Google’s Ads Transparency hub finally lets you see more about who is behind an ad

Illustration: The Verge

Google’s making it easier to find out more information about the advertisers behind the ads you see across search, YouTube, and the other sites where Google shows ads. The search giant has announced that it’s launching an Ads Transparency Center, a “searchable hub” containing a library of ads from verified advertisers.

Some of the information available in the hub includes a list of the ads an advertiser has shown and which regions they appeared in as well as the last date and format in which it ran an ad.

You can search for specific ads by heading to the Transparency Center directly or by selecting the three-dots menu that appears beside an ad you want more information about. From there, click the option that says “see more ads this...

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Twitter replies make sense again — on the web, at least

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter replies are back to normal — well, on the web. Earlier this week, tweet replies stopped showing who the user was actually replying to, which made them look like vague subtweets or random missives with no context. But on Wednesday morning, tweets once again included details about who is replying to whom on the web.

It’s unclear if the original shift was a bug or an intentional change. When we asked Twitter to clarify, its press email auto-replied with a poop emoji. Personally, I think it was just a bug given that tweet embeds and tweets on TweetDeck still showed reply information even when tweets on Twitter.com did not. Unfortunately, on iOS, replies still don’t show who people are replying to, but fingers crossed that changes...

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Get on the Zelda hype train while there’s still time — Breath of the Wild is $20 off

Ahhh, this brings me calm.

There are 43 days until The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom comes to fuck our shit up. If you haven’t yet picked up its six-year-old predecessor, whose impact on the gaming world is still being felt, now’s a good time.

Walmart is selling the physical version of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the Nintendo Switch for $39.99 ($20 off), just in time for the hype train to be hitting critical mass. I know you may be thinking, “Why on Earth is this game that’s over half a decade old not dirt cheap at this point?” Well, frankly, it’s just how Nintendo games are. But $40 is as good as its price gets, and for that, you get arguably one of the all-time greats in action-adventure games. It’s easy to get lost in Breath of the...

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The N64 controller for Switch is back in stock at the Nintendo store

You can finally play StarFox64 the way Nintendo intended. | Image: Nintendo

If you’re still on the hunt for Nintendo’s official N64 controller, you just might be able to pick up the legendary controller for the Nintendo Switch at the Nintendo eShop. This $49.99 controller allows you to experience N64 games the way they were meant to be played — with a big gray controller that has an awkwardly placed central analog stick.

This offer is exclusive to the Nintendo store and is only available to purchase if you’re a current Nintendo Switch Online subscriber. To see if it’s in stock and possibly complete your purchase, you may need to be logged in with your Nintendo account. (Note: you can only access the N64 games with the purchase of the Switch Online Expansion Pack.)

The restock for the N64 doesn’t follow the...

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Lamborghini’s first plug-in hypercar is the Aventador-replacing Revuelto

Image: Lamborghini

Revuelto (pronounced rey-WEL-to) either means ‘unruly’ or refers to a dish of creamy scrambled eggs. Either way, it will replace the Aventador as Lamborghini’s flagship vehicle.

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Asteroid City’s first trailer is the most Wes Anderson thing you’ll see today

Jake Ryan in Asteroid City. | Focus Features

Whether there are actually aliens hiding somewhere in Searchlight Pictures’ Asteroid City from director Wes Anderson is up for debate. What’s quite clear, though, is that the movie’s playing to all of Anderson’s strengths and going to give all of his fans exactly what they showed up for.

Set in a fictional American town during the mid-1950s, Asteroid City tells the story of a beleaguered widower (Jason Schwartzman) who’s busy schlepping his four children across the country to see their grandfather (Tom Hanks) when their car suddenly breaks down. Inconvenienced as everyone is by having to stop in Asteroid City while their car is fixed, the fact that an annual junior stargazer competition is on delights the widower’s son Woodrow (Jake...

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Sony’s new ZV-E1 camera is designed to help your vlogs suck less

The Sony ZV-E1 is pretty dang small for a full-frame camera.

