Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon are teaming up to produce new animated DC projects

Superman and Batman in Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons. | Warner Bros. Animation

Warner Bros. Discovery’s television-focused production arm is partnering with Amazon Studios to create new animated projects based on DC Comics’ IP, yet another sign of how the company is changing under CEO David Zaslav’s leadership.

During a keynote session at C21Media’s annual Content London event this week, Warner Bros. Television Studios chairwoman Channing Dungey opened up about some of the new moves the company plans to make as part of Zaslav’s vision for its future. According to Variety, Dungey expressed excitement for her division in particular, and pointed to Zaslav’s openness to collaborating with outside production outfits as one of the major reasons why. Unlike the old guard who felt like “everything has to stay in-house; we...

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TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew explains how US data will be kept out of China

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew gave a rare public interview at The New York Times’ DealBook conference today, telling host Andrew Ross Sorkin that he is “responsible for all the strategic decisions at TikTok” in response to a question about interference from the Chinese government.

The 40-year-old Chew was funny and relaxed for most of the interview, even if many of his answers sounded straight from the 2010s Zuckerberg / Dorsey social-networking-is-good-for-the-world playbook. Did you know TikTok enables people to express themselves and build communities around shared interests? Chew is particularly proud of booktok, a hashtag community with over 70 billion views that has become a force in the publishing industry. But asked a question about t...

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Zens’ new Apple MagSafe multicharger powers up to four devices

A four-in-one charging behemoth. | Image: Zens

Zens is releasing a new set of charging stands today, offering a mix of wireless and wired charging for up to four devices. At the top of the list is the Zens 4-in-1 Modular Wireless Charger, which has an official MagSafe stand for charging iPhones at 15W wireless speeds, a Qi pad for charging compatible AirPods, a stand for wired USB-C charging of an iPad or MacBook Air, and an Apple Watch charger that can fast charge a Series 7, Series 8, or Ultra.

That last bit is what really gives this $179.95 Franken-charger its “modular” moniker, since the Apple Watch charger attaches magnetically. You can get the same setup as a three-in-one, sans Apple Watch charger, for $149.95 — though if you change your mind later, the standalone module costs...

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1 billion people will be connected to 5G by the end of the year

The 5G future is imminent. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

5G is about to hit a major milestone. Telecom equipment maker Ericsson says in its latest mobility report that 1 billion wireless subscribers around the globe will be connected to 5G by the end of the year. That’s still far behind 4G, which grew to around 5 billion subscribers in 2022. But Ericsson predicts that 4G growth will peak at the end of the year, with 5G racing in to replace the reigning connectivity standard. While faster speeds are on the way for many of us, we’ll probably have to pay more for it, too.

In North America, where carriers have been declaring the supremacy of 5G for the past three years, around 35 percent of mobile subscribers will be on 5G at the end of 2022. The good news: mid-band 5G, aka the good stuff, now...

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Netflix CEO says he’ll order Dave Chappelle specials ‘again and again’ despite employee backlash

Laura Normand / The Verge

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said the company would order Dave Chappelle’s comedy specials “again and again” at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit on Wednesday. Chappelle’s last comedy special, The Closer, came under fire by employees for being transphobic.

“We’re just trying to be the most exciting entertainment company and more,” Hastings said when asked about how Netflix deals with controversy. “That special was one of the most entertaining watch specials we’ve ever had. We would do it again and again.” Hastings then goes on to describe Chappelle as “very entertaining and provocative,” aligning with Netflix’s overall goal of being “about entertainment.”

Netflix bought The Closer for $24.1 million, and it premiered on the platform last...

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Elon Musk is dragging Apple into the culture wars

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

And unfortunately for him, that might still not kill the Apple tax.

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Nvidia’s new RTX 6000 may bust engineering department budgets at over $7,000

Image: Nvidia

Nvidia’s about to launch its new for-serious-work-only RTX 6000 graphics card, and it’s going to be expensive. The new workstation card apparently showed up in retail listings on sites like ShopBLT and CompSource, according to VideoCardz, with prices coming in at a business expense-busting $7,378 to over $8,000.

