Netflix introduces spatial audio to a lot more movies and shows

The two new benefits are free and exclusive to those subscribed to Netflix’s premium tier membership, which costs $19.99 / month for 4K HDR and other perks. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Netflix is introducing two new benefits exclusively for its premium subscribers: rolling out support for spatial audio across the streaming platform’s top 700 titles and increasing the number of download devices from four to six. Announced via a press release, both new features are available globally today and come at no additional cost to premium-tier Netflix subscribers who pay $19.99 / month for 4K HDR and other perks.

Netflix first introduced the feature in July last year across a limited number of the platform’s original titles. Now, spatial audio will be available across 700 titles, including The Watcher, Wednesday, and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, and will be added to new titles as they’re released, including You, Your Place...

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What ‘feminist Tinder’ promised

Image: The Verge

An early slogan from Bumble encouraged users to “be the CEO your parents always wanted you to marry.” Since its founding in 2014, the company has billed its app as the more empowering dating service for women — one where women message matches first, and women are in control. It’s earned Bumble the moniker of “feminist Tinder.” And Bumble has been more than happy to play into that marketing.

But almost a decade on, Bumble can still feel as tired and broken as other dating apps. And it often seems like that feminist twist is more marketing fodder than meaningful change to how our apps run our love lives.

Episode four of Land of the Giants: Dating Games explores how ex-Tinder co-founder and marketing executive Whitney Wolfe Herd built a...

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Anker launches cheaper USB-C fast charging options for Samsung Galaxy phones

Anker 313 is a compact 45W GaN USB-C charger with flip-out pins and PPS support for Samsung devices. | Image: Anker

Anker’s releasing a pair of new “Ace” compact USB-C chargers that are intended for owners of the latest Samsung devices. They support Samsung’s Super Fast Charging 2.0 specification to quickly juice up newer Galaxy phones — Anker claims its 313 charger can fill up an S22 Ultra’s 5,000mAh battery from zero in under an hour — and should pair well with the S23 phones Samsung is announcing later today (perfect timing, Anker) or any other mobile gadgets you need to plug in.

Samsung’s Super Fast Charging relies on a USB Power Delivery (PD) specification called PPS. Unlike proprietary fast charging tech, like the Warp Charging in OnePlus devices, PPS is open for any manufacturer to use, but only Samsung seems to be using it widely.

Many USB-C...

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Intel’s RTX 3060 competitor drops to just $249 alongside ‘big’ performance improvements

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Intel is dropping the price of its RTX 3060 competitor, the Arc A750, to $249 just as it promises big performance improvements across a variety of DirectX 9 games for its Arc GPUs. The new $249 pricing will be available in the US and Canada today, followed by price drops in other regions over the course of the next week.

Intel’s Arc A750 was already only $289, less than the $329 retail pricing for an RTX 3060. This aggressive price cut means the A750 Limited Edition (made by Intel) is much more affordable than the average price for an RTX 3060, which Intel estimates at $391. “That’s what we see if you just take a snapshot of what’s on Newegg or Amazon, it’s around $391 on average,” says Intel fellow Tom Petersen in a press briefing with T...

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Did Spotify screw up? ‘No… and yes,’ says its CEO

Nick Barclay / The Verge

This is Hot Pod, The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.

Hi, everyone, I’m here today while Ariel is off for the week. I’ve really been enjoying the new Rian Johnson / Natasha Lyonne show Poker Face, with its oddball characters and unusually extended murder-of-the-week introductions. The first four episodes are already out, and two of them have a fun audio tie-in. (See, I made this relevant to the newsletter!) There’s a big plot point around a radio broadcast in one episode, and another features a true crime show called Murder Girl, whose host is played by a former podcaster (and Verge alum). Gotta respect its commitment to the Podcast Voice.

Today, I dive into Spotify’s earnings and where...

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PSA: Gmail’s new package tracking interface is now live if you know where to look

The new interface offers more at-a-glance information about where your package is. | Screenshot by Jon Porter / The Verge

Gmail’s iOS and Android apps have been updated with a new interface that makes it easier to see where your packages are in transit, and when they might arrive. The feature was announced last November, when Google said it would be arriving “in the coming weeks,” but it’s only been spotted in the wild by the likes of 9to5Googleand XDA-Developersover the past couple of days. It’s unclear exactly when it went live, but the feature appears to be available now if you know where to look.

