Motorola’s viva magenta Edge 30 Fusion is fun, and fun is good

The special-edition phone celebrates Pantone’s vibrant color of the year.

There’s really no sensible argument for the viva magenta Motorola Edge 30 Fusion. It’s $799 and doesn’t include wireless charging, an IP68 rating, or a telephoto camera. You should get, like, at least two of those things for $800 in 2023. But here’s the thing: it’s fun, and fun is seriously underrated when it comes to smartphones.

A lot of that fun factor has to do with the Edge 30 Fusion’s best and most obvious feature: its color. I think it’s pink, but my sources (a lot of people on Twitter) tell me that it is, in fact, red. And not just any red: viva magenta, the official 2023 Pantone Color of the Year.

Pantone employs some forced alliteration when it says it “vibrates with vim and vigor.” It also apparently “galvanizes our spirit,...

Continue reading…

Amazon’s kid-friendly Kindle is nearly 30 percent off right now

Amazon’s Kindle Kids is on sale right now for $84.99 instead of $119.99. | Image: Kindle Kids

Buying a kid a Kindle is great for two reasons. First off, it encourages them to read at a young age. Second, it serves as a great distraction that might save your sanity when you're both stuck inside on a rainy day. That’s why you might want to take a look at today’s deal on the kid-friendly version of the Kindle, which has dropped to a new all-time low. Regularly $119.99, you can currently buy the latest model for $84.99 at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target.

The Kindle Kids is exactly like the standard Kindle. It touts the same high-resolution, 300dpi display and a dark mode, along with USB-C support and marathon battery life. However, the kid-centric model lacks ads, comes with one of three vibrant covers, and provides a few additional...

Continue reading…

More details come out on which departments saw layoffs at Google, Microsoft, and Amazon

Amazon’s hexagonal MK27-2 delivery drone | Image: Amazon

Google’s decision to let go of 12,000 employees was only just announced on Friday, but it extended the recent trend of the “Big Tech” companies cutting jobs in previously unheard-of numbers, and now we’ve seen more reports about where those cuts happened.

The Informationreports that at Google, layoffs spread through nearly every group, including projects like Chrome, Search, Android, and Google Cloud. Its sources said they affected people who’d previously received “high performance reviews” and some managers making anywhere from $500K to $1 million.

One area of the search and advertising giant that was “relatively unaffected,” however, was the Google Brain division run by Jeff Dean, the senior vice president of research and artificial...

Continue reading…

Drop Sense75 review: a $350 keyboard without $350 of quality

Sanding down those rough edges doesn’t come cheap.

Continue reading…

Twitter will stop forcing you onto its ‘For You’ timeline

Soon you may be able to more-or-less set one of the tabs as default.

Twitter’s next update should make it less insistent that you use the “For You” algorithmic timeline, according to a tweet from Elon Musk. He says the app will “stop switching you back to recommended tweets,” and remember if you left it on the reverse-chronological “Following” timeline or a pinned list.

Musk’s promises should be taken with a grain of salt, but I hope the company delivers on this one. Until last month, Twitter had a button that let you set a preference on which version of the timeline you wanted to use. That option went away when the company rolled out a UI that let you swipe between the two timelines, with the app defaulting to opening on the algorithmic one.

Next Twitter update will remember whether you were on For You...

Continue reading…

Elon Musk admits at trial that he ignored pleas to stop tweeting

Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Elon Musk will never stop posting, no matter who tells him to stop.

That was one of the takeaways from his brief testimony during his securities fraud trial, which took place in a San Francisco courthouse Friday. Lawyers for the plaintiffs peppered Musk with questions about his tweets as they work up to his infamous “funding secured” tweet from 2018 at the center of this case. Musk is being sued by a class of Tesla investors who claim his bumbling attempts to take Tesla private that year cost them millions of dollars.

Musk wasn’t asked about that tweet yet, though. He took the stand for a little over 30 minutes before the trial recessed until next Monday. But the plaintiff’s lawyers got in plenty of questions about his Twitter habits,...

