Former Apple employee must repay $19 million after defrauding the company

Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge

A former Apple employee has been sentenced to three years in prison and must pay back over $19 million in restitution for stealing around $17 million from the tech giant through mail and wire fraud schemes. Dhirendra Prasad, 55, was originally charged in March 2022 and later pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud Apple and related tax crimes back in November last year.

Prasad was employed at the company between 2008 and 2018, mostly working as a buyer in Apple’s global service supply chain, purchasing parts and services from vendors. In his written plea agreement, Prasad admitted he started siphoning money from his employer around 2011 by accepting kickbacks, stealing parts, inflating invoices, and fraudulently charging Apple for goods...

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Netflix’s Sweet Tooth feels too confined in season 2

Image: Netflix

Netflix’s Sweet Tooth is Bambi meets The Last of Us. It inserts adorable animal characters into an increasingly harrowing world, where the skin of civilization is being pulled back by the nails of abnormality. This is a world unmade by a respiratory disease, while simultaneously reeling from the sudden births of hybrid children: half-human, half-animal. Amid this chaos, we meet the titular sweet tooth, Gus (Christian Convery), a half-deer boy. Raised in isolation in Yellowstone National Park, Gus found himself alone and hunted. With the help of a reluctant protector, Tommy Jepperd (Nonso Anozie), a mountain of a man carrying an equal amount of weight on his shoulders, and a terrifying teen named Bear (Stefania LaVie Owen), Gus journeys...

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The OnePlus Pad is an impressive tablet for its price

OnePlus’ first tablet brings high-end features and specs to a midrange price point. It reminds me of the OnePlus we used to know.

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AT&T email accounts reportedly broken into to steal crypto

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Hackers have reportedly been breaking into AT&T-provided email addresses, and using this access to steal large quantities of cryptocurrency, TechCrunch reports. While it’s not clear how many people have been impacted, one alleged victim claims to have lost $134,000 from a Coinbase account associated with a compromised email address. Email addresses with att.net, sbcglobal.net, and bellsouth.net domain names have all reportedly been affected.

The vulnerability revolves around mail keys, which are meant to allow users to log into AT&T email accounts via clients like Outlook or Thunderbird. Somehow, attackers appear to have found a way to generate these keys without the knowledge of the owner of an email account. Once they have access,...

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Incoming EU rules force Apple to reveal App Store user numbers in Europe

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple has revealed the number of active monthly users for various versions of its App Store in Europe in order to comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). The disclosure published on Apple legal resources site reveals that the iOS App Store has 101 million users in Europe, with the iPadOS App Store trailing behind with 23 million users. The macOS App Store has six million users and the tvOS App Store has one million.

The tech giant also provided estimated figures for the watchOS App Store, Apple Books, and Podcasts paid subscriptions, which have fewer than one million monthly users in Europe.

Platforms with over 45 million users are beholden to stricter regulations under Europe’s DSA rules

The recently-enacted DSA legislation...

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Sony reports strong PS5 hardware sales as it closes in on 40 million units sold

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Sony says it shipped 6.3 million PlayStation 5 consoles in the three months ending March 31st 2022, bringing total sales of the console to 38.4 million, the company reported in its latest earnings release. That’s more than triple what the company shipped in the same quarter the previous year (2 million), and means the Japanese electronics giant shipped 19.1 million PS5 during fiscal 2022, beating its earlier forecast of 18 million.

On the software side things were more mixed, Bloomberg notes. Revenue from game software was up overall, but units shipped fell from 70.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 to 68 million in the same quarter of 2022. PlayStation Network monthly active users were up slightly from 106 million to 108 million,...

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Steam now has a built-in cloud notepad you can pin atop your game

Elden Ring tips. | Image: Valve

Valve has just shipped a huge UI overhaul to Steam’s In-Game Overlay in the Steam Beta, among other fresh coats of paint. It also comes with one particularly awesome idea: a traveling notepad.

Yes, you’ve probably already got a notepad app on your PC, but does yours automatically pop up the correct file that corresponds to each game you play? Can you overlay it on top of your game so it’s visible while you play? Does it automatically sync from PC to PC via the cloud? Valve says its new Notes app does all of that, and works offline too.

Image: Valve

It’s not the only window you can newly pin atop a game: Valve says Guides, Discussions, and the Steam web browser can all be summoned into your game with adjustable...

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The MTA is abandoning bus and train alerts on Twitter

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority says it will no longer post service alerts and information on Twitter, citing doubts about the platform’s reliability. It’s directing riders to its website, apps, and email or mobile alerts instead.

“We’ve loved getting to know you On Here, but we don’t love not knowing if we can to communicate with you each day,” the MTA account tweeted in a thread on Thursday evening. “For the MTA, Twitter is no longer reliable for providing the consistent updates riders expect. So as of today, we’re saying goodbye to it for service alerts and information.”

The MTA provides service info in real time, 24/7.