The feature is currently opt-in, making it easy to miss it if you don’t know where to look. Google’s original blog post announcing the feature had a screenshot of a prompt in the Gmail app asking if you want to turn the feature on, but for now most people...

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Garmin finally introduces wireless charging with its stylish new hybrid smartwatch

The new Vivomove Trend works with Qi-certified wireless charging pads. | Image: Garmin

While Garmin’s latest hybrid smartwatch doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it is adding a long-overdue feature: wireless charging. The $269.99 Vivomove Trend will be the first of any Garmin device to add Qi compatibility.

Wireless charging isn’t new to smartwatches. In fact, most modern smartwatches come with some kind of wireless charging magnetic puck. The catch is these chargers tend to be proprietary, and even if you have a Qi charger, it likely won’t work with your smartwatch. Or, at least, not reliably. Conversely, Garmin says you should be able to plop the Trend onto any existing Qi-certified charger you may already have. This is neat, as losing smartwatch chargers is more annoying than your typical gadget. Not only is there a good...

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Wednesday’s top tech news: happy Samsung Unpacked day to all who observe

Image: Samsung

Plus we say goodbye to a VR classic, and AMD issues a prediction on when PC sales might pick up.

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Google Fi says customer data was compromised by hackers

Illustration: The Verge

Google has notified customers using its Google Fi cell service that their personal data may have been stolen in a recent cyberattack, which is believed to be in connection with a T-Mobile data breach earlier this month. In an email sent to Google Fi customers on Monday, obtained by Android Police, Google said that the cell network’s primary network provider had become aware of suspicious activity in a system containing Google Fi customer data.

Google Fi is an MVNO that uses T-Mobile’s network for the majority of its connections alongside US Cellular, but Google doesn’t explicitly name T-Mobile as its primary service provider within the email. We have reached out to Google for clarification and will update this story should we hear back.

...

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Jony Ive has designed a ‘magically transforming’ Red Nose

The new Red Nose for 2023. | Image: Comic Relief

Former head Apple designer Jony Ive has taken on an unusual brief: designing the iconic Red Nose that symbolizes the British charity Comic Relief. The new Red Nose is made mostly from plant-based materials and transforms from a small flat crescent into a honeycomb-paper sphere. Comic Relief says Ive’s redesigned Red Nose is the “most dramatic makeover since its debut in 1988.”

The product is being sold as part of Red Nose Day, an annual charity fundraising event from Comic Relief that’s broadcast across a variety of British BBC TV channels.

“We’ve grown up with Comic Relief and are proud to support their remarkable work,” says Jony Ive. “This new and seemingly simple Red Nose has been a fabulously complex little object to design and make...

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Google is reportedly testing an alternate home page with ChatGPT-style Q&A prompts

Photo by PAU BARRENA/AFP via Getty Images

We know Google is currently freaking out about AI chatbot ChatGPT, but a report from CNBC offers new details about how the search giant is apparently marshaling its response.

According to CNBC, Googlers are currently testing an AI chatbot of their own called “Apprentice Bard,” which offers responses to questions posed using natural language just like ChatGPT. Bard is built using Google’s LaMDA technology, which is itself similar to the GPT-series of AI language models that ChatGPT itself relies on. (Google has used LaMDA in the past to power similar chatbot demos at I/O, like its conversation with Pluto.)

One big advantage Bard reportedly has over ChatGPT is its ability to talk about recent events. As OpenAI warns, ChatGPT has “Limited...

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Tesla’s bitcoin holdings suffered a $140 million net loss last year

Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Tesla has revealed that its bitcoin holdings lost $204 million of value last year In a new regulatory filing, which was partially offset by gains of $64 million from converting the digital currency into fiat. Overall, it suggests the company’s bitcoin investment resulted in a net loss of $140 million throughout the course of 2022, TechCrunch reports.

That’s a lot of money, but it’s small in comparison to Tesla’s initial bitcoin investment announced in February 2021, when it said it had bought $1.5 billion of the digital currency and planned to start accepting it as payment for its vehicles. But it didn’t hold on to the bulk of this investment for long. Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed in June 2021 that it had already sold 10 percent of its...

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Microsoft is pulling many beloved games off the Xbox 360 store next week

A screenshot from Half-Life 2_, which is included in_ The Orange Box_._ | Image: Valve

Microsoft will be removing a bunch of beloved games from the Xbox 360 Marketplace on February 7th, according to a support page on the Xbox website (via Wario64), meaning you won’t be able to buy them after that date.

