Is it just me or is the Treasury Department firing warning shots at DeFi?

Who could have guessed? | Illustration: Micha Huigen / The Verge

All kinds of unwanted users — ransomware gangs, thieves, scammers, and North Korea — are merrily transacting in decentralized finance and even laundering funds, according to a new report from the Treasury Department. That’s because DeFi doesn’t comply with anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism finance laws.

Poor compliance with anti-money laundering as well as poor cybersecurity puts DeFi users at risk of theft and fraud, the Treasury says.

In the US, the Bank Secrecy Act — and some other regulations — mean that financial institutions have to help the government detect money laundering. In this paper, the Treasury notes that a DeFi service might well be a financial institution under the BSA, even if it’s decentralized, and will have...

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How to upgrade your Android smartwatch to Wear OS 3

Illustration: Samar Haddad / The Verge

The Wear OS 3 rollout hasn’t been the smoothest. It’s totally understandable if you decided to stick it out on Wear OS 2 until the dust settled. But last year was a good year for Android smartwatches, and there’s reason to believe that this momentum will carry forward.

It’s time, my friends, to consider upgrading your older watch to Wear OS 3.

At this point, the pros of Wear OS 3 are starting to outweigh the cons of its predecessor. The main reason to upgrade is third-party apps. Google’s put a lot of effort into luring back developers to the platform, and most big-name app developers (e.g., Strava, Telegram, etc.) are understandably prioritizing the new over the old. And while Google’s done a decent job to ensure its Wear OS 2 apps...

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Microsoft’s rolling out Edge’s AI image generator to everyone

Image: The Verge

Microsoft is making its DALL-E-powered AI image generator “available on desktop for Edge users around the world.” The company announced it’d be coming last month when it integrated the image generation tech into its Bing chatbot, but this move could make it available to a much wider audience.

When it rolls out — I and two other Verge staffers using Edge don’t appear to have access to it yet — the “Image Creator” will live in Edge’s sidebar. Using it should be pretty simple; you type in what you want to see, and Bing will generate several images that match the prompt. Then, you can download the ones you like and use them however you need.

In a Thursday blog post, Microsoft pitches the feature as a way to create “very specific” visuals...

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Tesla employees reportedly passed around personal videos from owners’ cars

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Tesla employees passed around and poked fun at private videos recorded by vehicle cameras, according to a report from Reuters. The videos, which were reportedly shared via Tesla’s internal messaging systems from 2019 through 2022, were recorded on the cameras that come mounted on Tesla vehicles to enable self-driving features.

As described by sources to Reuters, the recordings shared by Tesla workers range from graphic crashes and road rage incidents to more embarrassing scenes, including a video of a naked man approaching a car. Some employees reportedly even created memes using captures from recorded videos and later shared them in private group chats.

Tesla says “Sentry Mode recordings are not transmitted to us”

One former Tesla...

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Disney creates new executive role to oversee everything about its brand

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Disney has created a new “chief brand officer” role to oversee Disney’s brand across “the entire ecosystem of company touchpoints and consumer experiences,” the company announced on Thursday. Asad Ayaz, the company’s president of marketing for The Walt Disney Studios, will be taking the post and report directly to recently returned CEO Bob Iger.

As part of his chief brand officer duties, Ayaz will make marketing campaigns “leveraging and synthesizing the company’s full suite of content and consumer experiences,” set “corporate synergy” and “franchise priorities” with Iger, and “lead a global consumer research and analytics function focused on Disney’s brands,” according to the press release.

The new role could help Disney wrangle how...

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Overwatch 2 season 4 trailer got me right in the feels

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

I haven’t gotten emotional over an Overwatch trailer since the Overwatch 2 launch trailer. But the trailer for season 4 finally got me. Beyond teasing the season’s new skins, which feature a galactic space pirate theme, and the release of the newest hero Liveweaver, the season 4 trailer feels like it’s Overwatch returning to its narrative roots of hope, optimism, and inclusion.