We do this through https://t.co/8rwbuwle0p, our apps, email & text alerts, and, until recently,...

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They’re ‘skeets’ now

Image: Bluesky

Look. I know that most people aren’t on Bluesky yet, but when you get there, you should know that you won’t be posting. You’ll be skeeting.

I could do some explanation of it being a portmanteau of “sky” + “posting” but I think we just hit the sicko event horizon and a bunch of shitposters logged on over the last 24 hours, including a bunch who didn’t bother with Mastodon. Anyway it’s skeeting now. Sorry if you don’t like it. Skeet, skeet, motherfucker.

Also, it’s not the timeline, it’s the skyline. Dril is there. There’s been a main character incident. Quote tweets are happening but you can’t block anyone and muting doesn’t work. It’s pure PVP and no Elon Musk. Also no DMs, so you’re going to have to be horny on main.

Bluesky’s first...

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Meta is going to let you update Quest apps before the headset shuts down

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Meta’s v53 update for Quest devices adds a very welcome new feature: the headset will be able to update apps when you shut down your headset. If it works as intended, that means you’ll be able to download updates at a time when you aren’t planning to use the device, which I will appreciate — I’ve found myself stuck waiting for an update when I want to use an app more times than I can count.

How does it work? “You can simply take off your headset, plug it in, and go about your business while the headset does its thing,” Meta says in a blog post. Sounds great! I’m really looking forward to trying this out myself.

v53 includes a few other improvements as well. The update moves what Meta calls “Advanced Camera Settings” for capturing your...

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The Hunger Games prequel film gets its first trailer

Image: Lionsgate

Lionsgate just released a trailer for the Hunger Games prequel movie, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and it promises to be a star-studded return to the land of Panem.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes takes place 64 years before the events of the main series. Instead of featuring Katniss Everdeen, this movie follows the story of a young Coriolanus Snow (who later goes goes on to become the villain of the original trilogy) and a Hunger Games tribute named Lucy Gray Baird, who he mentors.

I haven’t read the book this movie is based on, but based on this trailer, the film seems like it will be a dramatic return to Panem and the battle royale-style Hunger Games that made the original series such a sensation. It helps that the movie...

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Microsoft’s Activision deal is on life support because cloud gaming still sucks

Image: Microsoft

Will the UK’s decision be a self-fulfilling prophecy?

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Now you can pay a monthly fee to un-nerf your electric Mercedes

EQE and EQS electric sedans. | Image: Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz has new finalized pricing on its vexing “Acceleration Increase” subscription revealed last year that can eke out more electric performance — without any physical modification — from the automaker’s current EQE and EQS EV models, Car and Driver reports.

The updated Acceleration Increase pricing starts at $60 per month, or you can save about $120 and pay $600 per year instead. That pricing only applies to the AWD EQE 350 sedan and its SUV counterpart. Meanwhile, the pricier AWD EQS 450 car and SUV command a higher $90 per month (or $900 per year) rate for their own boost.

Mercedes-Benz had initially set the subscription at $1,200 per year, but now it’s been reduced a bit to a slightly-less-unreasonable rate. The automaker is...

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Here are the best Amazon Echo deals right now

Like Amazon’s Echo speakers, its various smart displays come in a range of sizes. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Amazon’s current Echo lineup offers a broad selection of smart speakers and displays that can fit just about anywhere in your home. Whether you want to place a voice assistant in your living room, replace the bulletin board in your office, or pick up a touchscreen-enabled device to showcase recipes in the kitchen, there's an Echo device for just about every occasion and use case.

Regardless of why you might want one, there’s always a way to save on Echo devices, from the last-gen Dot to the wall-mounted Echo Show 15. Even when they’re selling at full price, for instance, Amazon offers a 25 percent discount when you trade in select devices, meaning there are still other ways to save money when none of the models are on sale.

Below,...

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YouTube Music is officially rolling out podcasts

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Podcasts have finally started to arrive for YouTube Music users in the US. The change will allow you to tune into podcasts on the YouTube Music app, where you can gain access to on-demand, offline streams that support background listening without a Premium subscription.

YouTube first announced that it was bringing podcasts to its music streaming service at The Verge’s Hot Pod Summit in February, and now it’s “gradually” rolling out to users. The YouTube Music app will now have a dedicated podcast tab where you can browse through shows that were once limited to the main YouTube app. You can also swap between the audio and video versions of a podcast while using YouTube Music.

podcast creators , welcome to @YouTubeMusic ✨ podcasts...

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Clubhouse is laying off more than half of its workforce

Image: Clubhouse

Clubhouse, the app that sparked a wave of audio-only features, is laying off over 50 percent of its employees. The app’s co-founders, Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, shared the news in a memo to employees, where they emphasize a need to “reset” the company in a post-covid era.

“As the world has opened up post-Covid, it’s become harder for many people to find their friends on Clubhouse and to fit long conversations into their daily lives,” the founders write. “To find its role in the world, the product needs to evolve. This requires a period of change.”

