Twitter officially bans third-party clients with new developer rules

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter has updated its developer rules to ban third-party clients, almost a week after it unceremoniously blocked the apps’ access to its platform, offering almost no explanation to what was going on (via Engadget). The new rules state that you can’t use Twitter’s API or content to “create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.”

The rules, updated on Thursday, make it clear what that means: “Twitter Applications” refers to the company’s “consumer facing products, services, applications, websites, web pages, platforms, and other offerings, including without limitation, those offered via https://twitter.com and Twitter’s mobile applications.” The clause banning alternative services was...

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Inside CNET’s AI-powered SEO money machine

Image: James Bareham / The Verge

Fake bylines. Content farming. Affiliate fees. What happens when private equity takes over a storied news site and milks it for clicks?

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Netflix’s paid password sharing to roll out ‘more broadly’ in the coming months

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The era of Netflix password sharing will soon come to a close. Netflix has plans to enforce password-sharing rules “more broadly” toward the end of the first quarter of 2023, the company announced in its earnings report today.

“While our terms of use limit use of Netflix to a household, we recognize this is a change for members who share their account more broadly,” Netflix writes. “As we roll out paid sharing, members in many countries will also have the option to pay extra if they want to share Netflix with people they don’t live with.”

The company also announced that CEO Reed Hastings is stepping down after 25 years of running the company and will pass the baton to Ted Sarandos, who had already been serving as co-CEO, and Greg Peters,...

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Reed Hastings is stepping down as Netflix’s co-CEO

Nick Barclay / The Verge

As Netflix announced its quarterly earnings, co-founder Reed Hastings revealed that after 25 years of running the company that grew from delivering video disc rentals by mail into a streaming behemoth, he is no longer its CEO.

He named content chief Ted Sarandos co-CEO in 2020, and Sarandos will continue on in that role but will now share duties as co-CEO with Greg Peters, Netflix’s former chief operating officer. In other executive moves, Bela Bajaria is now Netflix’s chief content officer, and Scott Stuber has been named the chair of Netflix Film.

Ted & Greg are now co-CEOs. After 15 years together we have a great shorthand & I’m so confident in their leadership. Twice the heart, double the ability to please members & accelerate...

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Meta’s bundling your Instagram and Facebook account settings in one place

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta’s putting your Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger account settings in one place. The company’s rolling out a new Accounts Center that lets you manage your preferences across all your Meta accounts from a centralized hub.

The revamped Accounts Center will live in the settings menu on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, which means you can adjust your account settings for Facebook from Instagram — and vice versa. It also applies to Meta’s standalone accounts that the company started letting Quest owners use in lieu of a Facebook account last year.

Image: Meta

Some of the settings you can toggle include personal details, passwords, security, ad preferences, and payments as well as the permissions you’ve given each...

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Sundance 2023: all the latest movie reviews and updates from the festival

Photo by Mark Sagliocco / Getty Images

This year, the festival returns with a hybrid format, screening films both in person and online.

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The Verge is partnering with the Computer History Museum to explore the past and future of tech

Apple Lisa 1 Computer, 102747605. Image copyright: Computer History Museum. | Photo illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge

We’re excited to announce that The Verge is partnering with the Computer History Museum this year to explore some of the most important innovations that changed the future of technology and our relationship with it. Located in Mountain View, California, CHM does extensive work in preserving, explaining, and making the history of technology accessible to current and future generations. Its mission is to “decode technology — its computing past, digital present, and future impact on humanity” — a charge that resonates with The Verge’s own editorial mission.

As part of our partnership, we’ll first be taking a closer look at Apple’s Lisa computer, whose innovative UX changed the way people relate to computers. Today, as part of its Art of...

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The State Department wants memos written in Calibri now, not Times New Roman

The State Department is changing with the times. According to a report from The Washington Post, employees have been directed to use 14-point Calibri when writing certain documents instead of the traditional Times New Roman. The mandate is set to go into effect in February.

In a memo cheekily titled “The Times (New Roman) are a-Changin,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly told employees that the change is meant to make documents more accessible, saying that Times New Roman’s serifs could “introduce accessibility issues for individuals with disabilities who use Optical Character Recognition technology or screen readers.”

big news for font freaks: Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department & replaced by...

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Drake is a certified gamer boy with Pharrell Williams’ gold PSP

Drake shows off all the cool stuff, including a solid gold PSP-1000 that used to be owned by Pharrell Williams. | Image: UMG

Drake dropped a new music video this week for his song “Jumbotron Shit Poppin,” and he’s playing with a classic PSP in it. But it’s not just any PSP; this is a real gold-shelled one that was, until recently, owned by Pharrell Williams (via Kotaku).

