The best deals on 4K TVs

We’ve got deals on all sorts of TVs, ranging from affordable (yet feature-packed) models to high-end OLED and Mini LEDs that can really wow you. | Image: Chris Welch / The Verge

The future looks bright for those who are looking to nab a great TV in 2023 at a substantial discount. Although a fresh slate of new models was announced at CES 2023, it might be a while until any of those arrive and receive any significant discounts. However, you don’t have to wait to land a great deal on a mid- or high-end TV from LG, TCL, Hisense, or Amazon’s own Fire TV brand, as many of the flagship models from last year are currently selling for hundreds of dollars less than their original list price.

Right now, there are a number of discounted 4K TVs to choose from, spanning a wide variety of prices, size configurations, and feature sets. Whether you want a secondary TV for the bedroom or a high-end OLED that’s built for a...

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Best gaming laptop in 2023: seven laptops to get your game on

The best gaming laptop is the Asus ROG Zephyrus G15. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales/ The Verge

All the best gaming laptops at every size and price

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Metroid Fusion is a great place to start with the series

Metroid Fusion. | Image: Nintendo

With Metroid Fusion joining the retro games lineup of Nintendo’s Switch Online subscription this week, every mainline 2D entry in the franchise will be playable on the Switch. And if you’ve never played a Metroid before, it’s a great place to start. Fusion combines depth and accessibility, while also nailing all of the things that make Metroid so distinct — namely, its moody exploration and the feeling of being isolated in a dangerous place. Plus, it has a smartass robot and a terrifying villain.

First, some caveats. Fusion isn’t the first in the series chronologically — and obviously isn’t the only place to get started with Metroid. You could play the NES original, which remains a cryptic masterpiece, or its Super Nintendo successor, w...

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Bethesda’s Starfield will now be released on September 6th

Image: Bethesda

Starfield, a big upcoming title from Microsoft-owned Bethesda, is getting a new release date today. Starfield had been delayed to the first half of 2023, and it will now arrive even later on September 6th.

In a new video, game director Todd Howard says Bethesda and Microsoft will now hold a Starfield direct event on June 11th to detail the game. “This June, we’re going to bring you into the studio and give you a deep dive in the game at our Starfield direct,” says Howard. “There’s so much that we still have to show you.” The dedicated Starfield showcase will follow Microsoft’s annual Xbox showcase on Sunday June 11th.

Join us for #StarfieldDirect following the Xbox Games Showcase on Sunday, June 11 https://t.co/Igj84qH7AT

— Xbox...

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Tesla under investigation after Model Y steering wheels fall off

The preliminary evaluation opened on March 4th and applies to over 120,000 Tesla vehicles. | Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Auto safety regulators in the US have opened an investigation into Tesla following reports that steering wheels on Model Y SUVs have fallen off while the vehicle is being driven. In documents posted on Wednesday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it’s aware of two separate incidents involving 2023 Tesla Model Y vehicles in which the SUV’s steering wheel completely detached from the steering column.

The preliminary evaluation was opened on March 4th and, according to NHTSA, applies to over 120,000 vehicles. In both instances, the brand-new vehicles were delivered without a necessary retaining bolt to attach the steering wheel to the column and had low mileage during the time of the incidents.

@elonmusk @...

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Some of the best Nintendo Switch games are $20 off in the run-up to Mario Day

What’s the term? Yahoo? | Image: Nintendo

Friday, March 10th, marks the official return of Mario Day, an annual celebration of all things Nintendo and one of the best opportunities of the year to score steep discounts on games starring Nintendo’s mustachioed plumber. Nintendo has a full month of shenanigans planned — including the release of a Mario-themed Nintendo Switch and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s fourth wave of DLC tracks — but numerous retailers are already slashing prices on both physical and digital Switch games ahead of the namesake event.

There’s a lot on offer, and although we’ll publish a larger roundup later this week encapsulating all the hits, we at least wanted to note a few highlights that are currently available for $39.99 instead of their typical list price of...

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The Mandalorian’s new episode channels Metroid’s moody exploration

Image: Lucasfilm

It’s no secret that The Mandalorian often feels like a video game. The show has it all: fetch quests, escort missions, gear upgrades, and even difficulty spikes. That’s probably why ol’ Mando feels right at home in an actual video game. The opening of the third season of the show got away from the gameplay in order to do some scene setting that felt like one of those lengthy cutscenes Naughty Dog loves. But in episode 2 — aka chapter 18 — the cutscenes are over and we’re back to the action. The episode doesn’t just feel like any video game, either: it’s very Metroid.

Note: this article contains light spoilers for the first two episodes of The Mandalorian season 3.

At this point in the story, Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his little green...

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The Lightship L1 is a caravan built for EVs that can also power your home

Image: Lightship

The self-propelled trailer reduces drag to extend range, comes loaded with solar panels to charge your EV, enough battery capacity to power your home, and sleeps up to six people.

