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The sensor array is where the health tech magic happens. | Image: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Between small signals, regulatory hurdles, skin color, and battery life, there’s a hell of a lot of ground to cover before a smartwatch can measure blood sugar levels.
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Look, you can make art on your iPad without having to pay for Apple’s Pencil.
For the past few months, I’ve been cheating on my Apple Pencil. Instead of using Apple’s $129 stylus with my iPad Mini for notetaking, I’ve been using an alternative I purchased off of Amazon for about $25. It looks nearly identical, works nearly as well, and even snaps onto and charges from your iPad. And while this $25 stylus doesn’t quite match all of the Apple Pencil’s features, it comes awfully close to providing a similar experience for a fraction of the price.
The stylus I’ve been using is from a random brand called “StylusHome,” but there are many similar ones listed on Amazon for around the same price. It apes the styling of Apple’s second-generation Pencil exactly — if it weren’t for the logo on the first-party one, I wouldn’t...
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Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell in the original 1997 Good Burger movie. | Photo by Paramount/Getty Images
It’s official: Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell will reunite for a Good Burger sequel that’s set to hit Paramount Plus later this year. The duo revealed the news during a segment on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Friday night, noting that they will start filming in the summer.
Good Burger 2 takes place in a present-day version of the fictional fast food restaurant of the same name, with Thompson reprising his role as Dexter Reed and Mitchell as Ed, the store’s hilariously oblivious cashier. Here’s the film’s official synopsis:
Dexter Reed is down on his luck after another one of his inventions fails. Ed welcomes Dex back to Good Burger with open arms and gives him his old job back. With a new crew working at Good Burger, Dex...
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Apple’s 14-inch MacBook Pro from 2021 offers a lot of the same functionality as the newer M2 models at a fraction of the cost. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
The nice thing about the entry-level M2-powered MacBook Air is the fact it's relatively affordable (for a Mac, of course). But that lower price tag comes with a drawback: it’s just not powerful enough for more demanding creative work. Thankfully, today’s $500 discount on the 14-inch MacBook Pro means you can buy a laptop that’s an absolute powerhouse for content creation at what’s closer to an entry-level price for the M2 Air.
Right now, the M1 Pro-equipped laptop is on sale at Best Buy with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage for $1,599 ($400 off), which is just $100 more than buying an M2-equipped MacBook Air with 512GB of storage and half the RAM. What’s more, the 14-inch MacBook Pro supports up to two external displays as opposed to...
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I want to scan everything I own with the Lumafield Neptune.
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Photo by Carsten Koall/picture alliance via Getty Images
It’s a great time to be shopping for an electric cargo bike.
Not only are there a bunch of great, modestly priced models that have just been released from an assortment of really interesting companies, but there are also a growing number of states offering incentives to curious shoppers that could help bring the cost down even further.
It feels as if the industry and the government have simultaneously woken up to the enormous potential of cargo e-bikes to replace car trips and improve the environment, and honestly, it’s about time.
The planet-and-community-saving superpower of cargo e-bikes is widely known. They’ve been shown to decrease car dependency, save people money, reduce carbon emissions, and speed up delivery times for...
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Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
Growing up, I learned The Way Things Work from author David Macaulay’s incredible illustrated books. This week, I was surprised to see Macaulay’s endorsement in my inbox for a new illustrated explainer by a different author — but the surprise didn’t last long.
Fifteen minutes after I began skimming through an advance copy of Hidden Systems, which just came out this week, I immediately ordered the book for my kids. It looks like a fantastic way to help them conceptualize the internet, the world’s water supply, and our power grid — and get them thinking about the infrastructure of the world they’ll someday inherit.
Images by Dan Nott / Random House
How Dan Nott defines a hidden system, from his website excerpt.
...
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Illustration: The Verge
Microsoft is trying to make it easier to share your experiences with its GPT-4-powered Bing Chat by adding a button that lets you post the AI’s response to Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. People have already been sharing the interesting (and sometimes upsetting) things that the chatbot has been saying via screenshots, but it seems like Microsoft is leaning into it now. Perhaps that’s a sign that it’s more confident in all the guardrails it’s put up around the system after users pushed it to the breaking point.
In a blog post on Friday, the company shows off the share button, saying that you can use it to generate a persistent link to the answer in addition to sharing it to social media. Clicking the link takes you to a Bing Chat window,...
