I just wish my Tesla Model 3 had Steam

I just want a rolling battle station. | Image: Tesla

Steam, the PC gaming platform, is making its way around town as part of Tesla’s latest holiday update. It fulfills a promise Tesla CEO Elon Musk made almost two years ago: that you’ll be able to play The Witcher 3using the car’s built-in hardware. But unfortunately for me, I won’t get to play it, and it doesn’t look like there will be any easy path toward upgrading.

I have a 2018 Tesla Model 3, and I think I should mention it’s received plenty of upgrades over the years, including overhauled user interface, Autopilot visualizations, streaming apps, and arcade games. But in my car, all of Tesla’s fancy new software is running on the Intel Atom — a processor designed for cheap netbooks from the previous decade (Remember the Eee PC?). So...

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Samsung might be working on a more colorful budget phone and we’re here for it

Alleged renders of the Samsung A34 show a silver, pearlescent color option that’s way more fun than awesome black. | Image: The Tech Outlook

A fresh batch of leaked renders allegedly show an upcoming Samsung device in a range of flashy colors. The leak is courtesy of The Tech Outlook (spotted by XDA-Developers) and features the Galaxy A34 with some healthy midrange specs: a 6.5-inch 1080p OLED, 48-megapixel main camera, and an Exynos chipset. But what’s really exciting are the color options: Lime! Purple! Pearlescent! If these renders are accurate, then we could see a more colorful outlook for budget phones in 2023, and it’s about damn time.

Sometime in recent history, phone makers decided that people in the US — particularly those on a budget — only wanted black phones. A quick turn through Samsung’s current A-series options shows most models in exactly one color choice:...

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The 240Hz OLED gaming displays are coming

Rejoice gamers: 240Hz OLED gaming monitors are finally a reality, and many are being showcased during CES 2023. | Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge

CES 2023 is now just days away, and there’s already a standout category that we’re particularly excited about: 240Hz OLED gaming monitors.

Generally speaking, OLED panels can achieve better picture quality and a faster response time than their LED or IPS equivalents but have historically lacked the ability to match them in providing high-refresh rates. There have been some exceptions — such as the Alienware AW3423DW, a QD-OLED running at 175Hz — but now, OLED gaming displays have finally achieved the optimal 240Hz refresh rate prized by gamers who specialize in eSports and FPS titles.

There are several 240Hz OLED displays (that we’re aware of) being showcased at the CES 2023 conference. One of the more innovative offerings is the...

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Texans came together to save more than 1,500 bats from wintery doom

Crowds watch as Mexican free-tailed bats are released by Mary Warwick, Wildlife Director at Houston Humane Society at the Waugh Bridge Bat Colony in Houston, Texas, on December 28, 2022. | Photo by MARK FELIX/AFP via Getty Images

Hundreds of bats rescued from the winter storm that struck the US over the past week were finally able to return to their homes in Texas last night. The bats nearly froze to death as the storm brought a blast of cold Arctic air down to the Lone Star State and much of the continental US.

Mexican Free-tailed bats started dropping from their roosts as temperatures dipped below freezing

Mexican Free-tailed bats started dropping from their roosts as temperatures dipped below freezing on the evening of December 22nd, according to the Houston Humane Society. At one colony under Waugh Bridge in Houston, the tiny bats plummeted 15 to 30 feet to the pavement. Suffering hypothermic shock, the bats might have perished on the pavement. Weighing in...

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New York breaks the right to repair bill as it’s signed into law

New York governor Kathy Hochul signed the Digital Fair Repair Act on December 28th, 2022, and the law will go into effect on July 1st, 2023 — a full year after it was originally passed by the NY State legislature. The bill establishes that consumers and independent repair providers have a right to obtain manuals, diagrams, diagnostics and parts from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in order to repair their own devices. However, the bill was meaningfully compromised at the last minute by amendments that give OEMs some convenient exceptions and loopholes to get out of obligations that many right to repair advocates had been hoping for.

One of the most controversial adjustments in the signed law is that it allows OEMs to sell...