It’s not all bad news. If you’ve already bought a game that’s getting pulled, you can still download it after February 7th. Games being removed that are available on Xbox One and Xbox Series X / S stores will remain purchasable on those platforms.

But that does mean digital games only available on the Xbox 360 Marketplace will be unavailable for purchase in just a week. Users on Resetera have figured out which games fall into that category and will be going away for good, and the list includes some well-known titles like Jet...

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Meta is inexplicably shutting down one of the best Oculus games

We’ve called it a cross between the Battle School from Ender’s Game and ultimate frisbee. We’ve called it Final Fantasy X blitzball meets VR. It made two of our Best VR Games lists — three, if you count the one I did for CNET before returning to The Verge. It convincingly sticks you into a robot body inhabiting a zero-G arena, where you have to use your wrist jets, obstacles, teammates, and even foes to catapult yourself to victory. It even became its own esport.

But now, Echo VR (née Echo Arena) is getting killed off by Meta (née Facebook). Facebook purchased its developer Ready At Dawn in 2020, after making Echo VR one of the flagship games for the Meta Quest (née Oculus Quest) and Rift S launch. Meta will not be offering any refunds...

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NLRB judge rules that Amazon broke labor laws in Staten Island (again)

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A judge for the National Labor Relations Board has determined that Amazon broke labor laws in the run-up to union elections at its JFK8 and LDJ5 facilities in Staten Island, New York. According to the judge, the company threatened workers by saying they wouldn’t get raises or additional benefits during a potential collective bargaining period and discriminated against union organizers while enforcing its solicitation policies.

According to the decision, posted in full by Bloomberg Law, Amazon removed a post from an internal forum that called for workers to sign an Amazon Labor Union petition to get holiday pay for Juneteenth. Amazon allegedly cited its solicitation rules, but the judge says the company didn’t take the same action against...

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AMD thinks the PC sales slump will end after one more rough quarter

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

People aren’t buying as many computers, and chipmakers are getting hit hard — but AMD thinks that should improve long before the year is out. “The first quarter should be the bottom for us in PCs,” AMD CEO Lisa Su said today on the company’s Q4 2022 earnings call.

Su predicts that the total addressable market for PCs will shrink 10 percent this year, down to around 260 million units. (IDC reported this month that 292.3 million PCs shipped in 2022, and both IDC and Gartner suggested it might take until 2024 to recover.) Su says AMD is expecting “a softer first half and a stronger second half.”

While AMD is predicting that both its client processor and gaming revenue will continue to drop next quarter — even as its new Ryzen 7000 desktop...

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We can’t afford to offset our aviation emissions

Passenger aircraft as seen flying over the Netherlands. | Image: Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images

With business continuing as usual, climate pollution from aviation could nearly triple by 2050 as demand for air travel grows, according to a new study published yesterday in the journal Nature Sustainability. It would cost up to $1 trillion to try to remove enough of that pollution from the atmosphere to meet global climate goals — an untenable situation.

To put that enormous cost into context, the global airline industry only netted $26.4 billion in profits in 2019 before the covid pandemic curbed travel. And even if airlines can pay to remove all their emissions from the atmosphere, that’s still not guaranteed to slow climate change. While carbon offsets — paying to cancel out your climate pollution through green projects like...

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Rode added a removable microphone to its headphones

Rode’s NTH-100M headset | Image: Rode

Rode is packaging the NTH-100 headphones with a headset microphone for broadcast, streaming, and other voice operations and calling it the NTH-100M.

There is virtually no difference between last year’s NTH-100s and the new $189 NTH-100M outside of the new removable boom microphone and the required TRRS cable for allowing devices to utilize the microphone, but it’s a welcome addition to the crowded headphone space.

One feature from the NTH-100s that stood out among other media production headphones was the dual-sided cable attachments, which could be plugged into either the right or left ear cup. The clever modularity here allows those same cable ports to accept the boom mic attachment and new TRRS cable, so users of the NTH-100 only...

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Custom build turns the Framework Laptop into a triple-screen powerhouse

Open for business. | Image: DIY Perks

The Framework Laptop has been a godsend for DIYers. Not only does the modular design allow for quick and easy repair, but the swappable mainboard is a robust platform for all sorts of bizarre builds. Tons of tinkerers have used the modular mainboard design to create their own cyberdeck designs. You don’t even need to buy the whole laptop to do it!