Overwatch, since inception, has been about an idealistic set of cosmopolitan heroes coming together to save a world in crisis. That message is in the game’s DNA with its bright colors, futuristic aesthetic, and Tracer’s signature line, “Cheers, love, the cavalry’s here.” I wouldn’t say Overwatch 2 has gotten away from that message, but it’s been de-emphasized in...

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A classic keyboard returns as the hot-swappable, wireless WhiteFox Eclipse

The new WhiteFox Eclipse. | Image: Alpaca Keyboards

The WhiteFox Eclipse is a new wireless mechanical keyboard that harks back to a classic community design. It’s based on the original WhiteFox, a project that played a big part in bringing custom keyboards into the mainstream, but with an updated set of specs and features that reflect just how much the scene has moved on since designer Matteo Spinelli hand-wired the original precursor to the WhiteFox back in 2013.

Obviously, that means the Eclipse is hot-swappable, allowing its stock Gateron Yellow Linear switches to be quickly removed and replaced without the need for desoldering, and it’s gasket-mounted to give it a softer feeling as you type. It’s also wireless, with a 4,000mAh battery that manufacturer Alpaca Keyboards reckons should...

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Here are some must-have accessories for your Nintendo Switch

From controllers to microSD cards, there are all sorts of accessories you’ll need to make the most of your Switch. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The Nintendo Switch is now the third-bestselling console of all time, having shipped more than 120 million units since it launched in 2017. If you’re one of the millions of people that own the hybrid system, odds are you already have everything you need. However, if you’re someone who recently picked up the console or you’re currently looking to purchase one, there are a handful of accessories that will make your gaming experience far more enjoyable (and convenient).

Whether you need a controller, a carrying case, or a pair of wireless headphones, we’ve rounded up the best accessories you can buy to supplement your experience gaming on the Nintendo Switch. Just note that while many of these accessories can be used with any Switch model...

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Meta adds 14 free games you can play over video calls inside Messenger

Mini Golf FRVR for Facebook Gaming, now available during a Messenger video call. | Image: Meta

Meta’s Facebook Gaming division is making Messenger video calls more interesting with a new set of free-to-play games you can now access with your friends while you chat face to face, no matter where you are. The feature comes fairly late in the post-covid lockdown world but is great for quick sessions of Words with Friends, Mini Golf FRVR, and Exploding Kittens (via Engadget).

The best part of the new Messenger video call gaming feature is how accessible they are for Facebook users. All you need to do is initiate a video call with one or multiple friends, tap the group mode button in the center, select the Play icon, and then select a game in the library presented to you — no downloading or installation required.

In 2018, Facebook...

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T-Mobile will provide free MLB.TV to customers through 2028

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

T-Mobile will continue to offer free MLB.TV subscriptions to customers through 2028. In a post on its site, the carrier announced that it has extended its partnership with Major League Baseball, giving customers the chance to watch baseball games for free each season.

T-Mobile has offered MLB.TV, which typically costs $149.99 per year, as a free perk for its customers for the past eight years. The service provides livestreams of out-of-market home and away games, along with access to pregame and postgame shows. While you can’t catch in-market games live, it still lets you watch them on demand after they’ve aired across a range of platforms, including iOS, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, and PlayStation.

In addition to announcing this...

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Microsoft’s Windows 365 Cloud PCs get more flexible, LG TV integration, and more

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft is making its Cloud PCs more flexible thanks to a new Windows 365 Frontline option, integration into LG’s 2023 TVs, and even a new Windows 365 experience for Android devices. Windows 365 Frontline is a new offering designed for frontline, shift, and part-time workers in a bid to offer businesses more flexibility over how they purchase Cloud PC licenses.

Microsoft originally put PCs in the cloud with Windows 365 nearly two years ago, allowing businesses to access Windows in a web browser. Windows 365 Frontline enters public preview today and features similar virtualized Windows 10 or Windows 11 PCs, but the crucial difference is now up to three people are able to access a machine based on a single license. That’s ideal for...

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The first big Wild Hearts update is beautiful and deadly

Image: EA

The monster hunting game gets a new cherry blossom fox just in time for spring.