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You can save nearly $600 on LG’s new Gram 16 laptop

LG’s Gram 16 laptop is on sale for $799 at BuyDig. | Image: LG

If you’re tired of constantly relying on a second monitor or resizing windows for work because your laptop’s screen isn’t spacious enough, today’s deal on LG’s latest Gram 16 is one you’ll want to consider. Regularly $1,396.99, you can currently buy it with 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and an Intel i5-1240P processor for just $799 from BuyDig until December 31st.

This is the 16-inch version of LG’s new Gram 17 we reviewed in October, which is our favorite laptop for fans of big screens. While this model’s display is one inch smaller, both still share a large, high-resolution screen so you can easily open up multiple windows and apps. Yet despite its size, the laptop’s also light enough to carry around while traveling or commuting....

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Instagram is littered with bright-as-hell HDR videos, but it didn’t have to be this way

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

I can’t be the only one that’s had this experience: I’ll be passing time scrolling through my Instagram feed when all of a sudden, my iPhone’s screen cranks the brightness up to 11 for a random video clip or reel. It’s worse if you’re in a dark environment or dimly lit bar when this happens because these bursts ignore your brightness settings and can get pretty unpleasant for your eyes.

The reason this happens is that people are increasingly sharing HDR (high dynamic range) videos on social platforms — whether they know it or not — and when your fancy smartphone plays them, the display goes into overdrive to showcase, in Apple’s words, the “true-to-life color and contrast” made possible by HDR. But the thing you’ll notice most of all,...

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8 great Apple Arcade games from 2022 for your iPhone or iPad

Micha Huigen / The Verge

There are plenty of good games to download right now in Apple’s regular App Store — hello, Marvel Snap — but the fact remains that if you’re going to play on your iPhone or iPad regularly, Apple Arcade is the best deal. For $4.99, you get unlimited access to a growing library that now includes not only exclusives like Fantasian but also many of the best releases from the iPhone’s gaming glory days. And none of the games feature ads or microtransactions, so you can just enjoy them without having to worry about forking out extra cash.

Since its debut in 2019, the library of games has steadily expanded, and Apple has settled into a nice rhythm of releasing a game almost every week. Here are the eight best additions to the service from 2022.

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The 10 best shows from 2022 to stream on HBO Max

Micha Huigen / The Verge

HBO Max, as we currently know it, is not long for this world. In 2023, the app will merge with Discovery Plus, and that’ll become its own thing. But that’s later. Now is the time to catch up on all the shows from the past year before the inevitably messy transition begins.

The premium network has a little bit of everything for everyone. There are stripped-down stand-up specials, screwball dramedies, irreverent animated series, CGI dragons, and everything in between. It’s a lot to take in at once. Lucky for you, we’ve compiled a handy list of shows to get you started.

Hacks

Hacks is a series about an unlikely pair of comediennes — a legendary stand-up diva in need of a new act and a young, disgraced TV writer trying to salvage her...

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The vibes are off at Tesla

Remember when this guy was in charge of a car company? | Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images

Layoffs, lawsuits, delays, Twitter chaos, stock in free fall, factory shutdowns — What happened to America’s favorite electric car company?

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India mandates USB-C on phones, turns focus to wearables

India is following in the EU’s footsteps and will require all mobile devices to support USB-C charging by 2025. The country is also looking into a standardized charger for wearables. | Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge

Mobile devices in India will be required to adopt USB Type-C as the standard charging port for electronic products by March 2025, according to a report byBusiness Standard. This follows similar legislation being passed by the European Union which requires new smartphones and other portable devices sold within the EU to use USB-C charging by December 28th, 2024 in a move meant to combat e-waste.

The Indian government is also exploring the possibility of enforcing a standardized charger for wearables such as smartwatches and fitness trackers. “The government will come up with two common types of charging ports for mobiles and wearable electronic devices,” said Rohit Kumar Singh, Secretary to the Department of Consumer Affairs. No details...

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Samsung’s latest fridge will be even better for TikTok

The Samsung Bespoke Refrigerator Family Hub Plus features a large vertically-oriented touchscreen display, ideal for making shopping lists and watching TikTok content. | Image: Samsung

Samsung has unveiled the Bespoke Refrigerator Family Hub Plus, a fancy name for its latest fridge with a built-in touchscreen display. At 32 inches, it features a much larger display than the 21.5-inch screen found on previous generations of the Samsung Family Hub refrigerators, which can be used to control SmartThings-compatible smart home devices, display Google Photos images, make digital shopping lists for Amazon delivery, and watch videos.