DIY Perks has taken that to the next level with this triple-screen laptop build. Unsatisfied with the lack of screen real estate and poor ergonomics in most laptops, they used their skills to cobble together a portable cyberdeck workstation.

Photo: DIY Perks

The Framework mainboard, some elbow grease, 3D Printing, and a tiny bit of soldering.

The bill of materials...

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Overwatch 2 is making it easier and cheaper for you to get older skins

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

To coincide with the release of season 3, Overwatch 2 is reintroducing Overwatch credits, giving players ways to earn those credits via battle pass progression, and adding Overwatch’s epic and legendary skins to its shop at reduced prices. Altogether, this currency overhaul is meant to address the long-standing complaint that the new cash shop placed one of Overwatch’s most unique and desirable features — its well-designed skins — behind a paywall that was just too expensive.

AsOverwatch season 2 nears its end, the developers published a blog highlighting their takeaways from the season. They addressed new hero Ramattra, including the tweaks they’ve made to his abilities, competitive ladder updates, and changes coming to rewards for...

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EA is shutting down Apex Legends Mobile and not giving refunds

A screenshot from Apex Legends Mobile_._ | Image: EA

Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment announced the game’s mobile version will shut down in all regions on May 1st, just a few weeks shy of its one-year anniversary. As if that wasn’t enough bad news for players, it also said that once the game is gone, so are any items or extras they purchased in Apex Legends Mobile. EA shared the news about the change as part of its Q3 FY203 earnings results.

A news post from the company described the shutdown as a “mutual decision” reached with its “development partner”; Apex Legends Mobile was developed by Respawn and Tencent’s Lightspeed & Quantum Studios, which also handles the mobile port of PUBG. Respawn’s post reiterates that note but starts by claiming, “Following a strong start, the...

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Please let me battle you in Marvel Snap

Image: Second Dinner

Marvel Snap’s Battle Mode update is now live, and my biggest problem right now is that no one wants to play. Is it because my handful of Marvel Snap friends and colleagues are afraid of the awesome power of my decks? Perhaps. Is it because it’s 2:30PM ET on a workday? Also very possible. But I’ve been waiting for this update since the developers told me about it months ago, and after the tiny taste of it I’ve gotten so far, I hunger for more.

For starters, do not do what I do and try to conscript your Marvel Snap agnostic boss or partner into playing against you. Snap won’t allow you to play in Battle Mode unless you’ve completed the game’s tutorial and reached rank 10. But once you meet that minimum criterion, hopping into a match is...

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Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has been delayed to April

The game is being pushed back six weeks. | Image: EA

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s release date is being delayed by six weeks to April 28th, EA announced on Tuesday. The game had been set to release on March 17th, but it’s being pushed back just a little bit.

“In order for the team to hit the Respawn quality bar, provide the team the time they need, and achieve the level of polish our fans deserve, we have added six crucial weeks to our release schedule – Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will now launch globally on April 28th,” EA wrote in a statement.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Now Arrives April 28th pic.twitter.com/PNtsL6kmER

— EA Star Wars (@EAStarWars) January 31, 2023

According to the statement, the game is “content complete,” and Respawn is focused on the “final stage” of development,...

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Cars are rewiring our brains to ignore all the bad stuff about driving

Photo by AAron Ontiveroz / MediaNews Group / The Denver Post via Getty Images

Unsurprisingly, most Americans frown upon antisocial behavior. Stealing people’s stuff, bending food safety rules, or smoking in large crowds tend to generate a lot of stern reactions.

But get behind the wheel of a car, and all that disapproval tends to melt away.

That’s because a lot of us suffer from a malady called “car brain” — though Ian Walker, a professor of environmental psychology at Swansea University in Wales, prefers to call it “motornormativity.” This is the term coined by Walker and his team to describe the “cultural inability to think objectively and dispassionately” about how we use cars.

A lot of us suffer from a malady called “car brain”

Think of it like “heteronormativity,” the idea that heterosexual couples...

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Anker finally comes clean about its Eufy security cameras

An Anker Eufy Floodlight camera. | Image: Eufy

First, Anker told us it was impossible. Then, it covered its tracks. It repeatedly deflected while utterly ignoring our emails. So shortly before Christmas, we gave the company an ultimatum: if Anker wouldn’t answer why its supposedly always-encrypted Eufy cameras were producing unencrypted streams — among other questions — we would publish a story about the company’s lack of answers.