The custom PSP-1000 was sold on Pharrell’s auction site, Joopiter, in November for nearly $20,000. According to the listing, its case is made of 14-karat solid gold that weighs 659.7 grams and was personally commissioned by the NERD member in 2008 to complement his gold BlackBerry. Pharrell tweeted last year that selling his jewelry and other belongings (including a gold BlackBerry) was about setting himself free “for the beginning of a new era.”

The end of an era for Pharrell is apparently...

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The red-state backlash against electric vehicles is incoherent — and gaining steam

A Tesla Supercharger in Virginia, where the state’s governor blocked an EV battery project because of its ties to China. | Photo by Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images

Remember when “getting ICE’d” was a thing? A few years ago, it was not uncommon to spot internal-combustion engine (ICE) vehicles deliberately parked in electric vehicle-only spots, usually near an EV charging station, effectively blocking access to that charger. It was an extremely stupid and anti-social way for aggrieved gas-powered car owners to express contempt for these new, less-polluting vehicles.

Now a bunch of Republicans are taking the concept of “getting ICE’d” to the next logical conclusion. Not content to simply obstruct a parking spot, they are instead looking to stymie the growth of EVs through ill-considered policy decisions. Their reasons are varied: some are trying to protect the oil and gas industry, while others...

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Climate change denial is making a ‘stark comeback’ on social media, study finds

Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, California, US, on Tuesday, November 29th, 2022.

Meta made millions last year on advertising that greenwashes fossil fuel companies and spreads disinformation about climate change, according to a new report. And outright climate denialism exploded on Twitter in 2022, according to the analysis published today by a coalition of environmental groups and researchers.

They identified fossil fuel-linked entities that spent about $4 million on Facebook and Instagram ads around the time of the United Nations’ climate change conference in November. Those ads disparage the transition to clean energy that’s necessary to slow climate change, the report says, while portraying oil and gas companies as unlikely environmental champions. Meanwhile on Twitter, the hashtag #climatescam has seen a...

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Microsoft starts testing tabs in Notepad for Windows 11

Notepad is the first built-in app to get tabs in Windows 11. | Image: Microsoft

Microsoft has officially started testing tabs in Notepad for Windows 11. A Microsoft employee accidentally revealed the feature was on the way over the holidays, and now tabs are showing up in an update to Notepad for Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel today.

The tabs support in Notepad lets you use multiple files in a single window, much like how Microsoft has implemented tabs in File Explorer in Windows 11. “There are also new keyboard shortcut keys to support managing tabs as well as some improvements to managing unsaved files, like automatically generating the file name/tab title based on content and a refreshed unsaved changes indicator,” explains Dave Grochocki, principal product manager lead at Microsoft.

Notepad is the first...

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WhatsApp now lets you chat with yourself

Illustration: The Verge

WhatsApp will now let you freely message yourself. The new Message Yourself feature has been gradually rolling out to WhatsApp users over the past couple of months and has appeared in the release notes for the latest app update this week. It’s not Meta’s latest AI invention but more of a digital notepad to let you send quick notes, reminders, links, and photos to yourself across multiple devices.

You could also use this feature to have a full-blown conversation with yourself, but I wouldn’t recommend it. My colleague David Pierce texts himself every day to share links, notes, and reminders that are all searchable across devices.

Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge

If you talk to yourself in the mirror every...

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PSVR2 adds Tetris Effect and Rez Infinite ports to its ‘launch window’ games list

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

A post on the PlayStation blog lists “over 30” titles for the PlayStation VR2’s monthlong launch window (you can scroll down to see the full list here) that starts when the hardware ships starting February 22nd.

While the new additions consist mostly of ports from the first PS VR or PC headsets, that list does include two popular puzzle games made by Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s Enhance studio, Tetris Effect and Rez Infinite.

Both titles earned stellar remarks from us in their previous VR iterations, so it’s good to see them here (since PS VR games won’t work on the new headset), but it does mean paying a little extra.

People who own PS4 / PS VR versions of the game can upgrade each title to its PS5 / PS VR2 edition for $9.99 USD, where they...

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Game developers aren’t so hot on NFTs, the metaverse, or huge acquisitions

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Ahead of the Game Developers Conference in March, the organizers of the event have released its annual State of the Industry survey results. Surveying 2,300 respondents, the questionnaire covered developer sentiment on a wide range of topics, including NFTs, unionization, the metaverse, and more.

