Google Stadia is shutting down soon, so transfer your games and saves while you can

Stadia’s shutdown is nearly here. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Google Stadia, the company’s not-long-for-this-world cloud gaming service, will be shutting down for good on January 18th. (Specifically, January 18th at 11:59PM PT, Google spokesperson Patrick Seybold confirmed to The Verge.) While the shutdown means that you’re about to lose access to all of your titles and saves on Stadia, many publishers have shared ways to bring your purchases and progress to otherplatforms so you can keep playing your games.

We’ve rounded up some of those options below; if you want to carry over what you can, you might want to start those processes soon. (If I forgot any, email me and I can add them.)

• Cyberpunk 2077: Developer CD Projekt Red will let you bring your data to PC by manually downloading it using...

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Another company has stopped working on smart contact lenses

The company showed off its tech at CES 2020. | Image: The Verge

One of the companies working on smart contact lenses is calling the project off. On Friday, Mojo Vision announced that it’s going to “pivot its business and focus its resources” on the MicroLED display tech it built during its work on the Mojo Lens (via Axios). Unfortunately, part of the pivot includes laying off around 75 percent of its workers as it restructures, according to a news post from the company’s CEO, Drew Perkins. The company had around 150 employees, according to data from PitchBook and LinkedIn.

The post says the reason for the change is that Mojo hasn’t been able to keep raising money to work on its smart contact lens. “The slumping global economy, extremely tight capital markets, and the yet-to-be proven market potential...

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Where was 5G at CES?

From the front row to a no-show. | Image: The Verge

When it wasn’t being overshadowed by covid resurgences, CES, for the past few years, has partially functioned as a big 5G pep rally. But as cars, smart home standards, and so many screens took center stage at this year’s show, 5G took a back seat.

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg gave a very similar keynote speech in 2019 and 2021, showing off all of the things 5G would supposedly enable: remote surgery, self-driving cars, augmented reality, and so on. T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert was slated to deliver the 2022 keynote before omicron put a stop to that. But in 2023, 5G was hardly a footnote on the speaker roster.

Why? It’s not as if all of the things we were promised with 5G have come to pass. I don’t remember getting into a fully autonomous...

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The Samsung Galaxy S23 will likely be announced on February 1st

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

It seems like Samsung will be announcing its new Galaxy S23 lineup of phones on February 1st, according to screenshots of the company’s Colombian website posted by leaker Ice Universe on Twitter. The announcement is no longer live on the site (though Android Central points out that the Wayback Machine managed to archive it), but it was up long enough to give us an idea about when the next Unpacked event will be, and to show that Samsung is promising “epic moments.”

The site didn’t specifically say that the S23 lineup would be announced at the event — it mentions registering to “meet the new Galaxy” — but that almost certain given that Samsung usually announces its flagship traditional phones around this time of year. The page also showed...

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Sony’s ultra-light LinkBuds S are $70 off at Best Buy

The LinkBuds S are some of the comfiest buds you can buy. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Happy first Saturday of 2023! What, that’s not a thing that people celebrate? Well, it is today because we’ve got some exceptional deals for you to check out. Teeing us off are the Sony LinkBuds S, which are on sale at Best Buy for $129.99 ($70 off) in their desert sand color. This colorway is a Best Buy exclusive, and the current sale drops the active noise-canceling (ANC) earbuds to their lowest price to date.

The LinkBuds S are one of Sony’s more premium pairs of wireless earbuds. In addition to their ANC, they’re also special because of how lightweight and comfortable they are. Another bonus is that they support Sony’s LDAC codec for near-lossless audio. Their sound quality may not exactly match that of Sony’s pricier WF-1000XM4...

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OLED gaming monitors have arrived to kick TVs off your desk

Several 27- and 45-inch models are coming. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Giant OLED TVs don’t belong on computer desks, despite what my colleague Sean Hollister thinks. A number of gamers use them as monitors since they deliver near-perfect picture quality at a similar price to high-end gaming monitors. It’s hard to blame them, but they’re putting up with lackluster stands, TV-focused interfaces, and having no DisplayPort, a staple for super-fast PC gaming. The pros might outweigh those cons for some, but it’d be great to get rid of most of those cons altogether. Thankfully, better alternatives now exist — a lot of them, actually.