Continue reading…

TikTok confirms that its own employees can decide what goes viral

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

TikTok has confirmed to Forbes that some of its US employees have the ability to boost videos in order to “introduce celebrities and emerging creators to the TikTok community.” The statement comes as part of a report about TikTok’s “Heating” button, which Forbes says can be used to put selected videos onto users’ For You pages, helping boost views by sidestepping the algorithm that supposedly drives the TikTok experience.

Jamie Favazza, a spokesperson for TikTok, told Forbes that increasing views to particular videos isn’t the only reason for heating. TikTok will also “promote some videos to help diversify the content experience” (read: make sure your feed isn’t entirely made up of one or two trends), he said. Favazza also suggests...

Continue reading…

Instagram showed people too many videos last year, admits Adam Mosseri

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Even Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, now believes that the platform put a lopsided emphasis on videos and Reels last year — and traditional photo posts were worse off because of it. In one of the answers from his weekly Q&A with users today, he acknowledged, “I think we were overfocused on video in 2022 and pushed ranking too far and basically showed too many videos and not enough photos.” Mosseri said that Instagram has since worked behind the scenes to restore a more even balance, and internal metrics show that it’s working.

“Things like how often someone likes photos versus videos and how often someone comments on photos versus videos are roughly equal, which is a good sign that things are balanced,” he said. “To the degree that...

Continue reading…

Humble Bundle’s Winter Sale kicks off today

Humble Bundle’s Winter sale goes live today | Image: Humble Bundle

Here’s your PSA to remind you that the Humble Bundle Winter Sale has started, knocking up to 90 percent off a variety of titles until February 7th. The sale features discounts on a plethora of AAA and eccentric indie games, but we’ve put together a short list of highlights that we can personally vouch for. Buying a game off the Humble Bundle store allows you to donate a portion of your purchase to the charity of your choice once you’ve set up an account.

The majority of the games on sale are unlocked via your Steam account, but a handful may require an Epic Games Store or Ubisoft Connect account.

• Cyberpunk 2077 $29.99 (normally $59.99)
• Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga $29.99 (normally $59.99)
• Cult of the Lamb$18.74 (normally...

Continue reading…

Light pollution is even worse than satellites show us

A long exposure photo shows stars in the night sky over the Santa Ruins in Trabzon, Turkey, on January 20th, 2023. | Image: Hakan Burak Altunoz/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The brightness of the night sky has risen by an average of 10 percent each year, according to new research. That’s a significantly higher number than estimates made using satellite data — which put that figure at closer to a 2 percent increase annually.

In other words, light pollution — which makes sleep and many everyday tasks harder for people and other living things — has worsened at a much faster pace than expected. And just as LED lighting has become popular around the world, the satellites typically used to measure light pollution have been unable to fully track it.

At the rate we now know light pollution has grown, the brightness of the night sky doubles in fewer than eight years — a result of human-caused light pollution. A...

Continue reading…

Nintendo reportedly projects Switch sales are going up in 2023

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Nintendo is planning to increase production of the Switch for the upcoming fiscal year beginning in March, according to a Bloomberg report citing anonymous sources. The news arrives on the same weekend as the company’s first big release in 2023, Fire Emblem Engage, and ahead of the long-anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which will go on sale in May_._

Nintendo reportedly has pinged its suppliers and assembly partners about increasing production without putting a firm number on its expectations. In November, the company had decreased its Switch sales forecast for the current year to 19 million units (down from its initial 21 million projection in May) due to ongoing component shortages, but the sources said the number...

Continue reading…

CNET pauses publishing AI-written stories after disclosure controversy

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

CNET will pause publication of stories generated using artificial intelligence “for now,” the site’s leadership told employees on a staff call Friday.

The call, which lasted under an hour, was held a week after CNET came under fire for its use of AI tools on stories and one day after The Verge reported that AI tools had been in use for months, with little transparency to readers or staff. CNET hadn’t formally announced the use of AI until readers noticed a small disclosure.

“We didn’t do it in secret,” CNET editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo told the group. “We did it quietly.”

CNET_’s pop-up disclosure before it was rewritten last week._

CNET, owned by private equity firm Red Ventures, is among several websites that...