As overall sentiment on NFTs cools amid continuous stories of fraud and scandal, the GDC survey reports only 23 percent of developers say that their studios are interested in Web3 technology — a slight decline from 27 percent last year. There does seem to be a marked decrease in NFTs and crypto in video games, as anytime a studio announces a Web3-based project, consumer backlash usually causes it to reverse course. Of the 2,300 respondents to...

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Instagram now lets you pause notifications with Quiet Mode

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Instagram’s adding a way to temporarily silence push notifications whenever you want to take a break from the app. The feature, called Quiet Mode, will send automatic replies to users who try to message you on the platform, letting them know you weren’t notified.

Instagram will specifically prompt teen users to toggle on Quiet Mode “when they spend a specific amount of time on Instagram late at night.” However, the platform doesn’t specify how much time teens have to spend on the app to see the prompt and also doesn’t say what timeframe it considers “late at night.” Meta spokesperson Liza Crenshaw tells The Verge the notification will appear after “several minutes.”

Image: Instagram

Instagram will automatically...

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Twitter Blue arrives on Android for $11 a month

Twitter Blue is currently only available to users in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, regardless of what system you use to subscribe. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter has rolled out Twitter Blue to Android users a month after the service was relaunched on the platform’s iOS app. As seen in Twitter’s updated help page for Twitter Blue, Android users can now purchase a monthly subscription for $11 — the same price as iOS users. The service is currently still limited to users within the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

Along with providing users with a blue “verified” checkmark, a subscription to Twitter Blue currently grants users access to the ability to edit tweets, upload longer 1080p videos, and access reader mode. Additional features like seeing fewer ads than nonsubscribers and prioritizing Tweets from verified users are listed as “coming soon.”

Image:...

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New York City’s no match for Ghostface in Scream VI’s new trailer

The Ghostface killer getting ready to stab someone in a bodega. | Paramount

Though Gale Weathers had the sense not to give the Ghostface killers of 2022’s Screamthe publicity they wanted for fear of inspiring yet another generation of masked murderers, Scream VI’s first trailer definitely makes it seem like her worst fears have been realized.

Scream VI, from directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, continues the stories of Sam (Melissa Barrera), Tara (Jenna Ortega), Chad (Mason Gooding), and Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) — the young survivors of the most recent wave of Ghostface murders in the fictional town of Woodsboro, California. Having been through that sort of experience, it’s no wonder that the friend group has decided to pack up and move to New York City as the new trailer establishes, and it...

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The laptops I’m most excited to test in 2023

Spoiler alert: this is one of them. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

It’s going to be an interesting year for laptops. We’re coming out of CES 2023, the annual trade show where the tech industry shows off the products we’ll be seeing hit shelves throughout the upcoming year. Big players, from Dell and HP to Razer and MSI, unveiled their weirdest and wackiest new products. There’s a lot to look forward to this year when it comes to display technology, chip capability, AI features, build, and more. But a few products really stood out from the rest.

In no particular order, here are the laptops that I’m most excited about testing in 2023.

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

The Yoga Book 9i’s kickstand is included!

Various companies have been trying to do funky...

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US arrests Russian crypto exchange owner for allegedly laundering over $700 million

The US Treasury Department has identified Bitzlato as a “primary money laundering concern” in connection with the Russian government. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

US authorities announced on Wednesday that the Russian co-founder of Hong Kong-based crypto exchange Bitzlato had been arrested in Miami for allegedly processing $700 million in illicit funds. Bitzlato’s crypto assets were seized and its digital infrastructure was dismantled by French authorities working alongside the US (in addition to other international authorities).

The US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has since identified Bitzlato as a “primary money laundering concern” in connection with the Russian government.

In a statement coinciding with the arrest, FinCEN accused Bitzlato of “repeatedly facilitated transactions for Russian-affiliated ransomware groups, including Conti, a...

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Get a $35 gift card when you buy a Nintendo Switch from Dell

You can currently get a $35 Dell Gift Card when you buy a Nintendo Switch from Dell | Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

Discounts on the Nintendo Switch are pretty rare, but today, picking up the standard, non-OLED model from Dell at full price will get you a free $35 gift card. Nintendo’s handheld needs little introduction at this point; it’s a marvelous console to play at home or on the go, and its two Joy-Con controllers allow for two-player gaming right out of the box. And it’s the only place to experience exclusive and very fun titles like Splatoon 3 and Fire Emblem Engage. There are also ports of big open-world games, like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and it’s one of the best consoles to get if you like role-playing games (RPGs).

Something to note is that Dell’s gift card can only be applied to future purchases at its online store, not to this one,...