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I want this to be me. Hoodie and all. | Image: Razer
Mouse pads are one thing. Mouse pads made of glass? Quite another. This, at least, is what I’m assuming based on the promotional materials for the Razer Atlas, Razer’s first glass mouse pad. “Absolute functionality and durability,” Razer’s website proclaims. “Experience pure polished precision,” the press release demands of me.
The $99.99 tempered glass Atlas has an anti-slip rubber base, is available in black or white, and is 0.19 inches (five millimeters) thick. But the main idea behind a glass mouse pad, or so I gather, is that you can glide a mouse across it very, very fast.
It’s not like I have a problem with the speeds afforded by whatever piece of foam is currently on my desk. But I just keep looking at this thing, and I feel...
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Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge
Microsoft is promising significant changes to the way Windows manages which apps open certain files by default and how users can select programs to pin to their Start menu on the Windows desktop or on the taskbar.
A new Settings deep link URI scheme will let developers send users directly to the right spot in Settings to change which program is the default for particular file or link types.
Image: Microsoft
Microsoft’s nonfinal concept design for the button that would let you confirm pinning an app tile to your Windows taskbar.
Separately, Microsoft will start testing a new API to let apps pin a primary or secondary tile to the taskbar.
Described on a company blog as “a principled approach to app pinning and...
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Image: Team Meat
The next title in the ultra-hard Super Meat Boy series is going to be, of all things, a puzzle game. The new game, Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine, is a match-four puzzler that’s clearly inspired by Sega’s Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, but it will have some _Super Meat Boy-_esque flair.
“As you’re trying to get your color-coded clones to the bottom of the screen and build combos, you’ll have to deal with buzzsaws, missiles and a host of other hazards primed to destroy your clones if you don’t play with the precision that the Super Meat Boy series has always demanded,” Team Meat’s Tommy Refenes said in a blog post. Sounds, uh, brutal. The game will have more than 100 hand-built levels “filled with hazards and traps that will test your...
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Illustration: The Verge
Federal authorities seized nearly $3 million from Gettr last September as part of a sweeping billion-dollar fraud investigation into a Chinese billionaire.
On Wednesday, the Justice Department arrested Chinese billionaire and dissident Guo Wengui, also known as Ho Wan Kwok and Miles Guo, for allegedly defrauding thousands of people out of more than $1 billion. Authorities said that Guo carried out the massive fraud through a complex web of investment schemes that has now entangled Trump-aligned social network Gettr.
Guo, an exiled Chinese dissident living in Manhattan, is a prominent Trump supporter and friend to Steve Bannon. A 2021 Daily Beast report revealed that Guo was an original investor in Gettr, where he touts nearly 900,000...
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Dominique Fishback as Andrea “Dre” Greene. | Image: Amazon
Amazon’s new psychological thriller series from Donald Glover and Janine Nabers is a dark sendup of stan culture, but it’s too caught up in its own obsession with Beyoncé.
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Some of the themes available from Discord. | Image: Discord
Discord is testing out themes that let you change the app’s UI, giving you the choice of 16 (or maybe 17?) premade color schemes. It’s a long-awaited feature for the app, but the catch is that you have to pay for Discord’s $9.99 monthly Nitro subscription to access it — themes aren’t included in the $2.99 monthly Nitro Basic plan, according to the company’s feature comparison chart.
Nitro has a lot of useful perks for people who spend a lot of time in Discord, such as the ability to upload larger files, send longer messages, and customize your profile, but I’d argue that you don’t have to be a power user to appreciate aesthetic changes. It’s easy to imagine people wanting themes but not being able to justify such a high price tag for an...
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Image: Illumination
When we first heard Chris Pratt’s Mario voice in the initial trailer for The Super Mario Bros. Movie, it didn’t sound like Charles Martinet’s iconic Mario voice at all. But in a new interview to promote the film, Pratt busted out a Mario voice that actually sounds almost exactly like what you hear in the Nintendo games.
Just listen to Pratt’s “wahoo” and “it’s-a me” yourself in this video from BBC’s The One Show:
"Mario and Luigi are Sliving"
Could you get more iconic catchphrases than Mario and @ParisHilton? @PrattPrattPratt, Charlie Day and Paris discuss iconic catchphrases #TheOneShow https://t.co/Yzo6QpbdQv #SuperMarioMovie pic.twitter.com/NhEEBOvoKo
— BBC The One Show (@BBCTheOneShow) March 16, 2023
They’re so good, right?...