Introduced via a Korean-language press release, the Family Hub Plus includes the free Samsung TV Plus service, allowing users to watch 190 TV channels in the US or around 80 channels in South Korea via the Samsung TV Plus app. The display’s vertical orientation also makes it suitable for watching...

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Twitter is acting up with intermittent error messages and notifications that won’t load

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

If you’re having issues while trying to use Twitter tonight, you’re not alone. Dozens of users are reporting various errors, saying they’re getting messages that they’ve exceeded their rate limit, to the site appearing to be completely broken, or failing to fetch new tweets.

DownDetector.com shows a spike of around 10,000 outage reports noted for Twitter, with reports starting just after 7:30PM ET.

Twitter is having issues pic.twitter.com/5OWhK8RD10

— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) December 29, 2022

Here at The Verge, we have multiple instances of the desktop site logging accounts out suddenly. When I click the log in button, the site simply refreshes without prompting me for a username or password — or crashes, showing an error message.

T...

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The LastPass disclosure of leaked password vaults is being torn apart by security experts

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Last week, just before Christmas, LastPass dropped a bombshell announcement: as the result of a breach in August, which lead to another breach in November, hackers had gotten their hands on users’ password vaults. While the company insists that your login information is still secure, some cybersecurity experts are heavily criticizing its post, saying that it could make people feel more secure than they actually are and pointing out that this is just the latest in a series of incidents that make it hard to trust the password manager.

LastPass’ December 22nd statement was “full of omissions, half-truths and outright lies,” reads a blog post from Wladimir Palant, a security researcher known for helping originally develop AdBlock Pro, among...

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Amazon’s started to deliver orders by drones in California and Texas

Image: Amazon

Amazon is now delivering orders by drones in California and Texas with the aim to ultimately fly out packages to customers’ homes within an hour, Ars Technica reports.

The retail giant’s drone delivery service, Amazon Prime Air, already dropped a small number of packages via drone in the backyards of customers in the run-up to Christmas in Lockeford, California, and College Station, Texas.

“Our aim is to safely introduce our drones to the skies. We are starting in these communities and will gradually expand deliveries to more customers over time,” Amazon Air spokesperson Natalie Banke told KTXL Fox 40.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave Amazon Part 135 approval to send packages by drone in 2020, as well as filing Final...

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Waze tests new alerts warning drivers about roads with a ‘history of crashes’

The new beta version of Waze, shown running in Israel, turns roads red if it has a history of crashes. | Screenshot by Geektime

Waze is one of the preferred navigation apps for many due to its live community-driven traffic incident information — but what if the app warned you where a crash could likely occur? A new beta version of the Google-owned app, as reported by Israeli tech news site Geektime, can alert users about roads that have statistically high crash occurrences based on Waze community data.

While using this new beta version of Waze, nearby roads deemed to be high-risk are colored red on the map. Although, Geektime points out that it may not do this for roads that the user often travels on. The feature also only pushes just one pop-up notification about the dangerous roads around the driver, perhaps in an effort to keep precaution from turning into...

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Disney’s releasing a Stan Lee documentary in 2023

Image: Disney

Disney will be releasing a documentary about comic book titan Stan Lee in 2023, as an original title for its Disney Plus streaming service. In an announcement post, the company said the news is being announced today because it would’ve been his 100th birthday (Lee died in 2018 at the age of 95).

Lee famously had cameos in pretty much every Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, some of which are shown in Disney’s announcement trailer. Of course, before the movies he was known as the person who helped write the stories they were based on; Disney’s post lists him as the co-creator of characters like Spider-Man, Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, Ant-Man, and the Avengers.

Disney has often used its streaming service to release content...

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Here’s where you can buy a PS5

Getting a PlayStation 5 no longer has to be an uphill battle. Thanks to the increased availability of Sony’s next-gen console, there are multiple options for bringing home a PS5. While availability is sometimes limited to bundles that come packaged with a game, this is still a great opportunity to bring home a console relatively stress-free. We’re keeping a lookout across the web to find where, when, and how you can buy either the PS5 (with a disc drive) or the PS5 Digital Edition, as well as any bundles that are not price surged.