Announced in September, the RTX 6000 is powered by the same Ada Lovelace architecture as Nvidia’s new RTX 40XX-series gaming offerings. We didn’t get information about the 6000’s pricing at that time, but competing top-end workstation cards like AMD’s Radeon Pro W6800 with 32GB of VRAM can cost less than $4,000 in comparison. Even Apple’s overpriced W6900X doesn’t go over $6,000.

To be fair, the new RTX 6000 has 48GB of GDDR6 ECC...

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YouTube is working on a fix for iOS crashes

If your YouTube iOS app is crashing, you’re not alone. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

YouTube says it’s working on a fix for crashes some people are experiencing while using the iOS app. It’s unclear exactly how widespread the problem is, but it does appear to be affecting quite a few users.

In a tweet from its TeamYouTube account at 2:19PM ET, YouTube said that “many” are dealing with crashes, and a lot of people are reporting crashes directly to the account. DownDetector indicates there are more than 7,500 reports of problems as of this writing. I haven’t yet run into issues, but a colleague has been experiencing the crashes.

hi, we're aware that many of you using the YouTube app on iOS devices may be experiencing crashes

we're so sorry about this & have begun working on a fix! updates soon

— TeamYouTube...

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Here’s everything that went wrong with FTX

The Verge

FTX’s sudden and catastrophic collapse sent reverberations throughout the entire cryptocurrency industry. What was once the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange is now in a death spiral that has billions of dollars left in limbo.

If you’re wondering how FTX managed to get to this point, you’re in the right place. Here’s a play-by-play of everything that went wrong.

First of all, what exactly is FTX?

FTX is a cryptocurrency exchange based in the Bahamas. It was founded by Sam Bankman-Fried in 2019 and lets users buy, sell, hold, and trade cryptocurrency (although those functions aren’t available right now due to the firm’s collapse).

In its prime, FTX spent its money on a number of sponsorship deals. While the Miami Heat’s stadium...

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How to buy an iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max for the holidays

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

If you’re hoping to buy an iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max in time to make it a holiday gift, you probably already know that the odds are against you. The standard iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus are readily available across most Apple retail stores, but Apple’s flagship phones are much, much harder to come by.

Not only are you contending with the normal holiday demand rush like any other year but also Apple just doesn’t have enough phones to go around. Covid-related lockdowns at the main iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max assembly facility have led to operations running at “significantly reduced capacity.” And worker protests at those Foxconn facilities have cut down supply even further.

Maybe you don’t care about getting a new iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max...

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Apple’s latest iOS 16 update includes optimizations for car crash detection

The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max both have Apple’s Crash Detection feature. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple has just released iOS 16.1.2, and the company is calling out two key updates in its patch notes: “improved compatibility with wireless carriers” and “Crash Detection optimizations on iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro models.”

The Crash Detection enhancements could be particularly notable, as there have been some issues with inadvertent activations since the feature launched. Crash Detection is designed to activate Emergency SOS and alert emergency services if it thinks you’ve been in a car crash, but the feature has also triggered for people safely riding rollercoasters, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Based on the vague iOS 16.1.2 patch notes, it’s unclear if the update addresses these sorts of mistaken alerts, but...

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Apple Music Replay misses the point

It’s not nothing, but it’s still not great. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The worst month of any Apple Music user’s life has been, for the past few years, December. Do not fight me on this — I’m sure you’ve all had other bad things happen to you in other months, but we must agree that December blows.

That’s because December is the month when the cultural phenomenon that is Spotify Wrapped takes over the internet. It takes over Twitter, it takes over Instagram, it takes over TikTok, and some foolhardy souls even post it on Facebook. For users of Apple Music (myself included), it’s like being denied a seat at the cool kids’ cafeteria table. Everywhere we go, we are surrounded by Spotify Wrapped. We cannot escape Spotify Wrapped. And yet, we cannot participate. We’re forced to observe.

Until this year. This...

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SpaceX almost doubles its current Starlink prices in Ukraine

The price of Starlink terminals in Ukraine will increase from the equivalent of $385 to about $700. | Image: Oleksandr Ratushniak/Reuters

The price of a Starlink satellite terminal has almost doubled in Ukraine, according to a report from the Financial Times, following increased demand for the SpaceX satellite devices and targeted Russian attacks on the country’s electrical grid that have caused communications networks to fail.