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Ring’s new video doorbell can finally see your packages

Ring’s newest video doorbell is its first battery-powered doorbell camera with a head-to-toe view. | Image: Ring

Ring’s new Battery Doorbell Plus fixes some of the biggest problems with its existing doorbells. While Ring created the category, many video doorbell competitors have surpassed its capabilities, offering better video quality, better viewing angles, and notifications for things like animals and vehicles (as well as people and packages). Only Ring’s top-of-the-line Ring Pro 2 (a wired doorbell) was really keeping up with the Joneses.

The new $179.99 Battery Doorbell Plus, available for preorder today at Amazon and Ring.com and shipping April 5th, improves on Ring’s existing battery-powered buzzers by adding a square 1:1 aspect ratio with a 150-degree by 150-degree field of view and 1536p HD video resolution. These are the same specs as...

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Meta’s powerful AI language model has leaked online — what happens now?

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Two weeks ago, Meta announced its latest AI language model: LLaMA. Though not accessible to the public like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Microsoft’s Bing, LLaMA is Meta’s contribution to a surge in AI language tech that promises new ways to interact with our computers as well as new dangers.

Meta did not release LLaMA as a public chatbot (though the Facebook owner is building those too) but as an open-source package that anyone in the AI community can request access to. The intention, said the company, is “further democratizing access” to AI to spur research into its problems. Meta benefits if these systems are less buggy, so will happily spend the money to create the model and distribute it for others to troubleshoot with.

“Even with all the...

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DuckDuckGo’s building AI-generated answers into its search engine

DuckAssist provides AI-generated summaries of information on Wikipedia. | Image: DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo has become the latest search engine to incorporate artificial intelligence. The company has announced a new tool, called DuckAssist, that automatically pulls and summarizes information from Wikipedia in response to certain questions.

DuckAssist’s beta is live on the search engine right now — but only through DuckDuckGo’s mobile apps and browser extensions. Gabriel Weinberg, the founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo, says the company will add it to the web-based search engine if the trial “goes well.”

Image: DuckDuckGo

Hit the blue “ask” button if you want an answer from DuckAssist.

When you enter a question that DuckAssist can help with, you’ll see a box that says “I can check to see if Wikipedia has...

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VW to provide 5 years of free vehicle tracking after mishandled carjacking

The Car-Net Safe & Secure add-on required to track stolen vehicles previously required an additional subscription fee. | Image: Robert Michael/picture alliance via Getty Images

Volkswagen has announced changes to its Car-Net security system after a “serious breach in process” delayed law enforcement from using the service to locate a vehicle stolen with the victim’s child still inside. From June 1st this year, VW will provide five years of free Car-Net Safe & Secure connected emergency services in the US — including automatic crash notifications, emergency assistance, stolen vehicle locator, and anti-theft alerts — for “most model year 2020 to 2023 vehicles.”

VW’s Car-Net system is a collection of technologies and services that allow vehicle owners to remotely monitor and operate their vehicle. While its basic package was already free for the first five years on compatible 2020 or newer VW models, Car-Net’s...

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Realme shamelessly clones Apple’s Dynamic Island with newly launched C55

Realme’s pill-shaped “Mini Capsule.” | Image: Realme

Less than six months after it debuted on the iPhone 14 Pro, Apple’s Dynamic Island has made it to an Android phone as a native feature. The Realme C55, which just launched in Indonesia (via GSMArena), includes a feature the company is calling the “Mini Capsule,” a pill-shaped black bar that expands out of the phone’s selfie camera.

An animation on Realme’s website shows the Mini Capsule extending out of the left and right of the phone’s selfie camera hole-punch notch. Its capabilities include displaying the phone’s charges status, data usage, and your step count.

Image: Realme

An animation of the C55’s Mini Capsule.

In spite of how shameless this all is, I’m broadly in favor of good new phone features being...

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Sony releases new PS5 update with Discord integration, 1440p improvements, and more

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Sony has released a new PS5 update that includes the highly anticipated Discord integration. Version 7 of the PS5 software is available for all consoles right now, allowing PS5 owners to join Discord calls on their console, alongside improvements to 1440p resolution, the ability to transfer data between PS5 consoles, and a new option to use your voice to capture clips of your gameplay.

PS5 owners will be able to use the Discord app on mobile or a PC to transfer a Discord call to their console. It’s very similar to how Microsoft initially launched Discord support on the Xbox last year, which means you can’t directly access Discord servers on a PS5 without using a mobile device or a PC to transfer the call.

The Discord integration is...

