane Nicole. The rocket and spacecraft suffered only “very minor damage,” according to NASA officials, but some material did come loose from Orion and could pose an issue to launch. The aim of the Artemis I mission is to launch the spacecraft on an uncrewed mission around the Moon to test out the technology before a series of crewed missions visit the Moon.

The decision to leave the rocket on the launchpad during a hurricane was controversial, as experts were concerned that high winds could cause it to rock. Previously, when Hurricane Ian threatened the Florida coast last month, the...

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Google agrees to pay $392 million to settle location tracking lawsuit

Illustration: The Verge

Google has agreed to pay a $391.5 million settlement to 40 states over allegations that the company tracked users’ locations without their knowledge (via The New York Times). As part of the settlement, Google’s required to alert users when location tracking’s enabled, as well as provide information on how to turn off the feature starting in 2023.

A coalition of attorneys general from Oregon, New York, Florida, Nebraska, and other states filed the lawsuit in response to a 2018 report from the Associated Press that reveals how Google silently tracked users’ locations across its various services on iPhone and Android. The lawsuit alleges that from 2014 to 2019, Google misled users into thinking their location had been switched off and would...

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Tesla on trial

Laura Normand / The Verge

As if he doesn’t have enough going on, Elon Musk will find himself in court later this week defending his $56 billion pay package from allegations by Tesla shareholders that it was rigged with easy performance targets.

And that’s not all! On Tuesday in Los Angeles, a Tesla Model S owner is on trial for manslaughter in a case that experts are calling it a first-of-its-kind legal test of the responsibility of a human driver in a car with advanced driver-assist technology like Tesla’s Autopilot.

Taken together, the twin trials represent a critical test for Musk’s multitasking skills

Taken together, the twin trials represent a critical test for Musk’s multitasking skills. He’ll take the stand in one trial, and while Tesla isn’t facing...

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Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur’s theme song has no business being this good

Devil Dinosaur hanging out while Moon Girl gets ready to jump into action. | Disney

Marvel’s recent superhero shows have never exactly been known for their music, but Disney’s upcoming Moon Girl and Devil Dinosauranimated series might be the one to change that.

Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur from co-creators Laurence Fishburne and Helen Sugland revolves around Lunella Lafayette (Diamond White), a brilliant young Black girl whose massive intellect is just one of her many gifts. In addition to being an inventive super scientist in the making, Lunella shares a psychic bond with a massive crimson T-rex known as Devil Dinosaur (Fred Tatasciore), who she accidentally summons to present-day New York City when one of her experiments goes haywire.

In Marvel’s comics, Lunella’s one of the many people who develop...

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Elon Musk says he fired engineer who corrected him on Twitter

Pro tip: if you care about keeping your job, you probably shouldn’t tweet about how your boss’s “simps” are pro “dickriders.” | Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Twitter has seen thousands of layoffs, departures, and resignations since Elon Musk took over, but one of the latest staffing changes appears to have been personal — the company’s new CEO tweeted that Eric Frohnhoefer, an employee who had publicly argued with him on the platform, had been fired.

The saga started on Sunday, when Musk tweeted an apology for Twitter being slow in “many countries” and implied that the poor performance is because the app does over 1,000 “poorly batched” remote procedure calls to load the home timeline — basically saying the app has to reach out to other servers a bunch of times and wait for a response for each request. Frohnhoefer, who tweeted that he’s spent six years working on Twitter for Android, quote...

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Nerf’s first League of Legends blaster is a $170 dart-flinging fish

This is not a photo; Hasbro’s only sharing digital renders of the product. | Image: Hasbro

If you’ve been to a toy aisle recently, you’ve probably seen how cartoony Fortnite renditions of real-world guns dominate the shelves. Now, Hasbro is licensing the blasters of another mega-hit video game: League of Legends. But if you or your giftee has a LOL obsession, know that the starting price of a Nerf object of power won’t be cheap.

The company’s first blaster is the $170 Jinx Fishbones, a cosplay-grade blaster from the same pricey “Nerf LMTD” brand that’s producing the Destiny 2 Gjallarhorn rocket launcher, Halo Needler, Aliens Pulse Rifle, and Mandalorian Amban Phase-pulse blaster. The nearly three-foot-long blaster is now on preorder at Amazon and Hasbro Pulse and scheduled to release on December 1st of next year.

It’s an...

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Oil giant Occidental wants to remake itself as a climate tech leader in Texas

An oil pumpjack pulls oil from the Permian Basin oil field on March 14th, 2022. | Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

One of the biggest oil producers in the US has a new kind of product in its lineup, one that’s supposed to clean up the climate pollution that’s still coming from its petroleum business. Its plan is to sell customerssupposedly green credentials that they can show off to the world. That risks giving polluters a license to keep polluting, critics say, and positions Big Oil asa heavyweight in the carbon removal and trading business.

This is allgoing down in Texas, where oil giant Occidental recentlyannounced plans for a massive climate tech project. Occidental signed an agreement to lease over 100,000 acres within the historic King Ranch, where it plans to build “direct air capture” (DAC) plants capable of filtering millions of tons of...

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The desk-friendly 42-inch LG C2 OLED is cheaper than ever

The LG C2 has many of the same features as the C1 but is much lighter. | Image: LG

Our first deal of the week is a good one. You can get a $400 discount on the 42-inch LG C2 OLED TV, which is currently discounted to $899.99 at Best Buy — its lowest price yet. While the features of the C2 are largely identical to those found in the older C1, including a 120Hz refresh rate, Dolby Vision support, and compatibility with AMD FreeSync Premium and Nvidia G-Sync, the C2 offers faster performance and a slightly brighter panel than its predecessor. Plus, this 42-inch-sized model may be great if you want to use it as a glorified PC monitor.

The C2 isn’t quite as bright as pricier QD-OLED televisions in a similar price bracket, and some people may be annoyed by its glossy panel coating, but its collection of features still makes...

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