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Discord is launching an in-app soundboard

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Discord is officially introducing its own in-app soundboard that you can use in voice channels. With the soundboard, you’ll be able to play all sorts of sounds in voice channels to have some fun or troll a friend. The feature was previously an experiment available to a limited amount of communities, but it will now be rolling out over “the coming weeks,” according to a Discord blog post.

There is a catch, though: you’ll only be able to actually make sounds with Discord’s soundboard on the desktop app. If you’re on mobile, you’ll hear the sounds but can’t use the board yourself, Kellyn Sloane, director of product communications, tells The Verge. That said, any official Discord soundboard is still an improvement, as you’ve previously had...

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Meta’s layoffs are reportedly ‘gutting’ its new customer service teams

Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta’s company-wide job cuts impacted the customer service team it had just started to build, leaving influencers and group admins grappling with scammers and technical difficulties, according to a report from CNBC.

CNBC says it spoke with former Meta employees and viewed documents filed with the US Department of Labor that indicate the company’s massive layoffs affected workers across Facebook and Instagram’s customer support, customer experience, and communities teams. Meta laid off 11,000 employees last November and cut an additional 10,000 workers in March.

Meta announced its plans to build a customer support team last year, with Brent Harris, Meta’s vice president of governance, stating the company was “spending a bunch of time” on...

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Apple’s M2 Mac Mini with expanded 512GB storage is $110 off

The Mac Mini design may be a bit old now, but it’s still pretty dang adorable for a desktop. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple’s brilliant M2-powered Mac Mini in its expanded configuration with 512GB of storage is selling for $689.99 at Amazon. That’s a sizable savings of $110 on the little desktop, making it an easy recommendation for anyone who needs a basic computer for their home. The M2 Mac Mini looks like most other Mac Minis, but it sports the same processor as the latest MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro. Like those laptops, you get two Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C ports, but the Mini also provides you with two USB-A ports, an ethernet port, and an HDMI port — oh, and it’s much, much cheaper. It has the same eight-core CPU and 10-core GPU of the base configuration, but the much roomier 512GB of storage makes life more convenient before you’re forced to...

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Today is the last day to order a Playdate before its $20 price increase

Frankly, price increases make me a little cranky. | Image: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Time is running out on preordering a Playdate with better pricing. Beginning tomorrow, Panic’s little yellow handheld will cost $199. The company announced last month that a price jump was coming on April 7th due to increased manufacturing costs, so now is your last chance to place a preorder for the current $179 price. This is actually the second price increase on the crank-equipped portable, as it initially went up from $149 to $179 before its initial launch.

A preordered Playdate must be paid in full, with an estimated shipping date currently listed as late 2023 — though, you can cancel any time before it ships and get a full refund should you change your mind. The Playdate includes a season of 24 games with the purchase, and more...

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The Apple Lisa was a design revolution — and it still feels like one today

The Apple Lisa, 40 years later. | Illustration: The Verge

The Apple Lisa was not, by nearly any definition, a hit product. Released in 1983, the ambitious but flawed machine was instantly overshadowed by Apple’s follow-up, the 1984 Macintosh — which helped cement the computer as a fixture in homes and offices worldwide.

But the design language of the Lisa is the design language of modern computers. It was one of the first machines to use the metaphor of a desktop, including things like folders, icons, and application windows that mimicked sheets of paper. Apple drew inspiration from outside sources, particularly the Alto, a groundbreaking machine developed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. But it iterated on the formula with obsessive user testing that adapted to first-time users’...

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Your laptop’s microphone might sound better than you think

Image: The Verge

Every now and then on The Vergecast, we like to do a microphone test. Because we spend a lot of time worrying about our headphones and how things sound to us but not enough time testing our microphones and how we sound to others.

Last year on the show, we stress-tested the microphones on a bunch of flagship wireless earbuds to see which sound the best for voice calls. But not everyone uses earbuds for conference calls and video chats — and many people don’t even have analog wired headphones anymore. So can your laptop’s built-in microphone handle a voice call these days?

To find out, The Vergecast sent senior reviewer Monica Chin with six laptops to one of the most chaotic spots in New York City: Times Square. The results were not...