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The FTC’s Twitter privacy investigations have ramped up since Elon Musk’s takeover

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had its eye on Twitter since well before Elon Musk bought the outfit, but now we have a better idea about what questions it’s been asking lately. Not only have the investigations continued, but the FTC has been looking into the company’s abilities to keep user data secure, the development of the Twitter Blue subscription plan, and pulling together information on the actions of the company’s new owner.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government — part of the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee — revealed the requests in a new report (PDF), calling the FTC’s actions harassment and overreach.

According to the...

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Twitch says deepfake porn is now grounds for instaban — here’s why

A blurred mosaic representing porn.

It’s been five full years since most online platforms made it crystal clear that face-swapped porn is not okay — but not Twitch, apparently. Today, in a blog post titled “Addressing Explicit Deepfake Content,” the livestreaming service now says that synthetic non-consensual exploitative images (NCEI) will not be tolerated.

Even a brief unintentional glimpse at those sorts of images “will be removed and will result in an enforcement,” the company writes. And if you intentionally promote, create, or share deepfake porn, that’s grounds for an instaban: doing that “can result in an indefinite suspension on the first offense.”

The company isn’t doing this on a whim — as BuzzFeed News and NBC News reported last month, Twitch recently had its...

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Tumblr Sexyman is leaving Xbox Game Pass

Image: Toby Fox

It’s time for another Xbox Game Pass refresh, which is seeing some interesting games enter the platform and some must-plays leave. You can check out the full list of games heading to Game Pass and the ones falling off on Xbox’s Game Pass website, but I thought I might call out some of them here.

Civilization VI

Civilization VIis coming to game pass on March 16th. I know Civ VI has been out on consoles since 2019, but I am relatively new to and fascinated by the idea of PC strategy games on console. I checked out my beloved Age of Empires II on console earlier this year and found the experience a fairly seamless transition between PC and console. I’m extremely intrigued to check out Civilization VI on Xbox to see what it does differently...

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Google I/O 2023 will be on May 10th

Image: Google

Google has announced its annual I/O conference will begin on May 10th. The company says it’ll be “broadcast in front of a limited live audience and is open to everyone online” and that you can register to attend today.

This year, the biggest expectations revolve around all of the artificial intelligence technology Google is developing. Expect news about Bard, Google’s answer to ChatGPT, as well as other products to generate images, write code for apps, or test product prototypes.

Image: Google

The Google I/O 2023 landing page, which looks curiously similar to a tablet or foldable device UI.

The conference is typically where we’ll get information about the next version of Android — which Google has already...

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Star Wars films from Kevin Feige and Patty Jenkins have reportedly been shelved

Photo by Albert L. Ortega / Getty Images

The Star Wars production slate just got a little smaller. According to a report from Variety, a pair of upcoming Star Wars films from Marvel president Kevin Feige and Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins is no longer in development.

We first heard about a potential Star Wars film from Feige and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy back in 2019, but sources close to the situation tell Variety it’s been shelved. The same goes for the Rogue Squadron movie Jenkins was working on, which isn’t all that surprising given its production was delayed in 2021 and pushed back again last year. In December, Jenkins expressed uncertainty about the future of the film, noting at the time she didn’t “know if it will happen or not.”

Despite these setbacks, V...

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Twitter just let its privacy- and security-protecting Tor service expire

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter has allowed the certificate for its Tor onion site to expire, effectively killing off a privacy- and speech-protecting service that it introduced last year. Visiting the Tor-specific onion site address will now deliver a warning that the certificate verifying the site’s authenticity has lapsed; proceeding past that point (which is highly not recommended) currently delivers a Twitter error page. The certification expired on March 6th, just shy of two days before the site’s one-year launch anniversary.

Twitter no longer has a communications department to ask about the change, but the Tor Project confirmed the service’s lapse to The Verge. “The onion site is no longer available seemingly with no plans to renew. The Tor Project has...

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Hyundai’s next-gen Kona EV is a little bigger and goes a tad further

The 2024 Hyundai Kona EV. | Image: Hyundai

Hyundai’s Kona compact SUV got a glow-up, and now the automaker is revealing new details about the model year 2024 redesign that includes a slight range improvement for the all-electric model.

Kona EV is a relatively unsung mass-market electric SUV compared to the Tesla Model Y and Mustang Mach-E, but now it’s been redesigned from the ground up as primarily an EV. It carries a 65.4 kWh battery that enables about 304 miles (490 km) of range on a full charge based on European WLTP estimates.

The previous 2023 model Kona had a similarly sized 64 kWh battery (long range) with a European WLTP range of 301 miles (484 km). The US Environmental Protection Agency’s range estimates are generally more conservative than the WLTP; the agency rated...

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Congress rolls out new bill allowing nationwide TikTok ban

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

A TikTok ban is closer than it’s ever been following the Tuesday introduction of a bill that would make it easier for the Biden administration to restrict access to the popular video sharing app.

The bipartisan bill, led by Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), would empower the secretary of commerce to ban foreign technologies and companies from operating in the US if they present a threat to national security. While TikTok is not explicitly named in the bill text, the measure covers companies in adversarial countries including China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela.