Continue reading…

Netflix’s new anime is just a taste of Junji Ito’s terrifying stories

Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre | Image: Netflix

Part of what makes Junji Ito’s work so terrifying is how it sticks with you. The mind behind iconic horror manga like Tomie and Uzumaki takes an idea — whether it’s a schoolgirl who can’t die or a small town obsessed with spirals — and steadily pushes the concept as far it can go, usually toward some kind of disturbing body horror that forces you to look away. Before you know it, the idea has lodged itself in your brain, his carefully crafted black-and-white images flashing even after you close the book.

The new Netflix anthology Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre, which adapts a number of Ito’s stories into animated episodes, captures some of that terror. The ideas are still there, the horrifying imagination that can make...

Continue reading…

Samsung’s original Galaxy Buds Pro are a massive $100 off today

Yesterday’s flagships are today’s bang-for-the-buck deals when you can get them for prices like this. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for some Frideals (sorry, not sorry). First off, the last-gen Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro have fallen to their lowest price yet. Right now, you can get the wireless earbuds for just$99.99 ($100 off) in all colors at Best Buy or in white at Amazon.

Now, these buds from early 2021 may not have the lightweight, refined design and fancy 24-bit audio potential that the newer Galaxy Buds Pro 2 have, but they’re still an excellent pair of noise-canceling earbuds two years later. And as good a replacement as the newer Buds Pro are, they launched at a higher price of $229.99, making this discount on the last-gen model all the more worthwhile for anyone that wants some good buds on a budget. Read our review.

...

Continue reading…

How to easily share your Wi-Fi password on Android and iOS

Image: Samar Haddad; Allison Johnson / The Verge

If you have a guest over to your house for any amount of time, there’s a fair chance they’ll ask you for the Wi-Fi password, which may begin a dreaded dance of you trying to remember what it is or read out a complicated string of numbers, letters, and symbols.

Of course, you could always buy a Wi-Fi password sign or write it on a sticky note that you can quickly point guests to, but that’s not always the most convenient solution; if your password is long or contains hard-to-read symbols (is that an O or a 0?), it can be a pain to get your friends and family connected.

It’s worth noting that if you frequently have people you don’t know very well or large groups over, you should really look into setting up a guest or temporary Wi-Fi...

Continue reading…

Here’s how the HomePod Mini’s new bundle of features work

Apple’s HomePod Mini can now monitor temperature and humidity.

While the sort of new HomePod grabbed all the attention this week, the HomePod Mini is also getting some new features. With the launch of iOS 16.3 (likely later this month), the Mini will get all the same smart home capabilities as the new, bigger HomePod second-gen. The differences between the two Apple speaker siblings are now mainly in size and sound capability. From new temperature and humidity sensing tricks to the ability to find your family for you and even set up automations with just your voice, these new features should make the HomePod Mini a little more useful around the house.

These new features bring some much-needed functionality to the HomePod line

Both HomePods are also getting a Sound Recognition feature later this...

Continue reading…

T-Mobile announces another data breach, impacting 37 million accounts

The breach went undetected for over a month before T-Mobile detected the malicious activity. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

T-Mobile has revealed the company’s second major breach in less than two years, admitting that a hacker was able to obtain customer data, including names, birth dates, and phone numbers, from 37 million accounts. The telecom giant said in a regulatory filing on Thursday that it currently believes the attacker first retrieved data around November 25th, 2022, through one of its APIs.

T-Mobile says it detected malicious activity on January 5th and that the attacker had access to the exploited API for over a month. The company says it traced the source of the malicious activity and fixed the API exploit within a day of the detection. T-Mobile says the API used by the hacker did not allow access to data that contained any social security...

Continue reading…

Polar Ignite 3 review: style over substance

The Ignite 3 looks like a sleek, modern smartwatch but acts like a tracker from five years ago.