At CES 2023, numerous companies announced models that use LG Display’s flat 27- and curved 45-inch OLED panels. They’re actual computer monitors, complete with sturdy,...

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The Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola is a ThinkPad owner’s dream

I can’t be the only one who appreciates how similar the logo is. | Image: Motorola

I’m generally a Windows user, but one of the things that’s always sorely tempted me about the Apple ecosystem is the interconnectedness. Not only are macOS and iOS comfortably similar in form and function (and getting moreso every year), but there are so many easy ways to transfer content between a Mac and an iPhone. That’s why I enjoyed testing out Lenovo’s ThinkPhone by Motorola, which is supposed to be — and I never thought I’d be writing this phrase — the smartphone version of a ThinkPad.

The ThinkPhone has a Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset, a 6.6-inch OLED screen, a 5,000mAh battery, a bunch of fancy enterprise security features (a phrase ThinkPad enthusiasts will certainly be familiar with) and two rear cameras including a...

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Creative founder Sim Wong Hoo, the man behind Sound Blaster, has died

Sim Wong Hoo, the Singaporean entrepreneur, who founded and ran Creative Technologies. | Image: Creative

Creative Technologies founder, CEO and chairman Sim Wong Hoo has died, his company has confirmed. He “passed away peacefully on 4 January 2023,” according to a press release. He was 67 years old.

It might seem hard for younger readers to believe, but there was a time that computer sound wasn’t guaranteed. If you wanted to plug in headphones or speakers that could do more than bloops or bleeps, you probably needed a sound card — and none were as successful as Creative Labs’ Sound Blaster. It sold over 400 million units as of its 30th anniversary in 2019.

The company was also huge in the MP3 player space with its Creative Nomad and Zen line of players and successfully sued Apple over its iPod, obtaining a $100 million settlement.

S...

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The LG Gram Style might be the prettiest laptop of 2023

Where’s the touchpad?

For the past few years, I’ve been a big fan of the LG Gram 17. It’s got great battery life, a massive screen, and it feels like it weighs basically nothing. But if there’s one hesitation I sometimes have about the line, it’s the aesthetic. The Grams of the past have just looked a bit... boring. Which is fine — many laptops are — but also means there’s a fashion-conscious audience out there they potentially aren’t reaching.

Enter the LG Gram Style. This, as the name implies, might be the first LG laptop I’ve ever seen that I’d really consider calling “stylish.” It’s unbelievably thin, it’s mind-blowingly light, and it’s covered in a lustrous color-changing finish. My hands-on time with this device was in LG’s very dimly lit booth at CES...

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The best laptop deals you can get right now

The MacBook Air equipped with Apple’s M1 processor is our favorite affordable laptop and is often on sale. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

If you want a great laptop, you’re going to have to fork over a ton of money, right? Not necessarily. There are dozens of good laptops on the market at various price points. However, it can feel overwhelming to find the right one for your needs (some are better suited for, say, college students, whereas others are ideal for gamers).

That’s why we’ve come up with this list of some of the best laptop deals available right now. In addition to the latest discounts, we’ll share each discounted model’s best features (and downsides) to give you more clarity during your shopping journey. And if you need to do more research, you can also check out our guides to the best laptops on the market and the top cheap laptops as well.

The...

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Microsoft is running an ad in The Washington Post to say that it’s cool with unions

It’s running the ad in partnership with the CWA. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft has been going out of its way to encourage regulators to approve its proposed $68.7 billion deal for Activision Blizzard, and in its latest move, the company is running an ad in The Washington Post spelling out the tech giant’s acceptance of unions. The ad is co-signed by the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which represents workers in industries like communications and media.

“As we enter a new year, we remain committed to creating the best workplaces we can for people who make a living in the tech sector,” the beginning of the ad reads. “When both labor and management bring their voices to the bargaining table, employees, shareholders and customers alike benefit.”

Microsoft also acknowledged the new ZeniMax Media...

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Software engineer allegedly stole $300K from an e-commerce site by copying Office Space

A file was discovered on the software engineer’s work computer titled “OfficeSpace Project,” with the accused admitting to naming the scheme after the 1999 comedy. | Illustration by Beatrice Sala

A former Zulily employee has been charged with stealing over $300,000 from the e-commerce site after allegedly being inspired by the 1999 film Office Space.As reported by The New York Times, according to this police report (pdf), Ermenildo Valdez Castro, 28, is accused of manipulating product prices and altering the company’s code to divert shipping fees from Zulily to a personal account.