We know what most vlogs and YouTube videos look like in this, our Age of Content. So does Sony, and it’s starting to make cameras built to spit out exactly the style of video you’re looking to mimic.

The new Sony ZV-E1 is a compact mirrorless full-frame system camera that’s dedicated to content creators and aimed squarely at vloggers. It’s the new flagship offering of Sony’s established ZV line of vlog-centric cameras, taking a similar 12-megapixel backside-illuminated full-frame sensor as the pro-focused FX3 and mixing in the A7R V’s AI autofocus smarts to reduce the friction in making high-quality video content.

My colleague Becca Farsacespent a week with the camera and tested many of its vlog-centric automated features for you to...

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We need Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for Gmail

Memory-erasing technology but for your inbox. | Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Have you looked at your email inbox lately? Here’s a suggestion: don’t. I can tell you what it looks like without even seeing it. For starters, there’s a big red badge on your email app icon with a five-digit number that you ignore a hundred times a day. It’s stuffed full of promotional emails, spam, newsletters you don’t read, and a sprinkling of bills and credit card notices. Maybe there are a couple of legitimate messages from acquaintances or your parenting group buried in there somewhere, but the prospect of locating and responding to them is too daunting, so you ignore them forever.

Your email inbox, like mine, is a wasteland. If there’s anything useful in there, it’s under a pile of digital garbage so thick most of us would...

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The Verge’s 13 favorite kitchen tools

The Verge

We’ve all got to eat, and unless you’re the type of person who lives on instant meals and takeout, you probably need to cook as well. Most of The Verge’s staff not only cook but enjoy cooking, so we asked them to tell us what type of kitchen tools they are using these days.

We got a wide variety of answers — and at least one debate. We have recommendations for instant thermometers, rice cookers, and toaster ovens as well as a back-and-forth about the best way to grind your coffee beans, and more.

So check out how our writers and editors hone their foodie skills, and if you like, let us know in the comments what your favorite kitchen tool is. (And if you’re really into this kind of thing, feel free to check out last year’s favorite...

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The Insta360 Flow is a phone gimbal with all the trimmings

Image: Insta360

Insta360 is getting into the smartphone gimbal market with a device that aims to make it easier to film slick, stabilized, and well-framed video with your smartphone’s camera. The Insta360 Flow is a $159.99 gimbal with three-axis stabilization that’s available starting today across the US, Europe, and Japan.

The obvious competitor for the Flow is DJI’s $159 Osmo Mobile 6 lineup of smartphone gimbals. And on paper at least, Insta360 has made a decent effort to match DJI’s features spec for spec. DJI includes a tripod in the box with the Osmo Mobile 6, so Insta360 has built one into the Flow. DJI has its ActiveTrack 5.0 automatic subject tracking feature; Insta360 has Deep Track 3.0. The Flow even has a built-in 215mm (8.5-inch) selfie...

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Oura study shows covid-19 can impact your biometrics for weeks after infection

In some cases, Oura says it took up to a month for users’ biometric baselines to return to normal after a covid-19 infection. | Image: Oura

At the start of the pandemic, researchers and wearables makers rushed to see whether smartwatches and fitness trackers could detect covid-19. It’s now 2023, and while wearables show promise in detecting illnesses, there hasn’t been too much progress on the covid front. But even as most people start moving on with their lives, some wearable makers are still sifting through the data to see what can be learned from the past three years. Case in point: smart ring maker Oura just released a new study that found significant changes in its users’ biometrics up to 2.5 days before and 10 days after users reported a covid-19 infection.

The study, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Digital Biomarkers, looked at 838 Oura members who...

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My impossible search for the best, most powerful, most private journaling app ever

Day One is a great app. It also asks you to trust it in a big way. | Image: Day One

I have written in my journal 86 days in a row. It was my New Year’s resolution to actually commit to keeping a diary of my days, and every day since January 2nd, I’ve sat down and done so. This is the longest I’ve ever kept a journal — and almost certainly the longest I’ve ever stuck to a resolution of any kind. I’m probably more proud of myself than I should be.

I’ve been using the Day One app, which is the giant of the digital journal space. Day One works on practically every platform, is fast and simple, and lets me write text as well as save photos, audio, and links into my journal. It’s a great app!