Continue reading…

The most surprising camera I have used in years

The Nikon Z9 has a new full-frame 45.7MP stacked CMOS sensor. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

At nearly three pounds, or 1,340g, the $5,500 Nikon Z9 is a brick of a mirrorless camera with more buttons and features than I have been able to test in the nearly two months I have had with it. It has a new full-frame 45.7MP stacked CMOS sensor that, thanks to the new Expeed 7 image processor, can shoot RAW photos at 20fps for over 1,000 frames (assuming you are using a fast enough card). And the video specs put flagship specs from Sony’s A1 and Canon’s R5 to shame. They include 12-bit 8K 60fps or 4K 120fps both in N-RAW, Nikon’s RAW video format. You can also shoot in ProRes RAW up to 5K 30fps.

Photo by Amelia Krales / The Verge

Photo by Amelia Krales / The Verge

Photo by...

Continue reading…

Google is freaking out about ChatGPT

Illustration: The Verge

The recent launch of OpenAI’s AI chatbot ChatGPT has raised alarms within Google, according to reports from The New York Times. Now, the Times says Google has plans to “demonstrate a version of its search engine with chatbot features this year” and unveil more than 20 projects powered by artificial intelligence.

As recently as December, we’d heard Google execs were worried that despite investing heavily in AI technology, moving too fast to roll it out could harm the company’s reputation. But things are changing quickly. Earlier this morning, Google announced it’s laying off more than 12,000 employees and focusing on AI as a domain of primary importance.

There’s no specific timeframe mentioned for the launch of Google’s AI search demo,...

Continue reading…

Winnebago kicks off eVanlife with the all-electric eRV2

Image: Winnebago

Winnebago’s name is synonymous with vanlife, which makes its new all-electric eRV2 notable for an industry built on top of diesel engines. It’s just a prototype, but this one is fully operational and actually on the road with a fleet of customers for six months of field testing. Input from those early experiences will ultimately inform the eRV’s final design and help kick off an era of #eVanlife in the process.

The eRV2 is a follow-up to the eRV concept announced last year. It’s built around the Ford E-Transit chassis with a range of 108 miles (174km) from its 68kWh battery. Yes, that’s paltry for a vehicle that will be used by adventure seekers far away from EV charging networks but fine for field testing a prototype, I guess. Winnebago...

Continue reading…

D&D responds to community backlash with new licensing terms

The new OGL 1.2 is subject to community feedback known as playtesting, which will be addressed on or before February 17th. | Image: Wizards of the Coast

In an announcement on the DnD Beyond website, Kyle Brink, executive producer of D&D, has introduced OGL 1.2, the latest version of the Dungeons and Dragons Open Gaming License. Brink highlighted that this version of the license doesn’t contain any of the ownership, royalties, and revenue reporting requirements found in the more restrictive OGL 1.1 that leaked last week.

Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) — the Hasbro-owned publisher of Dungeons & Dragons — released the new draft ahead of its self-imposed deadline of Friday, January 20th. Unlike the previously leaked draft, OGL 1.2 will be subject to community feedback known as “playtesting” in the tabletop gaming community.

Starting our playtest with a Creative Commons license and an...

Continue reading…

Microsoft has copied the best Windows audio app

Microsoft is copying features from a popular third-party audio tool for Windows. In the latest test build of Windows 11, a new volume mixer can be enabled that looks a lot like EarTrumpet. The new Windows 11 feature provides quick access from the taskbar to switch audio outputs and control individual app volumes.

That’s exactly what EarTrumpet was built for nearly five years ago. The awesome utility has improved audio in Windows for years, and I once called it “the Windows 10 volume control app Microsoft should have created.” How ironic.

Former Microsoft engineer Dave Amenta and Microsoft MVP Rafael Rivera created EarTrumpet, and Rivera pointed out the similarities of Microsoft’s new Windows 11 feature on Twitter this week. “Oh snap....

Continue reading…

Friday’s top tech news: job cuts come for Google

Illustration: The Verge

And it’s all-change over at Netflix.

Continue reading…

Google cuts 12,000 jobs in latest round of big tech layoffs

Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Google is cutting approximately 12,000 jobs — the latest technology firm to initiate significant layoffs as inflation rises and global markets brace for a downturn.