Demand for this console is still high, with no guarantees that inventory will remain available for long. Nevertheless, we’ll do our best to keep this article updated with the latest in-stock alerts and tell...

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This was the hottest year yet for the UK

A man walks towards a bus station as heatwave hits London, United Kingdom on August 14, 2022. | Photo by Rasid Necati Aslim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

2022 will go down as the warmest year in the books yet in the UK, according to provisional figures from the Met Office national weather service. A record-smashing summer heatwave was the burning cherry on top of 11 months of unusually toasty weather in the UK.

That makes this year the hottest across the UK since annual record-keeping began 139 years ago. Zooming in on England specifically, 2022 will also top the list of warmest years in the world’s oldest instrumental record of temperature — the Central England temperature series that started 364 years ago.

Records set this year might not hold for very long

Unfortunately, because of climate change, the records set this year might not hold for very long. The UK’s top ten warmest years...

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Sherlock Holmes will finally escape copyright this weekend

A portrait of Holmes by artist Sidney Paget. | Wikimedia

Watching the copyrights on art expire still feels like a novelty. After all, the US public domain was frozen in time for 20 years, thawing only in 2019. But this weekend’s Public Domain Day will give our cultural commons a few particularly notable new works. As outlined by Duke Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, the start of 2023 will mark the end of US copyrights on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s final Sherlock Holmes stories — along with the seminal science fiction movie Metropolis, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and the first full-length “talkie” film The Jazz Singer.

The public domain lets anyone republish, remix, or remake works without the permission of the rights holder — typically long after the original...

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Hot Pod’s favorite podcast episodes of 2022

Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

I hope you all had a happy holiday weekend and, with any luck, are off this week. Last week, I dug into the wonky, rocky economic outlook for podcasting in 2023. This week, I am keeping it light (plus, nothing much happens in the liminal space between Christmas and New Years, anyway).

There have been a number of thorough, expert rankings of the top podcasts of the year – this is not one of them. This is a purely subjective list of episodes I really enjoyed during my free time that had nothing to do with writing this newsletter. If your taste is anything like mine, I hope you like them, too.

Normal Gossip, “Steampunk-Ass Murder Mystery”

I am not original, and like most people connected in some way to the podcasting industry, I am...

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TikTok is now banned on mobile devices issued by US House of Representatives

An internal memo from the US House of Representatives has ordered staff to delete the TikTok app from mobile devices issued by the House. | Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

The US House of Representatives has ordered staff to delete TikTok from any House-issued mobile phones, according to an internal memo obtained by NBC News. The directive was reportedly issued by Catherine L Szpindor, the chief administrative officer of the House, and also bans the popular social media app from being downloaded on House-issued devices going forward.

The CAO’s Office of Cybersecurity believes TikTok to be a “high risk to users” due to a lack of transparency regarding how its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, handles customer data. “House staff are NOT allowed to download the TikTok app on any House mobile devices,” the memo said. “If you have the TikTok app on your House mobile device, you will be contacted to remove it.”

...

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Hand Mirror makes the best use of Apple’s MacBook notch that I’ve seen

Just click behind the notch and you’ll get a webcam preview. | Image: Hand Mirror

We’ve covered Hand Mirror before. It’s a simple, free Mac utility that lives in your menu bar. Whenever you click it, you see a small preview of your selfie camera. If you’re prepping for a video call with colleagues or just want to check how disheveled you appear to other coffee shop goers at 8AM, it’s a perfect little tool.

Hand Mirror’s developer Rafael Conde recently introduced a paid add-on to the app that unlocks some bonus features. (The main video preview feature is still completely free and works as well as ever.) One of those new tricks — called “notch trigger” — caught my eye. When enabled, Hand Mirror will bring up the selfie camera preview whenever you click behind the notch area on Apple’s 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros...

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9 great games for your VR headset from 2022

Micha Huigen / The Verge

Although the tech surrounding VR headsets has stagnated somewhat, there are still plenty of fantastic titles that make great use of the technology available, and we’ve chosen some of our favorites for you to try now and over the coming year. You might notice that several of our top picks are a bit long in the tooth, but we still consider them to be some of the best experiences for the greatest variety of headsets — that is, until the release of the PlayStation VR 2 in February.