Starlink terminals in Ukraine are set to increase from the equivalent of $385 to about $700. The monthly subscription required to use the service will also climb from $60 to $75 on December 29th according to emails sent to Ukrainian Starlink customers, though this is still cheaper than its original $100 rate, which was dropped back in August to “reflect local market conditions.” For the sake of comparison, a Starlink dish costs $599 in the US,...

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Marvel Snap’s new way to earn cards is live

Brood? I don’t need a Brood. | Image: Second Dinner

Your Marvel Snap shop might look a bit different today. As The Verge reported last week, a new way to outright buy not yet unlocked cards is now live alongside some card updates, bug fixes, a new earnable currency, and a slew of new cards.

Known as Collector’s Tokens, the new currency is now available, hidden within Collector’s Caches that start popping up around the 500th level of the Collection ladder. Any player at or above that level should have also received a neat gift of Collector’s Tokens that they can use right away to start buying cards. The card shop seems to rotate pretty often, so you’ll need to check in at least a couple of times per day to see which cards are on offer. If there’s a card you like but don’t have the funds...

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I shouldn’t have to try so hard to make multitasking work on a Mac

This image may have been arranged for maximum overload effect. | Image: Richard Lawler

There are at least half a dozen ways to multitask on macOS, and I can’t find a single one that I enjoy using.

Normally, my work setup starts with a Windows PC, which can be a single laptop screen, a desktop plugged into Samsung’s ridiculous ultrawide G9 curved monitor, or something in between. But today, thanks to literally two drops of water making contact with an XPS 13 touchpad and a post-surgery cat who doesn’t appreciate his temporary ban from climbing on things, I’m coming to you live from an M1 MacBook Air. And I hate it.

The Samsung G9 monitor is ridiculous pic.twitter.com/WPrLKcm2nB

— Richard Lawler (@rjcc) January 3, 2022

Not the hardware, mind you — I find the redesigned Air comfortable to use. With 16GB of RAM, it’s more...

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Google Stadia hardware refunds will be issued within two weeks

The Stadia Controller. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Google will be issuing refunds for Stadia hardware purchased from the Google Store within two weeks, according to an email sent to customers on Wednesday. That means the refunds should arrive well ahead of the cloud gaming service’s impending January 18th shutdown. Purchases of the Stadia controller, the Founder’s Edition, the Premiere Edition, and Play and Watch with Google TV packages are all eligible for refunds, according to Google’s Stadia shutdown FAQ.

At the time of the shutdown announcement, Google committed to refunding hardware and software purchases, and it began software refunds earlier this month. Once your hardware refund has been issued, you’ll get an email confirmation, Google said in Wednesday’s email. Google expects the...

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Kraken crypto exchange lays off 30 percent of workforce

Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

The cryptocurrency exchange Kraken announced job cuts today, affecting 30 percent of its workforce, or around 1,100 employees. In a blog post, Kraken CEO Jesse Powell says the firm made the decision to help it weather the “crypto winter.”

Kraken, a platform that lets users buy, sell, and trade crypto, announced its plans to hire 500 new employees in June, but only as long as their beliefs aligned with the company’s “crypto-first culture,” which apparently means not calling out things said by others as “toxic, hateful, racist, x-phobic.” But now, Kraken’s pulling back on its spending after a period of rapid growth, citing “significantly lower trading volumes and fewer client sign-ups.”

Powell says that while Kraken tried to mitigate...

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San Francisco approves use of remote-controlled robots to kill suspects

Remote-controlled robots like this are often used by police departments to examine, disarm, or detonate bombs. | Image: DENIS CHARLET/AFP via Getty Images

San Francisco’s police will be allowed to use remote-controlled robots to kill suspects. The city’s board of supervisors last night approved a controversial policy that lets police robots “be used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available.”

The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) said it does not own any pre-armed robots and has no plans to arm its current machines, reports Sky News. As SFPD spokesperson Allison Maxie explained in a statement, the department’s robots can now be equipped with explosives “to contact, incapacitate, or disorient violent, armed, or dangerous suspect” in “extreme circumstances to save or prevent further...