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I wish Amazon had been honest about why it’s sunsetting AmazonSmile

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Whenever I come across a sales campaign that boasts, “if you buy our product, we’re going to give part of our profit to this deserving charity,” I’m often tempted to call a doctor and consult them about all the grains of (to me) forbidden salt I’ve just eaten. I’m very well aware that the amount of money that is going to be moved to that charity is probably very small, that the tax advantages to the company will be worth more than what it may lose in immediate profit, and that I’d be better off just sending some cash to the organizations I support.

All that being said, I must admit that I made an exception (practically and emotionally) for the AmazonSmile program. This decade-old program let me, as an Amazon customer, choose among a...

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Netflix’s Jung_E adds heart to a story about AI brains

Kim Hyun-joo in Jung_E_._ | Image: Netflix

With 2016’s Train to Busan, director Yeon Sang-ho managed to do something surprising: offer a fresh take on a zombie story, one of the most well-trod genres around. Now, he’s tackling yet another oversaturated space with Jung_E, a sci-fi tale about how humanity will adapt to living alongside AI. The new film introduces some fascinating ideas about class and technology, along with some very fun action sequences. But it manages to stand out mostly thanks to its extremely personal take on our AI future.

The movie is also notable for being the final on-screen performance from Kang Soo-yeon, a Korean star who died suddenly last May. Jung_E represents not only her last role but also a return to the screen after nearly a decade away.

Jung_E...

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Testing Nvidia’s GeForce Now RTX 4080, the most advanced cloud gaming platform yet

Image: Nvidia

For $20 a month, Nvidia will rent you an RTX 4080 gaming PC in the cloud. It feels phenomenal in some games, but there’s still work to be done.

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The Steam Deck wasn’t born ready, but it’s ready now

I’m making a note here: huge success.

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Check out this clever voice assistant demo hacked together with GPT-3 and Siri

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A developer has put together a GPT-3 demo that attempts to enhance Apple’s Siri voice assistant and allow far more conversational voice commands. In a video posted to Reddit, developer Mate Marschalko shows the assistant controlling his HomeKit smart home devices and responding to queries in response to relatively vague prompts that today’s voice assistants like Siri would typically struggle to understand.

For example, the AI is shown turning on Marschalko’s lights in response to the voice prompt “Just noticed that I’m recording this video in the dark in the office, can you do something about that?” Later on in the video Marschalko asks the assistant to set his bedroom to a temperature that would “help me sleep better,” and it responds...

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Google Stadia is how you shut down a service right

Google Stadia is survived by its gamepad, fans, and its Nvidia and Amazon rivals. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Google made a few mistakes with its Stadia cloud gaming service. Maybe more than a few. Okay, it made a lot of promises it didn’t keep and said a lot of things that look pretty laughable in hindsight and totally pulled the rug out from under its indie developers. We did our best to warn you!

And yet, I don’t think Stadia will be remembered poorly now it’s gone — because in the end, Google did right by its customers. Pay attention, rival companies: this is how you shut down a service right.

I can’t remember a company ever trying so hard to erase its mistakes: Stadia users got full hardware and software refunds, save game transfers, even a final celebratory test game they could play on the eve of the shutdown. They were warned over three...

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Amazon is closing its AmazonSmile charity platform

The announcement of AmazonSmile’s closure comes as Amazon begins another round of job cuts. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon is shutting down its AmazonSmile charity program next month. The closure coincides with a variety of cost-cutting efforts announced by the e-commerce giant that includes laying off thousands of employees.

The AmazonSmile program functioned like an overlay for the standard Amazon site, allowing users to shop as normal, but select a charity to which the e-retailer donated 0.5 percent of the cost of all eligible products. Amazon claims that over $377 million has been donated through the scheme since it launched in 2013, but in its closure notice suggested this was not sufficient to keep the scheme running.

AmazonSmile will shut down on February 20th

“After almost a decade, the program has not grown to create the impact that we had...

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Thursday’s top tech news: what does ‘funding secured’ mean anyway?

Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty IMages

Plus more Apple rumors, and a hefty proposed OSHA fine for Amazon.

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Amazon’s OSHA fine for warehouse safety violations could be about $60K

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, has issued a citation against Amazon, alleging that the company violated safety laws and failed to keep workers in three warehouses safe. The regulator has also proposed $60,269 in penalties related to the violations — a drop in the bucket for a company that recorded over $127 billion in sales during the third quarter of 2022 alone but a relatively high penalty compared to many of the ones it faced from OSHA before.

According to a press release, the citation stems from inspections at three warehouses located in Deltona, Florida, Waukegan, Illinois, and New Windsor, New York. OSHA says that Amazon “exposed workers to ergonomic, struck-by hazards” in the location, putting them at...

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