But I had this moment, about a month into pouring my heart and soul (and hundreds of pictures of my newborn son) into Day One, where I...

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Prepare your ears for Wikipedia’s ‘sound of all human knowledge’

With more and more information being delivered via audio sources like voice assistants, the Wikimedia Foundation thought it was time to adopt a so-called “sound logo” for Wikipedia and its other projects. Think of it as Wikipedia’s equivalent of the Netflix “ta-dum,” the HBO “aaaaaaah,” or Intel’s iconic five-note chime. After an exhaustive search via “Sound of All Human Knowledge” contest, Wikimedia thinks it found an audio clip representing its mission.

The winning entry was submitted by Thaddeus Osborne, a nuclear engineer and part-time music producer from Virginia, USA. Here’s how he describes the sound:

“My sound logo welcomes its audience into a world of information. The sound of a page turning quickly becomes a library like a...

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The Last of Us on PC is a rare disappointing PlayStation port at launch

Image: Naughty Dog

I was expecting to write about how The Last of Us Part I arriving on PC is the latest example of a great PC port of a Sony PlayStation title. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. The Last of Us Part I arrived on PC yesterday and players aren’t happy. Out of more than 9,000 reviews in the Steam store, 67 percent are negative.

PC players are reporting issues that range from random crashes and stuttering, all the way up to long shader compilation times and characters randomly becoming dripping wet in cut scenes. The game also appears to be poorly optimized, taking up large amounts of VRAM on systems and dropping frames. I’ve personally experienced crashes and random frame rate drops on my own test system, which is a top-end gaming PC...

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Mark Hamill voices air raid warnings in Ukraine as Luke Skywalker

Photo by VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images

Star Wars actor Mark Hamill has lent his voice to a Ukrainian air raid app to warn citizens of incoming attacks during the ongoing conflict with Russia. “Attention. Air raid alert. Proceed to the nearest shelter,” says Hamill over Air Alert, an app linked to Ukraine’s air defense system. When the threat has passed, Hamill signs off with “The alert is over. May the Force be with you.”

Invoking his beloved Luke Skywalker character, some of the lines contain recognizable quotes from the Star Wars franchise like “Don’t be careless. Your overconfidence is your weakness.” You can hear a few lines in the following video starting around 56 seconds in:

The reason I remain optimistic about Ukraine's corruption-free future. And a quick update,...

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Google plans to share heat alerts in Search

London Underground advising people not to travel in record breaking heat on the 19th of July 2022, Picadilly Station, Central London, United Kingdom. | photo by Kristian Buus/In Pictures via Getty Images

Google plans to roll out new alerts in Search for extreme heat events, the company announced in a blog post today. Eventually, users should be able to find important information about extreme temperatures in their area when they search relevant terms like “heatwave.”

The alert will bring up information like when a heatwave is forecast to start and end in an area, local news on the event, and recommended actions to stay safe. The feature is expected to be available in the US and “a number of countries” including parts of Europe in the second half of the year, according to Hema Budaraju, senior director of product for health and social impact at Google Search.

“We feel a great sense of responsibility as we continue to scale this work...

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Elon Musk and top AI researchers call for pause on ‘giant AI experiments’

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

A number of well-known AI researchers — and Elon Musk — have signed an open letter calling on AI labs around the world to pause development of large-scale AI systems, citing fears over the “profound risks to society and humanity” they claim this software poses.

The letter, published by the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, notes that AI labs are currently locked in an “out-of-control race” to develop and deploy machine learning systems “that no one — not even their creators — can understand, predict, or reliably control.”

“We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.”

“Therefore, we call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of...

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Union accuses Apple of firing workers in retaliation for organizing

Illustration: The Verge

The Communications Workers of America union is alleging that Apple fired five workers in Kansas City, and disciplined another in Texas, in retaliation for organizing. The union has also accused the company of interrogating employees, promising those employees better working conditions if they don’t support the union, and threatening them with worse conditions if they do.