According to court documents, Castro began editing Zulily’s software code for checkout payments in February 2022, which allowed him to steal around $260,000 in electrical payments by diverting shipping fees from Zulily customer purchases to a Stripe account that he controlled, in some cases double-charging customers for shipping.

Here are the three...

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Games Done Quick founder steps down after completing 13-year any% speedrun

Photo: Games Done Quick

Mike Uyama, who launched the first GDQ in his mother’s basement in 2009, is stepping away due to health reasons.

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The EPA wants to strengthen air pollution rules — does its plan do enough?

People walk along an overpass above the Cross Bronx Expressway, a notorious stretch of highway in New York City that is often choked with traffic and contributes to pollution and poor air quality on November 16th, 2021, in New York City. | Photo by Spencer Platt / Getty Images

For the first time in over a decade, the Environmental Protection Agency could toughen its standard for how much soot is allowed in the air we breathe. Today, it proposed lowering the regulatory threshold for fine particulate matter, commonly called soot. Still, some major health and environmental groups say the EPA’s plan is too lenient on the pervasive pollutant that disproportionately burdens communities of color.

“Today’s proposal from EPA to update the national annual limits on particulate matter pollution misses the mark and is inadequate to protect public health from this deadly pollutant,” Harold Wimmer, president and CEO of the American Lung Association, said in a statement.

“Today’s proposal from EPA to update the national...

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Seven free alternatives to the LastPass password manager

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Back in February 2021, the LastPass password manager announced it was changing its free version so that it would only work on one type of device and that people who wanted to use it on both their computer and mobile devices would have to start paying for a subscription. More recently, LastPass members may have a more important reason to consider a change: two breaches in 2022 have resulted in user data being accessed by hackers.

LastPass has stated that its info is still secure. However, if you’re currently using LastPass and are feeling a bit, well, nervous — or if you’re not happy with whatever your current app is — there are other password managers out there to try. So we’ve updated our 2021 listing of free password managers for you...

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The Nier: Automata anime debuts January 7th on Crunchyroll

Image: Aniplex

Nier: Automata, Yoko Taro’s quirky but heartfelt action RPG, is being adapted into an anime that will begin streaming on Crunchyroll on January 7th. The show was first announced in February 2022 and is officially titled Nier: Automata Ver1.1a.

Based on the synopsis from Crunchyroll, it seems like Nier: Automata Ver1.1a’sstory sticks relatively close to the game, though Taro said in a recent video that there will be some changes. Part of what’s interesting about the game is its 26 different endings and a narrative that takes place across a few different perspectives, and we’ll have to wait and see if and how the show ends up including those.

If you’re curious, here’s the synopsis. I’ve left the punctuation exactly as it was provided.

T...

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MSI made a stylus that is also a pencil

I don’t really know, either. | Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge

Okay, so. This is a pencil. You can draw with it on paper, the way you would with a pencil. Then, you can bring it up to your laptop screen and write on that, as you would with a stylus.

This MSI Pen 2, announced earlier this week, actually seems like such a no-brainer product when I think about it. If you have a notebook or Post-its on your desk where you like to write notes but also sometimes like to navigate your laptop’s screen with a stylus, you now only need one pen to do both. You could also try sketching out a picture, chart, or graph on paper before diving into doing so on a computer without putting down your writing utensil. You could take physical notes on a text that you’re reading on your computer, then also reach up and...

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Microsoft doesn’t own the rights to Minecraft’s ending — no one does, its author claims

Poem’s end. | Image: Minecraft

There is no question who wrote the poem at the end of Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Julian Gough is the one who gave the game’s unseen gods their voice, beautifully telling the player how the universe loves them — and how the player is the universe, dreaming of itself.

We know it is Julian because he put his name in the poem, and because game studio Mojang put his name in the credits, and because Mojang founder Markus “Notch” Persson personally and very publicly recruited him for the task. What we did not suspect — not till we read Gough’s new Twitter thread and an epic 10,000-word blog post that is well worth a full read — is that Microsoft may not actually own the rights to the game’s ending.

(For those who...