While there are plenty of options for enjoying VR, the Meta Quest 2 remains the most popular by far, even with this year’s $100 price hike and the release of the Meta Quest Pro. As a result, that is the headset that we used to try out all the games listed...

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Sony’s WH-1000XM5 headphones are 30 percent off, their lowest price yet

Sony calls this color of the XM5s “silver,” but they appear as off-white in person. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Previous price cuts on Sony’s WH-1000XM5 over-ear, noise-canceling headphones took off $50 or so, but this new one at Amazon is a whopping $121 off. Whether you’re keeping track or not, this is the biggest price cut to date. Today’s deal is on the silver (more like off-white) color scheme only, which may be a disappointment if you prefer black. However, you’d be smart to try to get a price match from a different retailer, which may help you get the color you want, and get it from a store where you might have some holiday gift cards to spend. We have a whole article with all of the price-matching details.

At $279, you won’t find a set of headphones that are better than the XM5 at drowning distractions with superb noise cancellation. While...

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8 great shows and movies from 2022 to stream on Amazon Prime Video

Micha Huigen / The Verge

Amazon started out as a bookseller in the 1990s before developing into the commercial behemoth it is today. One of the features it uses to encourage membership is its Prime video service, which features original series and movies along with existing shows and films that it has made available. And no matter what your opinion is of Amazon, it’s hard to argue against the idea that some of its Prime productions are pretty impressive.

If you’re looking for something to stream during the holiday season — or after — and you have a Prime membership, here are some suggestions that you may want to try out.

Night Sky

Night Sky is one of the best least-known science fiction series around. The eight episodes star Sissy Spacek and J.K. Simmons as...

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We asked 17 smart people to predict the future of transportation in 2023

Photo by Kelsey McClellan for The Verge

Will car prices start to stabilize? Which startups will go bust? What will happen with the Cybertruck? Will this be the year of the cargo bike? Our experts offered their predictions on these topics and more.

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Aqara delays Matter transition until January

An update for the Aqara M2 smart home hub (pictured far left) was initially planned for December 2022, but has since been delayed until 2023. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge

A free Matter software update for the Aqara M2 smart home hub has been delayed until January 2023. A statement from an Aqara representative to HomeKit Authority claims that the maker of affordable smart home devices “needed more time to ensure the customer experience was right.”

The update will make over 40 of Aqara’s existing Zigbee devices Matter compatible and was originally scheduled to roll out sometime in December 2022. While the short delay may be disappointing, it may not be a bad thing — our own early review of the Matter smart home network saw mixed results regarding connectivity and setup, so a bit more time in the oven couldn’t hurt.

There’s no word if the delay impacts Aqara’s overall timeline for its transition to Matter....

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This new Game Boy-inspired 8-bit game console is the size of a matchbox

Image: Arduboy | The Verge

The Arduboy Mini is the latest Game Boy-inspired handheld game console from creator Kevin Bates, the man behind the original Arduino-based 8-bit Arduboy. Measuring in at around two quarters in length (as shown in Gizmodo’s early review), this tiny gaming handheld offers many of the same benefits as the larger Arduboy despite its compact size, such as an OLED display, hundreds of open-source games, and an exposed design that encourages users to explore hardware hacking and coding.

In fact, tinkering is so encouraged that the Arduboy Mini doesn’t come with a speaker or a battery built-in. Instead, the gadget comes with clearly labeled solder contacts for both a battery and speaker located on the exposed rear of the device. Otherwise, the...

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US military biometric capture devices loaded with data were sold on eBay

Image: Getty

Old US military equipment being sold on eBay contained what appears to be biometric data from troops, known terrorists, and people who may have worked with American forces in Afghanistan and other countries in the Middle East, according to a report from The New York Times. The devices were purchased by a group of hackers, who found fingerprints, iris scans, peoples’ pictures, and descriptions, all unencrypted and protected by a “well-documented” default password. In a blog post, the hackers called getting at the sensitive data “downright boring,” given how easy it was to read, copy, and analyze.

Matthias Marx, who lead the group’s efforts in researching the devices, doesn’t think that the data itself is boring, though, calling the fact...

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