A press release from the CWA quotes D’lite Xiong, one of the workers who was fired:

Apple management said I was fired for a typo in my timesheet that I had documented and tried to correct. Yet, it is clear the real reason I was fired was for exercising my right to organize and win a protected voice on the job.

Another employee says she was put on notice after arriving...

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The ugly economics behind Apple’s new Pay Later system

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

This article was originally published in June 2022. We’re reviving it today since Apple has finally gone through with its plans to launch the service.

Apple is getting into the “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) business with its new Pay Later service built into Apple Pay and Apple Wallet. While Apple bills the service as “designed with users’ financial health in mind,” BNPL is a practice that has come under scrutiny by government regulators as something that could potentially harm customers.

Apple’s Pay Later service, which has been in the works since at least last year, lets users make a purchase with Apple Pay and then pay it back in four equal installments over the course of six weeks. There’s no interest on these installments, but it...

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Tesla Model X seatbelt failures spur a new federal investigation

Image: Tesla

The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is currently investigating (pdf) two separate non-crash-related seatbelt failures that occurred in newer Tesla Model X vehicles (via NBC News).

NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) notes two complaints from Model X owners saying their front safety belts failed to stay connected to the seat belt anchor pretensioner. Both owners reported that the separation occurred while driving their 2022 and 2023 model-year Model X SUVs. The investigators write that “both vehicles were delivered to the owners with insufficiently connected anchor linkages.”

NHTSA first opened the investigation on March 24th and says up to 50,000 or so Model X vehicles could be affected by the issue....

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Lucid’s laying off 18 percent of its workers

Photo by Tim Stevens for The Verge

Lucid, the EV startup behind the Air sedan that competes with the Tesla Model S, has announced that it’s laying off around 1,300 employees, or 18 percent of its workforce, within the next few months. According to an email from CEO Peter Rawlinson, which was attached to a regulatory filing, the cuts will affect employees and contractors “in nearly every organization and level, including executives.”

Rawlinson says employees will hear more about the layoffs over the next three days, and the filing says the restructuring should be complete “by the end of the second quarter of 2023.” The email says that employees who are let go will receive “career resources, Lucid-paid healthcare coverage continuation, and acceleration of equity,” and the...

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Google’s ADT partnership finally has a new home security product to show for it

ADT Self Setup is a new DIY smart home system that can integrate with Google Home devices and the Google Home app. | Image: ADT

Three years after Google invested $450 million in home security company ADT, the two companies finally have an integrated offering for customers looking for a DIY smart security setup. ADT’s Self Setup system, which launched last month, will now integrate with Google Nest devices — including its video doorbell and indoor and outdoor cameras.

While ADT has offered Google’s smart home devices as part of its professionally-installed packages since shortly after the investment, this is the first time the two companies have offered a complete software security integration for a DIY product. Now ADT’s sensors and Google’s cameras can be controlled directly in the Google Home app or on a Google Nest Hub, as well as through ADT’s app. Plus, you...

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Paramount Plus has renewed Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Crew members of the USS Cerritos. | Paramount Plus

In case anyone was worried whether Star Trek: Lower Decksor Star Trek: Strange New Worldsmight be on the chopping block, Paramount Plus wants you to know that there’s no reason to be alarmed.

Deadline reports that, ahead of their upcoming returns this summer, Star Trek: Lower Decks has been renewed for a fifth season of animated adventures, while Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will be coming back for a third season at some point in the future. Both series received orders for 10 episodes. The renewal orders come just days after the streamer announced that Star Trek: Discovery will end with its fifth season, and at a time when Trek fans have been very seriously rallying around the idea of a Picard spin-off.

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Google is going to show a new ‘Perspectives’ carousel in search results

Illustration: The Verge

Google is adding a new carousel in search results to help you see different perspectives on certain search topics. The feature, called “Perspectives,” is a new box showing “insights from a range of journalists, experts, and other relevant voices” that will appear under the “Top Stories” box in results.

In a blog post, the company shared a GIF of what the box looks like for perspectives on this year’s Oscars. It includes tweets from Mark Hamill and Jamie Lee Curtis as well as a few articles. It looks fine, but I’m annoyed that it will be yet another thing cluttering up Google’s search results. (I may just be nostalgic for the good old days.)