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Apple has reportedly canceled the next iPhone SE

SE fans may have to go a long time between upgrades. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

We may not be getting a new iPhone SE in 2024, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who bases his predictions on sources in the supply chain. On Friday, Kuo wrote in a blog post that Apple had canceled production and shipment plans for the phone after his prediction last month that a fourth-gen iPhone SE could be canceled or delayed.

Kuo thinks the reason the phone is getting axed could be that Apple’s lower-end phones were selling worse than the company hoped (in September, Bloomberg reported that there was more demand for iPhone 14 Pros than regular iPhone 14s) and due to concerns that another price increase for the lineup could make it less attractive to price-conscious buyers.

(2/5)
as well as concerns that the full-screen design of...

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Satechi’s new charger delivers 200 watts of power to six ports

Satechi’s new charger powering up a phone, laptop, and iPad. | Image: Satechi

At CES 2023, Satechi announced what it calls its most powerful charger yet: a new GaN charging hub capable of delivering 200 watts of power. Basically, it can charge a lot of stuff at once and do it at high speeds, too.

The GaN charger comes with six USB-C PD ports, so you can charge up to six devices at the same time. Weighing a little over a pound and measuring about 4.1 x 4.1 x 1.4 inches, it’s also small enough that you could fit into your backpack and pull it out while on the go.

Unlike its predecessor — a 165-watt charger launched last year at CES — this new model also comes with two USB-C PD 3.1-compatible ports, which are capable of delivering more power than their predecessor. That’s in addition to four USB-C PD 3.0 ports, as...

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Sony and Manchester City are building a metaverse, but they need to prove why we should visit

Man City fans will be able to hang out in this new metaverse. | Image: Sony

Sony builds incredible virtual worlds for its PlayStation games, and now the company is starting to dabble more seriously with building metaverse worlds, too. At CES 2023, the company showed a brief look at a metaverse-y experience it’s building with the soccer club Manchester City. But so far, Sony seemingly isn’t bringing the same high-quality, must-play approach it’s known for to this soccer-focused hangout.

The experience, which Sony and Manchester City are calling a “proof of concept,” will let fans participate in activities at a virtual version of the team’s Etihad Stadium with their own custom avatars. In clips from an official video, virtual avatars run around the stadium and on the field itself, occasionally dancing and...

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Sennheiser’s latest earphones offer high-end looks for $150

Sennheiser’s IE 200. | Image: Sennheiser

I mean, sure, if you’re wearing wired in-ear headphones in 2023, you could absolutely buy a pair with the cables going straight down. Or you could get a pair with wires that go up and swoops backward behind your ears like Sennheiser’s latest pair of earbuds, the IE 200, and pretend you’re a musician onstage at Glastonbury every time you’re wearing them.

At $149.99, these in-ear headphones (or, I guess, in-ear monitors) sit at the bottom of Sennheiser’s IE range, which goes up to the eye-wateringly expensive $1,499.95 IE 900. But the fundamentals are (ostensibly) the same. They have that premium-looking cable-up form factor and are equipped with the same sized 7mm “extra-wide band” transducers. Sennheiser claims these offer “superbly...

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CES is back, and so is The Vergecast

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

CES will continue through the weekend, but The Verge has already seen a whole lot of what the show has to offer. This week on The Vergecast, myself, our editor-in-chief, Nilay Patel, and our senior news editor, Richard Lawler, get together and talk about some of the weirdest stuff we’ve seen, the most absurd concepts, and all the genuinely cool tech coming out of the show.

We start the show talking about some of the goofiest car concepts we saw, including the Sony and Honda collaboration dubbed Afeela and BMW’s new concept that has color-changing panels (courtesy of E Ink) and a digital assistant.

We then moved on to talk about TVs, Lenovo’s dual-screen laptop, and plenty of smaller, fun gadgets like Withings’ new pee sensor. It’s a...

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Here’s why Samsung and Dell’s new monitors are so exciting for Mac users

Samsung’s ViewFinity S9 5K monitor. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

A weird thing has happened at CES this year: display manufacturers not named Apple have announced true 5K and 6K monitors designed for creative work and productivity. These new monitors, which will appeal to Mac users for reasons other than “it’s white and doesn’t have RGB lights,” are providing some actual competition to Apple’s Studio Display and even an alternative to the staggeringly expensive pro-level Pro Display XDR.