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Apple TV Plus’ Shrinking series starring Jason Segel and Harrison Ford drops in January

Jason Segel and Harrison ford in Shrinking. | Apple TV Plus

It’s been a few weeks since Apple officially announced its upcoming comedy series Shrinking from Brett Goldstein, Jason Segel, and Ted Lassoco-creator Bill Lawrence, but it turns out that the premiere date is right around the corner.

Shrinking tells the story of Jimmy (Segel), a therapist whose own ongoing experience with grief prompts him to start engaging with all of his patients a bit differently than they’re accustomed to. While Jimmy’s still committed to helping his patients deal with a wide range of issues, he’s less interested in being sensitive about how he deals with people or sugarcoating the advice he gives them. When Jimmy starts to tell everyone exactly what’s on his mind, his personal life begins to change in unexpected...

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The 12.9-inch M1 and M2 iPad Pros are down to their best prices yet

Apple’s M2-powered iPad Pro is on sale for $100 off at Amazon right now. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

The problem with Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Sometimes a deal is so good, it’s gone before you can even hit the “checkout” button. Apple’s latest 12.9-inch iPad Prowas one of those devices thatreached an all-time low during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but naturally it seemed to sell out quickly. Luckily, the new Wi-Fi-enabled iPad Pro is on sale once again at Amazon in space gray with 128GB of storage for $999 ($100 off).

In addition to sporting Apple’s new M2 processor, the 2022 iPad Pro supports Wi-Fi 6E, if you have the right kind of router. It also comes with a new “hover” feature exclusive to M2-powered Apple devices that detects when the second-generation Apple Pencil is 12mm or less above the screen. As a result, you can...

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Twitch is implementing its own ‘panic button’ safety feature

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Today, Twitch announced it’s implementing a new safety feature that might feel familiar to streamers who’ve battled against the hate raids that plagued the platform last year. Called Shield Mode, the new feature enacts an emergency lockdown of a creator’s stream.

“Shield Mode is a little different from our other safety tools,” Twitch said in the announcement. “While it does introduce some entirely new capabilities ... its real power comes from the way it combines and levels up existing safety tools in one place.”

Shield Mode seems similar to the community-developed “panic button,” which was devised to combat the surge in hate raids that took place last year. With Shield Mode, streamers and their mods can choose settings that will mass...

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Here’s what we know about Elon Musk’s Neuralink event

Would you let this man stick wires in your brain? | Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge

So let’s talk about Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company. There’s a “show-and-tell” event coming at 6PM PT / 9PM ET today, November 30th, and ordinarily I would be providing you with the service of telling you where to watch it. But frankly, I don’t know, and like most Musk companies, Neuralink does not have a PR department.

Fun! It’ll be on YouTube, probably.

Musk has said he wanted to do tests in people in 2022, but he is also completely lousy at deadlines

One thing to keep in mind during the presentation is that the Food and Drug Administration specifically regulates medical devices — not just brain implants. That means clinical trials to get the agency’s approval. Now, I see that Neuralink has a job posted for a...

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Honda is the latest automaker to bring hands-free highway driving tech to the US

Image: Honda

Honda will bring its hands-free highway driver-assist technology to the US by the end of the decade, making it the latest automaker to offer partially automated driving tech to customers.

Honda Sensing, the company’s Level 2 advanced driver-assist system (ADAS), is already available to car owners who have opted to add the feature to their vehicles. Two upgraded systems, Honda Sensing 360 and Honda Sensing Elite, will add new features thanks to more capable sensors and advanced AI software developed by the automaker.

Honda owners in China will be able to purchase the upgraded Honda Sensing 360 system later this year. US customers can option up in the late 2020s, and by 2030, the system will come standard on all Honda vehicles.

US...

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The Apple Watch Action Button’s sole purpose is to do your bidding

Buttons and smartwatches belong together. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

For me, the worst part about running in cold weather isn’t the freezing wind, black ice, or the fact that my face feels like it’s been stabbed with one thousand needles. It’s the 10 seconds spent shivering as my icicle fingers navigate through menus to launch an Apple Watch workout. Ten seconds isn’t much, but it’s enough for the cold to seep into your bones because you’re not moving. That’s why I was stoked for the Apple Watch Ultra and one of its key new features: the Action Button.