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Lyft expands its EV and hybrid booking option to 14 more US markets

A Lyft vehicle in 2019. | Image: TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images

Green mode, a Lyft ridehailing option that lets travelers specifically request a hybrid or fully electric vehicle, is expanding to 14 new US markets starting April 17th. These areas include San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, Boston, New York City, Chicago, San Diego, Washington, DC, Austin, Denver, Orange County, Sacramento, and Phoenix.

Riders will need a business profile to use the Green mode feature, which is available to anyone with a work email address. Lyft spokesperson CJ Macklin said this restriction is meant to allow the company to test the ridehailing option with a smaller selection of its users and that the plan is to make it more widely available over time.

Lyft aims to have a 100 percent electric fleet by...

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Motorola’s big-battery budget phone gets 5G and a price hike

The Moto G Power 5G is a little pricier this year, but it promises some meaningful upgrades. | Image: Motorola

The 2023 version of Motorola’s all-about-battery-life Moto G Power trades some of that battery life for modern conveniences. In addition to 5G, a nicer screen and more powerful processor are on offer, so Moto’s battery claims aren’t as lofty this year, and the price is higher. While last year’s 128GB model sold for $249, this year’s edition starts at $299. Still, it might make for a budget phone that’s worth buying.

Along with a huge 5,000mAh battery, the Motorola Moto G Power 5G (Lord help me; that is actually the full product name) includes a MediaTek Dimensity 930 processor with 4GB of RAM. By the looks of it, that should be a serious upgrade from the 4G-only Helio G37 chip in the 2022 Moto G Power, which, by several accounts, stank....

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Counter-Strike 2 is getting Nvidia’s latency-reducing Reflex tech

Image: Valve

Nvidia’s latency-reducing Reflex technology is coming to Counter-Strike 2. Reflex is designed to make games feel more responsive by reducing the amount of time between when you click your mouse and when you see the action on-screen. It’s all-important in competitive shooters, and up until now, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was the most played game on Steam without it.

Valve and Nvidia have worked together to add Reflex to Counter-Strike 2, the upcoming replacement for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. GeForce GTX 900 series and above will be able to enable Reflex in Counter-Strike 2, and it will have the biggest impact on older GPUs, according to Nvidia. Reflex can reduce system latency by up to 35 percent in Counter-Strike 2, which...

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The poop emoji: a legal history

Image: Mengxin Li / The Verge

In July 2022, the world watched with bated breath as Twitter sued Elon Musk. No one knew whether the deal was going to happen or whether it had all been an elaborate troll to begin with. (The two weren’t mutually exclusive, either.) Billions of dollars and the fate of a major worldwide social media network hung in the balance. The lawsuit was, in some ways, unprecedented. Legal experts found themselves besieged with all kinds of tricky questions.

For example, was this the first time the poop emoji showed up in court?

The answer is no. In 2018, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion in Emerson v. Dart in which a corrections officer, Paula Emerson, sued the county alleging workplace discrimination. While the...

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The impossibility of logging off

Image: Mengxin Li / The Verge

The logout button has become practically defunct.

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Minecraft Legends is a blast in multiplayer

Image: Microsoft

Minecraft Legends is a strategy spinoff of Minecraft — but it might also be the next competitive multiplayer craze. I had a chance to spend a few hours with the game last month at GDC in San Francisco, and while it seems like it has a solid campaign to dig into, I had a lot more fun with the team-based multiplayer. It’s kind of like Minecraft mashed with League of Legends and StarCraft, and in the one match I played, it involved a lot of yelling (in a good way).

Legends is built on the same “bedrock” engine as the main Minecraft game, and the two look pretty much identical. You control a blocky little character running through a similarly blocky world. The difference here is what you’re doing. To get acclimated, I first played around two...

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OneNote is getting Microsoft’s new AI Copilot to help you write your notes

Illustration: The Verge

Microsoft is planning to add its new Microsoft 365 Copilot assistant to OneNote. The software giant originally announced Copilot for apps like Teams, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint last month, and it’s now ready to demo how note taking will be impacted by an AI-powered assistant.