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Nell Tiger Free in Servant_._ | Image: Apple
Endings are hard. That’s particularly true for serialized mystery box TV shows, ones where plentiful juicy secrets hook viewers but the answers often fail to satisfy them. Putting a final bow on a story like that is a unique challenge. That’s part of what makes Servant, the Apple TV Plus psychological thriller helmed by M. Night Shyamalan, so interesting. Whereas many of these shows seem like they’re making it up as they go, Servant had a specific ending in mind. As Shyamalan told me ahead of the most recent season premiere, “The story wanted to be four seasons.” The show has been weird, confusing, and frequently nonsensical. But at least there has been the promise that it’ll all make some sense eventually.
So now, here we are at that...
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Our exclusive discount drops the price of Google’s flagship earbuds in all four colorways to a mere $145. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
If you’ve spent any time scouring the endless sea of headphones on the web recently, you won’t be surprised to hear that the wireless earbuds space is constantly evolving. Sony appears to be prepping a successor to our favorite pair of earbuds, the WF-1000XM4, while Nothing is set to launch its upcoming Ear 2 in less than a week. But if you’re looking to pick up a pair of earbuds today, you can grab Google’s Pixel Buds Pro at Wellbots for just $145 ($55 off) when you use promo code 55THEVERGE at checkout.
Google’s flagships earbuds offer quite a bit over their flawed predecessor. They feature impressive noise cancellation and good sound quality, and if you’re a Pixel user, they offer easier controls and support for head-tracking spatial...
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Illustration: The Verge
The Google Photos app has already hosted AI-powered features for still photos going as far back as the Top Shot and Photobooth features added with the launch of the Pixel 3. More recent devices powered by its Tensor SoC have pushed on-device machine learning tech even further to enable stuff like Face Unblur and the Magic Eraser that wipes out photobombers, but it soon might expand its abilities to videos, too.
The launch of Google’s Pixel 8 lineup could introduce a new Video Unblur tool to sharpen videos, code discovered by 9to5Google suggests. It was found within the latest APK for the Google Photos app that the company most recently uploaded to the Play Store.
The publication managed to enable the UI for the feature after decompiling...
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Select iPad models go on sale quite regularly. | Image: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
While the best iPad deals come around during major sale events like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Amazon Prime Day, you can still find plenty of great discounts at all times of the year if you know where to look. Whether you’re after the high-end iPad Pro or the most affordable entry-level iPad, there’s likely a sale going on somewhere that you may be interested in.
Of course, it’s difficult to know exactly where you can find the most notable deals unless you’re scouring the major retailers on a daily basis. But that’s often what our deal hunters at The Verge are doing each and every day, so let us help you out. Below, we’ve listed the best deals you can get on each iPad model that is currently available, including the latest ones...
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Our top fitness earbuds pick from Beats now comes in more colors, but there are also great options from Sony, Jabra, Sennheiser, and more.
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Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge
If you own an Xbox Series X or an Xbox Series S, and especially if you just got one, you might not spend a whole lot of time on the menu screens before diving into your games — but there are plenty of useful features and options that are worth exploring.
Here, we’ll highlight 11 of the most useful settings that cover everything from screenshots to eye strain to audio output. You can find all of them in the Settings section of the Xbox interface.
If you’re listening carefully for important sounds during gameplay, you don’t necessarily want to be distracted by pings from the console’s notification system. To turn these sounds off:
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Image: Nick Barclay / The Verge
Meta’s paid verification system for Facebook and Instagram is now rolling out in the US, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Friday. First introduced in Australia and New Zealand in February, “Meta Verified” gets you benefits like a blue verification badge, proactive impersonation protections, and direct access to customer support. The subscription costs $11.99 per month on the web and $14.99 per month on mobile devices.
However, the US version of Meta Verified won’t get you increased visibility and reach like it does in Australia and New Zealand. “We heard feedback that how this piece of the offering worked was causing confusion, so we’re taking the time to further explore its value and learn before we consider expanding this component...
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The FCC is cracking down on the relentless deluge of spammy, automated text messages. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Regulators in the US have introduced new rules to combat the growing number of text messaging scams. Announced on Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) now requires that mobile service providers block automated text messages that are “highly likely to be illegal,” such as texts from unused, unallocated, or invalid phone numbers. This also includes blocking messages from phone numbers identified by government agencies or other organizations as not being used for texting.