It’s hard to overstate how rare this actually is. Though there have been many monitors marketed toward MacBook owners over the years, with features such as USB-C connectivity, high-wattage charging, and nicer than average designs, they’ve typically all had traditional 4K panels and sub-par pixel densities, as opposed...

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Ring’s Always Home Cam won’t be flying in your home until at least 2024, if then

Photo by Owen Grove / The Verge

The Always Home Cam, Ring’s autonomous indoor security drone, made its public debut at CES this week. But it was flying in an empty room behind a glass door and disappearing into a side room between flights, so we never saw it take off or land. The demo, while impressive, shows that it’s unlikely we’ll see Ring’s indoor security camera patrolling your living room anytime soon.

Despite announcing preorders (by invitation only) for the security camera in 2021, Ring still hasn’t said when it will ship the Always Home Cam to customers’ homes. “We are looking forward to — in the next short future — shipping it out to customers at high volume,” founder Jamie Siminoff told The Verge in an interview. But he also said 2024 was the earliest we...

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The Peugeot Inception concept is an EV knife aimed straight at the future

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

French automaker Peugeot revealed its Inception concept, a deadly looking electric car that’s all sharp angles and brutalist designs. The concept, which was announced at CES this week, will inspire a lineup of future EVs that will start making their way to customers in 2025.

Stellantis, which owns Peugeot, had a heavy docket at this year’s CES, including a Chrysler cockpit concept and a battery-electric Ram 1500 truck that borrows a lot from the world of muscle cars. But the Peugeot Inception was arguably the most CES-y of all the announcements, with its rectangular steering wheel, hyper-minimal dashboard, and color-shifting interior. There’s even a device inside the car called “the Halo Cluster” with a 360-degree screen, for some...

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M3gan is a midrange delight about the horrors of 21st-century parenting

M3gan reading a book to Cady, her best friend and primary user. | Image: Universal Pictures

Universal and Blumhouse’s M3gan is exactly the right amount of ridiculous, which is why it can afford to be a little shaggy toward the end.

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How to watch the Awesome Games Done Quick 2023 speedrunning marathon

Participants at Summer Games Done Quick 2022. | Photo by ICED / Games Done Quick

It’s almost time for Games Done Quick’s first speedrunning extravaganza of the year. The 2023 edition of Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ) kicks off on Sunday, and this year’s event looks to once again feature a week-long feast of incredible gaming feats.

The first game on tap is an any-percent run of Splatoon 3, meaning the runner can use any means necessary to beat the game, andI can’t wait to see how an expert inks their way to the ending in just over an hour. That’s followed by a 29-minute run of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which will almost certainly feature a lot of ridiculous physics stunts; you can get a preview of what’s in store by watching this recent video from the AGDQ runner.

From there, the schedule is c...

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The last-gen Apple TV 4K is almost half off today

The second-gen Apple TV 4K with 32GB of storage is on sale for $74.99 at Best Buy. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Getting back into the swing of things after New Year’s Day always feels like, well, a year in and of itself. Thankfully, if you’re feeling the need to unwind with your favorite show this weekend, the second-gen Apple TV 4K is currently on sale at Best Buy in the 32GB configuration for $99.74 ($80 off) and the 64GB configuration for $109.24 ($90 off).

The 2021 Apple TV 4K may no longer be the latest and greatest set-top box in Apple’s lineup, but that doesn’t mean it’s a slouch when it comes to specs. Although it lacks HDR10 Plus and a Siri Remote that supports USB-C — two hallmarks of the third-gen model — it’s still plenty quick and supports Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, Wi-Fi 6, and HDMI 2.1 for TVs that support faster refresh rates over...

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Pixel 7 owners report ‘spontaneously’ shattering camera glass

The Pixel 7 (left), and Pixel 7 Pro (right). | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Pixel 7 owners are taking to Twitter and Reddit to report that the glass covering the phone’s rear camera is shattering, despite the phone apparently not being knocked or dropped. PhoneArenaand Android Police have pulled together photos from numerous owners showing the damage to their handsets, with reports stretching back at least as far as November — just a month after the phone went on general sale.

Photos posted across social media show both $599 Pixel 7 and $899 Pixel 7 Pro phones suffering from the issue. Owners are reporting being quoted anywhere from $200 to over $400 to fix the damage, though others say Google has agreed to conduct repairs under warranty.

View post on imgur.com

Not even a month, no drops just regular use....

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