The Action Button is a programmable physical button that’s exclusive to the Ultra. Unlike the digital crown or side button, it isn’t hard-coded to do any one thing. Instead, you can program it to do anything you want. Sort of.

Apple placed the button on...

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Netflix’s latest batch of mobile games includes Cats & Soup and a new Reigns

Image: Devolver Digital

Netflix has once again quietly added some games to its mobile app — and there’s some cool stuff to dig into in this batch.

Headlining the update is Reigns: Three Kingdoms, the latest entry in the card-swiping strategy series. This iteration is inspired by the 14th-century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and according to publisher Devolver Digital, it “thrusts players into the turbulent final years of the Han dynasty. There, they will encounter the many factions, wars, and heroes of the saga as they swipe their way through negotiations, marry to strengthen alliances, and convert to gain more power.”

Another intriguing addition is Cats & Soup, a cozy management game about, well, cats and soup. It looks reminiscent of the iconic cat...

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Nintendo shuts down Smash World Tour ‘without any warning’

Smash World Tour organizers claim sabotage could be partially responsible for Nintendo’s decision to shut down the third-party tournament. | Image: Nintendo

The Smash World Tour has announced that both the upcoming championship tournament and the 2023 Smash World Tour have been canceled after Nintendo demanded the event organizers cease operations “without any warning.”

As reported by Kotaku, the third-party event was one of the largest fighting game competitions in the esports scene. “In 2022 alone, we connected over 6,400 live events worldwide, with over 325,000 in-person entrants, making the Smash World Tour (SWT, or the Tour) the largest esports tour in history, for any game title,” said Smash World Tour in a statement addressing the shutdown. “The Championships would also have had the largest prize pool in Smash history at over $250,000.”

The upcoming Smash World Tour Championships...

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DoorDash announces layoffs affecting 1,250 workers

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

DoorDash is laying off around 1,250 workers. The update, posted by DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, explains that the company grew too quickly during the covid pandemic, leading to an increase in operating expenses that could soon “outgrow” the company’s revenue.

“While we’ve always been disciplined in how we have managed our business and operational metrics, we were not as rigorous as we should have been in managing our team growth,” Xu writes. “That’s on me. As a result, operating expenses grew quickly ... This hard reality ultimately led me to make this painful decision to reduce our team size.”

Xu adds that although DoorDash remained resilient during and after the covid pandemic, the company is not “immune” to the current economic challenges....

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Amazon Kindle Scribe review: absolutely adequate

Amazon’s biggest Kindle ever is also the first to let you pair it with a stylus for note-taking. But crummy document syncing and lackluster software hold this E Ink device back.

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SpaceX accused of age discrimination by former employee

General view of SpaceX headquarters on August 03, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. | Photo by AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

A former SpaceX engineer published an essay today describing alleged age discrimination he says he experienced while he was at the company. “I saw my work roles gradually transferred to younger engineers who fit the company’s ‘frat bro’ mold,” John Johnson writes in the essay published on the platform Lioness.

“In the culture, in the environment of SpaceX, old people are rare. And when I say old people, I mean anyone over 40,” Johnson, who is 62, tells The Verge. In a job interview for his role at SpaceX, Johnson says he was asked whether he’d “be okay” working with young colleagues.

“In the culture, in the environment of SpaceX, old people are rare. And when I say old people, I mean anyone over 40.”

Over the four years Johnson worked...

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Spotify Wrapped 2022 is here, and it’s giving everyone a ‘music personality’

In this year’s Wrapped, Spotify is assigning listeners a Myers–Briggs-esque “music personality.” | Image: Spotify

Spotify Wrapped is here, and with it, a slew of year-end charts, data, and graphics ripe for sharing. In addition to the standard personal data (top artists, songs, etc.), Spotify is providing listeners with social-friendly stats the company hopes will generate the kind of buzz it has in the past, spurring competitors like Apple Music and YouTube Music to produce their own year-end roundups.

The splashiest new Wrapped goody is the “music personality” feature — a Myers–Briggs-esque system that analyzes how you listen and assigns you one of 16 flattering categories, such as “Adventurer,” “Fanclubber,” and “Specialist.” It’s a savvy move; whether zodiac sign or Hogwarts house, the kids simply love to be categorized.

The new Wrapped also...

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