“As your notetaking partner, Copilot uses your prompts to draft plans, generate ideas, create lists, organize information, and more,” explains Greg Mace, a product manager for OneNote.

Image: Microsoft

How the Copilot integration works in OneNote.

Much like Copilot’s integration in Word, the AI assistant can rewrite, format, or summarize existing text in OneNote based on prompts in a sidebar interface. You can also ask the AI assistant to...

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Microsoft brings its Bing chatbot to your fingertips with SwiftKey on Android

Illustration: The Verge

Microsoft has added Bing Chat AI to its popular SwiftKey keyboard for Android. The integration started appearing on Wednesday and allows SwiftKey Beta users to quickly access Microsoft’s Bing chatbot at the tap of a button in any app.

The Bing Chat integration inside SwiftKey includes the usual chat mode that offers access to the chatbot, or a tone mode that will rewrite any text right within the keyboard. If you were only using the Bing mobile app to access the chatbot, this new integration makes that app rather redundant if, instead, you’re willing to install and use SwiftKey everywhere.

To access this new Bing Chat integration you’ll need to download the beta version of SwiftKey on the Google Play Store. Pedram Rezaei, Microsoft’s CTO...

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The ‘world’s strongest water gun’ is back and wetter than ever

Image: Spyra

Sypra has made a name for itself by creating powerful, electronic water guns, the first of which launched on Kickstarter in 2018. Now, the company’s adding a third water gun to its lineup, aptly named the SpyraThree, and it includes additional modes for when you want to take your battles super seriously or are just looking for some casual summer fun.

Before we get to those, let’s go over what makes the Spyra more than just your standard Super Soaker — and why it can command its eye-popping price tag of $179.00 per gun. Like the SpyraTwo (which you can still buy for around $5 less), the SpyraThree features an electronic firing system that can spray people from around 30 feet away, and can send water almost 50 feet when you charge up a...

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Microsoft Edge launches Workspaces test that lets you share browser tabs

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft’s Edge is rolling out a limited public preview of its Workspaces feature, which lets you save and share sets of browser tabs using a single link. We got our first look at Workspaces last year, but the new preview gives us a much clearer picture of how it all works.

With Workspaces, you can gather a bunch of tabs on a particular topic and save them into neatly labeled groups within Edge. While this sounds a lot like Edge’s Collections feature (which already lets you save and organize webpages), Workspaces adds another layer of functionality by letting you share these saved tabs with your colleagues, who can then add or make changes to the tabs in real time.

Screenshot: Emma Roth / The Verge

As you can see in...

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Apple might be getting into VR at the worst possible time

Illustration: The Verge

Apple is heavily rumored to reveal its long-awaited mixed reality headset in just a couple of months, but that reveal seems to be arriving at a time when demand for high-end VR is actually quite low.

According to a new blog post from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, some of the biggest recent bets in VR have largely flopped. Kuo reports that:

Sony has cut its 2023 production plan for the PS VR2 by about 20 percent.

The product lifecycle shipment for Meta’s Quest Pro is only around 300,000 units.

Pico (China’s largest AR/VR headset brand) shipments in 2022 were more than 40 percent lower than expected.

In other words, the impressive PSVR 2 hasn’t been as popular as Sony may have hoped, Meta Quest Pro sales barely scratch the surface of the Quest...

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Operation Cookie Monster shuts off hacker marketplace selling millions of stolen accounts

The screen you’ll see if you visit Genesis Market now. | Image: Europol

Several law enforcement agencies have teamed up to take down Genesis Market, a website selling access to “over 80 million account access credentials,” which included the standard usernames and passwords, as well as much more dangerous data like session tokens. According to a press release from the US Department of Justice, the site was seized on Tuesday. The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (or Europol) says that 119 of the site's users have been arrested.

Genesis Marketplace has been around since 2018, according to the Department of Justice, and was “one of the most prolific initial access brokers (IABs) in the cybercrime world.” It let hackers search for certain types of credentials, such as ones for social media...

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