“Today, the threat that everyone is talking about is TikTok, and how it could enable surveillance by the Chinese Communist Party, or facilitate the spread of malign...

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The oil industry’s carbon capture plan won’t help Texas’ most polluted communities

Pedestrians walk through Charles H. Milby Park in front of a refinery in Houston, Texas, on Sunday, March 8th, 2020. | Image: Sharon Steinmann/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A controversial tactic for slowing climate change is picking up steam in Texas: capturing carbon dioxide emissions from smokestacks. While that might reduce CO2 emissions heating up the planet, it could pose new problems for communities already saddled with industrial pollution.

Oil giant Occidental announced late last week that it leased 55,000 acres along the Gulf Coast of Texas to build out a hub for carbon capture technologies. The idea is to capture carbon dioxide emissions from nearby chemical plants, refineries, and factories. That CO2 then travels via pipeline to underground storage sites within Occidental’s proposed hub.

The prospect of these new kinds of pipelines crisscrossing through communities already has some e...

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YouTubers can swear at the start of videos again without getting demonetized

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube will ease its restrictions on swearing in videos after an update it rolled out in November sparked backlash from several creators, and the company will be reviewing videos that had their monetization affected by the policy. In a video uploaded to the Creator Insider channel, the company says it reviewed the data on how the new rules were enforced and found that they “resulted in a stricter approach than we intended.” The update means that creators will still be able to make at least some money on videos, even if there’s mild swearing up front, though the restrictions remain confusing and don’t fully revert to the older rules.

As a recap, late last year, the company changed its advertiser-friendly content guidelines to say that if...

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How to stream your security cameras to your Echo Show

Samar Haddad / The Verge

Alongside being a great kitchen TV, a handy bedside alarm clock, and a decent digital picture frame, an Echo Show smart display can also double as a security camera monitor. If you have a smart security camera that works with Amazon Alexa, it’s easy to view a live feed from it right on your smart display. This works with indoor cameras, outdoor cameras, doorbell cameras, and even floodlight cameras.

Also, new this year, if you have more than one camera, the Echo Show can display multiple feeds at once, so you can surveil your whole domain... like some sort of mad Bond villain.

Any Amazon Echo Show or Amazon Fire TV works for viewing live footage from any compatible camera, which includes cameras from Ring, Arlo, Google Nest, Eufy,...

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Nvidia issues fix for recent driver eating up your CPU

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

If you installed version 531.18 of Nvidia’s drivers that were released with Nvidia’s new RTX Video Super Resolution feature last week, you may have noticed the Nvidia Container app hitting your CPU for more than 10 percent at a time. Nvidia’s latest GeForce drivers have been causing high CPU usage for some PC gamers, and the company is now issuing a hotfix driver today to correct the problems.

The new hotfix drivers (531.26) correct the issues, with Nvidia Container no longer hogging the CPU when logging in or when a game is closed. You can download the fixed drivers over at Nvidia’s website.

It’s the second time this year that Nvidia has had to issue quick fixes for issues with its GeForce drivers. Last month, a Discord update limited...

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Gigi Sohn withdraws her nomination for President Joe Biden’s FCC

Image: Pete Marovich-Pool/Getty Images

Gigi Sohn has withdrawn her nomination to serve on the Federal Communications Commission, as first reported by The Washington Post Tuesday.

Sohn, a former FCC official and longtime public interest advocate, was nominated as a third Democratic commissioner by President Joe Biden in October 2021. But over the last 16 months, a brutal and oftentimes bad-faith lobbying campaign has continued to block her nomination. That’s left the FCC with a 2–2 partisan split that has blocked many of Biden’s goals for the agency, including reinstating net neutrality rules.

“It is a sad day for our country and our democracy”

“I could not have imagined that legions of cable and media industry lobbyists, their bought-and-paid-for surrogates, and dark money...

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Amazon’s Black Friday NFL stream will be free, even if you don’t have Prime

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Even people who aren’t subscribed to Amazon Prime will be able to watch the football game it’s streaming on Black Friday for free, according to an announcement from the company. Amazon’s partnership to stream the Black Friday game, which will be played at 3PM ET on November 24th, was announced late last year, but at the time it wasn’t clear if it would just be available to people who pay for Prime.

Amazon’s press release says that the decision to stream it for free will offer “a free sample of the benefits that come with Prime membership,” which may be a hint as to why the company’s doing it. It could act as a push for NFL fans who may be on the fence about subscribing to Prime Video to access its Thursday Night Football streams, which...

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Apple Watch Ultra review: an aspirational debut

A new player has entered the multisport watch game

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The best Chromebook for 2023

Acer’s Chromebook Spin 713 | Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge

The best Chromebook for anyone who wants Chrome OS on their laptop

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