GIF: Google

The perspectives, in this instance, are fairly inoffensive. But...

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Adnan Syed’s murder conviction has been reinstated

Image: Lloyd Fox/Baltimore Sun/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Adnan Syed’s murder conviction has been reinstated just months after he was freed from prison, as reported earlier by the Associated Press and The Baltimore Sun. Syed, whose case was featured in the popular Serial podcast, was convicted of the murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee in 1999 and spent over 20 years behind bars.

The Appellate Court of Maryland ruled in favor of the victim’s family after they filed an appeal, claiming that they weren’t given the proper notice to attend the hearing that resulted in Syed’s release. The court ordered a new hearing with sufficient notice given to Lee’s brother, Young Lee. It will reexamine the question of overturning Syed’s conviction, which, for now, is back in force.

“This court has the power...

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Kia sees an opening to dominate the full-size electric SUV segment with its big, boxy EV9

Image: Kia

Kia is ready to pull the wraps on its next big electric vehicle (emphasis on big): the EV9 three-row SUV. The EV9 will have a proper North American debut at the New York International Auto Show next week, but before it does, the automaker is rolling out a list of key specifications to whet our appetite.

Kia revealed the production version of the EV9 earlier this month in South Korea, but in doing so, it left out a lot of crucial details. We’ve seen the interior with its swiveling second-row seats as well as the very Soul-like exterior design. Today, the company is filling in some of the gaps as well as outlining its strategy to dominate the full-size electric SUV segment, which it claims is totally up for grabs.

Full-size three-row...

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NPR prioritizes radio over podcasts with steep cuts

Image: SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

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

It’s a busy news day, so I won’t waste time: Adnan Syed’s murder conviction has been reinstated, NPR cancels some of its standalone podcasts, and Slate takes its podcasts to YouTube.

NPR cuts result in the cancellation of four podcasts

Last week, NPR enacted its deepest layoffs since the Great Recession in order to make up for a $30 million shortfall. Ten percent of the staff — more than 100 people — were laid off, and all but one job vacancy was removed from the network’s careers site. The cuts touched all sectors of the organization, including the business side and radio production, but podcasting appears to have been hardest hit.

N...

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Titmouse’s 5 Second Night animation showcase is back with a vengeance

Titmouse’s 5 Second Night 2023 poster. | Image: Titmouse

Animation studio Titmouse’s annual showcase of shortform stories returns this month with a new batch of original cartoons created during artists’ time off.

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How much money do we think Substack lost last year?

Image: Substack

Substack is desperate, huh? That’s what I understand from their fundraising email, anyway. They’re now hitting up retail investors for millions of dollars after they failed to raise last year.

After certain recent historical events, I have become skeptical of the term “financial inclusion,” a set of buzzwords for making financial services more available to people who are not stratospherically rich. Maybe my cynicism is because Facebook tried to launch a stablecoin for the “unbanked” that you nonetheless needed (at least, according to the now-scrapped plan) a credit card to use. Maybe it is because Robinhood made a big fuss about how many brand-new retail investors it brought onto its gambling platform. Or maybe it’s the proliferation of...

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Here’s where you can preorder Nintendo’s Zelda-inspired Switch OLED

The Nintendo Switch OLED Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Edition is available to preorder for $359.99. | Image: Nintendo

After months of rumors, Nintendo has finally confirmed it’s releasing a Zelda-inspired Nintendo Switch OLED on April 28th. The special-edition console will retail for $359.99 and commemorates one of this year’s most anticipated video games, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which will drop alongside a new Zelda-themed controller and carrying case two weeks later, on May 12th.

Where to preorder the Nintendo Switch OLED Tears of the Kindom Edition

For those eager to get their hands on the limited-edition console first, Nintendo, Best Buy, and Target are letting customers preorder one starting today. Unlike the standard Switch, the Switch OLED boasts a vibrant seven-inch OLED display, 64GB of storage, and an improved kickstand,...

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