As reported by Bloomberg News, Google SEO Sundar Pichai announced the cuts in an email to staff on Friday. The job losses constitute around 6 percent of Google’s global workforce, compared to recent layoffs at Microsoft (10,000 jobs or 5 percent of the workforce), Amazon (18,000 jobs / 6 percent), and Meta (11,000 / 13 percent). Earlier this month, Google’s parent company Alphabet announced much smaller cuts at Verily, its health-focused subsidiary, and Intrinsic, a subsidiary developing software for industrial robots.

In the email to staff, Pichai said the company would...

Continue reading…

Crypto lending firm Genesis files for bankruptcy

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Genesis, a crypto lending and trading conglomerate of more than 200 businesses, has filed for bankruptcy following the meltdown of the FTX exchange, the Financial Times reports. Genesis, one of FTX’s biggest lenders, had previously suspended withdrawals in November, and cut 30 percent of its staff earlier this month, BBC News reports. Genesis is part of the Digital Currency Group (DCG), which also owns cryptocurrency asset manager Greyscale and crypto-focused news outlet CoinDesk.

The bankruptcy follows months of uncertainty at the crypto firm. The Financial Times reported earlier this month that Genesis owes its creditors over $3 billion, including almost a billion to the customers of the Winklevoss crypto exchange Gemini. Its Chapter...

Continue reading…

Amazon follows Apple in increasing music streaming prices

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The price of Amazon’s Music Unlimited streaming service is increasing in the US and UK from February 21st. In support pages, which we spotted via Billboard, the company says US users will now pay $10.99 per month for a subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited (up from $9.99 previously), while UK listeners will now pay £10.99 (up from £9.99). The discounted student rate is also increasing from $4.99 (£4.99) to $5.99 (£5.99).

According to data from market research firm Midia, Amazon Music had around 13.3 percent of the world’s music subscribers, behind Apple Music with 13.7 percent, and Spotify with 30.5 percent, as of mid-2022.

“To help us bring you even more content and features, we’re updating the prices of select Amazon Music Unlimited...

Continue reading…

Apple has hiked HomePod Mini and iMac prices in some countries

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Depending on where you live, the HomePod Mini and the iMac may have just gotten more expensive. The Apple Post noted that the company’s small smart speaker went from £89 to £99 in the UK, and outlets like MacRumors and 9to5Mac have reported a similar €99 to €109 jump in other European countries like Austria, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

In the UK, each pre-made iMac configuration also went up in price by £150. In France, iMac prices went up by €100 for the base model and €110 for the other models, though they stayed the same in Germany and Ireland.

It’s hard to find a pattern in the increases. In New Zealand, the HomePod Mini’s price went from NZ$159.00 to NZ$179.00, while it stayed the same in neighboring Australia....

Continue reading…

BP makes an order for EV charging stations from US-based Tritium

BP Pulse branded charging stations built by Tritium. | Image: Tritium

BP Pulse, the EV branch of oil and gas conglomerate BP, placed a new order for DC fast chargers from electric vehicle power supply maker Tritium. The companies have not specified how many chargers are in the new order, but Tritium calls it its “largest ever order from a single customer.” The transaction means there will soon be even more available chargers as EV adoption grows and government-mandated deadlines to eliminate combustion cars looms closer.

“We’re looking forward to putting these chargers to work across three continents,” BP Pulse CEO Richard Bartlett states in a press release. BP Pulse currently operates about 60 charging locations in the UK based on its online map and is working to expand in Australia, Europe, and the...

Continue reading…

Samsung Display shows off a new folding phone hinge that can rotate 360 degrees

Samsung Display prototype. | Image: Samsung Display

Samsung has a new prototype display that could send its folding phones in a new direction: 360 degrees.

Samsung Display, the subsidiary that makes the company’s screens, showed off the new prototype display and hinge at CES 2023. The “Flex In & Out” display can rotate 360 degrees, meaning it can be folded inward and outward, company spokesperson John Lucas told The Verge in an email.

In addition, the display comes with a different hinge design that supposedly creates a significantly less visible crease. That’s because the “water-drop hinge” could allow the display to form a looser shape — like a waterdrop — when folded inward. This subtler hinge would also put less stress on the display.

Image: Samsung Display

S...

Continue reading…