It worked.

In a series of emails to The Verge, Anker has finally admitted its Eufy security camerasare not natively end-to-end encrypted — they can and did produce unencrypted video streams for Eufy’s web portal, like the ones we accessed from across the United States using an ordinary media player.

But Anker says that’s now largely fixed. Every video...

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Twitter ends CoTweets, its collaborative posting feature

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter is shutting down CoTweets, its collaborative posting feature that was one of the last big product updates introduced before Elon Musk’s takeover. A notice was posted on Twitter’s help center announcing the end of the feature.

CoTweets allowed two accounts to co-author posts that appeared simultaneously on users’ profiles. As of last July, select users in the US, Korea, and Canada were able to use CoTweets after the company began testing the idea last spring. While CoTweets were still limited in rollout, many people anticipated they’d be helpful for brands doing collaborations or announcements.

As of today, users with the feature won’t be able to post new CoTweets. Existing posts will be visible for another month before they...

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ChatGPT’s creator made a free tool for detecting AI-generated text

Image: OpenAI

OpenAI, the company behind DALL-E and ChatGPT, has released a free tool that it says is meant to “distinguish between text written by a human and text written by AIs.” It warns the classifier is “not fully reliable” in a press release and “should not be used as a primary decision-making tool.” According to OpenAI, it can be useful in trying to determine whether someone is trying to pass off generated text as something that was written by a person.

The tool, known as a classifier, is relatively simple, though you will have to have a free OpenAI account to use it. You just paste text into a box, click a button, and it’ll tell you whether it thinks the text is very unlikely, unlikely, unclear if it is, possibly, or likely AI-generated.

In...

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Hyundai’s Ioniq 6 EV can keep it rolling with its new EPA-estimated 361 miles of range

The 2023 Hyundai Ioniq 6. | Image: Hyundai

Hyundai’s new Ioniq 6 has had its playdate with the EPA, and now the automaker is revealing that its electric “streamliner” sedan can travel an estimated 361 miles on a full charge. While the calculation is specific to the SE Long Range RWD trim, the AWD version is no slouch, either, with a maximum range of 316 miles.

Compared to the similarly sized RWD version of Tesla’s Model 3, the Ioniq 6 SE Long Range RWD could go a whole 89 miles further based on the EPA estimates. Hyundai isn’t topping Tesla’s Long Range AWD Model 3, though, which has a 358-mile estimated range that bests the highest-stamina AWD Ioniq 6.

Hyundai is certainly ecstatic about the excellent EPA results for the Ioniq 6. The automaker had previously estimated the US...

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Capcom teams up with Crunchyroll to launch a new Street Fighter mobile game

Promotional art for Street Fighter: Duel_._ | Image: Crunchyroll

Capcom and Crunchyroll are launching a new Street Fighter mobile game very soon, though it doesn’t sound like your typical Street Fighter title.

Titled Street Fighter: Duel, Crunchyroll describes it as “the first ever RPG in the series,” and based on a summary on Crunchyroll’s website, it will feature 2D brawling, too:

Are you ready to duel it out in the world of Street Fighter? Be prepared to travel the globe to recruit and level up iconic characters from across the Street Fighter series. With a team of champions, players will throw down in beautifully animated 2D brawls on all-new and iconic stages from Street Fighter’s past to take down Seth and the Shadaloo’s army of mech clones in an extensive story mode.

Street Fighter: Duel is a...

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Microsoft’s post-layoffs Halo studio is smaller and switching to Unreal Engine

Halo could look a lot different. | Image: 343 Industries

Halo developer 343 Industries lost at least 95 people due to Microsoft’s recent layoffs, and the studio is apparently switching from its proprietary Slipspace engine to Epic Games’ widely used Unreal Engine for future games, Bloomberg reports.

The future of Halo has been somewhat up in the air since the layoffs announced on January 18th. Halo Infinite had a strong launch in late 2021, but over time, fans started to get annoyed by frustrations with multiplayer progression, repeated delays to planned features like network campaign co-op and Forge (which finally launched in November), and no indication that new campaign content was imminent.

343 has publicly affirmed its commitment to the franchise following the layoffs. “Halo and Master...

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