Automated messages, or “robotexts,” have become frustratingly common, relentlessly clogging up our phones with unwanted and often scammy promotions. It’s almost impossible to block junk texts completely, and some spammers have gotten creative to stand out...
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The 2020 MacBook Air, one of the best laptops you can get, is frequently on sale. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
With multiple configurations and various models to choose from, finding a deal on a Mac equipped with an M-series chip is not all that difficult. It’s sometimes a slightly different story for the MacBook Pros with beefier M1 Pro and M1 Max CPUs, but with a little luck, you can score those excellent laptops for as much as $500 off. As for the most recent batch of M2-powered 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, they, too, get their fair share of modest savings with some regularity. And with the recent introduction of M2 Pro and M2 Max 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros, it’s probably just a matter of time until you can save some money on those refreshed models, too.
Here, we’ll run through the discounts that are currently available for Apple’s...
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Photo: Getty Images
YouTube has lifted restrictions on former President Donald Trump’s YouTube account. YouTube announced on Twitter that the channel is no longer restricted and can upload new material. “We carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, while balancing the chance for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election,” it said via the YouTubeInsider account. “This channel will continue to be subject to our policies, just like any other channel on YouTube.”
Trump was suspended from YouTube after the January 6th, 2021, riot at the US Capitol. The site removed a video that it said violated its policies against inciting violence, and it banned Trump from uploading new content — first for a...
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Microsoft’s new Copilot feature overhauls Microsoft 365 apps and services. | Image: Microsoft
Copilot is more than just a chatbot. Microsoft is slowly building an AI assistant that it has dreamed about for years.
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Sienna Miller in Extrapolations_._ | Image: Apple
There are kernels of real science in Apple’s new star-studded climate change drama Extrapolations. In the first episode alone, we see raging fires, water shortages, and vanishing Arctic ice. These threats are real.
The show also makes some stuff up for the sake of telling a story. (Spoiler alert!) Walruses, for one, face much more danger from humans than we do from them. But considering their status as a “vulnerable” species due in part to oil and gas drilling and shrinking sea ice, a little walrus rage in the first episode is probably warranted. There’s also no such thing as “summer heart,” a medical condition we see in the second episode. But heat doesput extra strain on the heart, and it’s already the top weather-related killer in...
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Resident Evil 4. | Image: Capcom
Right now, we are absolutely spoiled for choice when it comes to entertainment. TV shows, movies, and games all come out at such a fast and furious pace that it’s hard to keep up. Not all of them are worth your time, of course — which is where we come in.
Our team spends a lot of time immersed in the various realms of pop culture so that we can handpick our favorites for you. That could mean a hot new indie game you might’ve otherwise missed or the streaming series that will become your new obsession. Either way, if you’re finding it hard to sort through the flood, this is the place to find a curated selection of the best stuff.
And like last year, this page will be updated regularly throughout the year — so make sure to check back in...
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Passing the buck is an all-American sport | Illustration by Hugo Herrera / The Verge
The culture war has come for the banks, and friends, it is stupid.
There are a wide variety of proposed explanations for the fall of Silicon Valley Bank. For instance, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has suggested SVB’s board “may have been distracted by diversity demands” as I guess it had too many women, too many Black people (one), too many queer people (again, one), and too many veterans (???).
Meanwhile, in The Financial Times, the problem is that Silicon Valley Bank let people work from home. “It is harder to have a challenging call over Zoom. It makes it harder to challenge management,” according to Nicholas Bloom, a professor at Stanford University who the FT chose to quote for some reason. “Ideas like hedging interest...
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Mobile spinoffs based on beloved console games can sometimes be hit-or-miss. But based on an initial pair of trailers, I’m cautiously optimistic about the newly announced Persona 5: Phantom of the Night (aka The Phantom X). Following a tease in April 2021, “P5X” is now official, and is in development for Android, iOS, and Windows. Unfortunately, none of the press materials mention an international launch, so it sounds like it might be exclusive to China.
That’s a shame, because (from the trailers at least) this looks like a pretty faithful Persona experience. The game appears to be set in the same locations as 2016’s Persona 5, but revolves around a new cast of characters including protagonist Wonder, their owl sidekick Luffy, and friend...