In their memo, Davison and Seth say they’ve been unable to make things work with the current size of Clubhouse’s team, noting that it’s “difficult” to “communicate the strategy to...

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Microsoft is done with major Windows 10 updates

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Windows 10 22H2 will be the final version of the operating system, Microsoft said in a blog post on Thursday. Moving forward, all editions of Windows 10 will be supported with monthly security updates until October 14th, 2025, when Microsoft will end support. (Some releases on the Long-Term Servicing Channel, or LTSC, will get updates past that end of support date.)

Microsoft is encouraging users to now transition to Windows 11 because Windows 10 won’t be getting any new features.

Windows client roadmap update! Key takeaways:

1 - #Windows10 will reach EOS on October 14, 2025.
2 - Version 22H2 will be the final version of Windows 10.
3 - You'll see the next #Windows11 LTSC release in the second half of 2024.

Read the announcement: h...

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Dril is now on Bluesky

“1337” seems appropriate. | Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

Dril has joined Bluesky.

The invite-only decentralized Twitter alternative has been gaining steam in recent days — I’ve seen a lot of people I follow on the bird-themed social network start to show up on Bluesky. But the Twitter clone might truly begin to feel like a New Twitter now that Dril, the Twitter legend who recently gave an interview as his real-life human self, has officially joined the platform.

There’s nothing on Dril’s Bluesky profile that makes it absolutely clear that it’s really him. (He hasn’t tied a domain name to his handle, for example.) Dril has posted once, but it’s an extremely not-safe-for-work post that I will not be including here. But Paul Frazee, a staff engineer at Bluesky, confirmed Thursday that the Dril...

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Microsoft’s mice, keyboards, and webcams are being discontinued in favor of Surface accessories

Microsoft-branded keyboards will be a thing of the past. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

Microsoft will no longer manufacture mice, keyboards, and webcams that are Microsoft-branded. Instead, Microsoft is now focusing on its Surface-branded PC accessories, which include mice, keyboards, pens, and more. It brings an end to the legacy of Microsoft-branded PC hardware after the company first launched its first mouse in 1983 and bundled it with Microsoft Word and Notepad.

“Going forward, we are focusing on our Windows PC accessories portfolio under the Surface brand,” says Dan Laycock, senior communications manager at Microsoft, in a statement to The Verge. “We will continue to offer a range of Surface branded PC Accessories — including mice, keyboards, pens, docks, adaptive accessories, and more. Existing Microsoft branded PC...

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Tesla indeed violated labor laws in Florida, US labor board rules

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Tesla violated national labor laws by suppressing employees at its Orlando, Florida, service center from discussing pay and bringing up grievances on working conditions, a US labor judge ruled on Wednesday (PDF). The decision comes after the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) accused Tesla of instructing its employees to refrain from discussing the hiring, suspension, and termination of employees last year.

Tesla has now been ordered by the judge to cease and desist from continuing to violate labor law. As pointed out in an email from NLRB press secretary Kayla Blado to The Verge, Tesla must post multi-lingual notices of the ruling around the Orlando facility in areas where it would normally post notices. The automaker will also have...

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Google plans to add end-to-end encryption to Authenticator

Illustration: The Verge

Google Authenticator is getting end-to-end encryption — eventually. After security researchers criticized the company for not including it with Authenticator’s account-syncing update, Google product manager Christiaan Brand responded on Twitter by saying that the company has “plans to offer E2EE” in the future.

“Right now, we believe that our current product strikes the right balance for most users and provides significant benefits over offline use,” Brand writes. “However, the option to use the app offline will remain an alternative for those who prefer to manage their backup strategy themselves.”

(3/4) To make sure we’re offering users a full set of options, we’ve started rolling out optional E2E encryption in some of our products,...

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One of 2022’s best mystery games is getting an expansion in May

Image: Playstack

The Case of the Golden Idol, a point-and-click murder mystery game that was one of my favorite titles of 2022, is getting its first expansion in just a few days. The new DLC, The Spider of Lanka, adds three new scenarios and will be available starting May 4th.

The Spider of Lanka promises to be just as mysterious as the main game if a description from a press email is anything to go by. “The Spider of Lanka begins in 1741, one year before the first scenario in The Case of the Golden Idol,” according to the description. “The new story follows Albert Cloudsley and Oberon Geller on their maiden voyage to the fictional Kingdom of Lanka, as they visit [REDACTED], the Raja whose Priest has some startling information concerning the location of...

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Microsoft Designer is being integrated into Edge for AI-generated social content

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft is rolling out a bunch of new features for Microsoft Designer, its AI-powered graphic design tool, to streamline how users design social media posts. The platform will soon be accessible directly through the Edge web browser and has additional AI-powered creative tools to help it compete with rival graphic design services like Canva.

Microsoft Designer was first unveiled in October last year and includes AI text-to-image features similar to tools like Stable Diffusion. Users can generate images using text prompts, incorporating the results into projects like invitations, greeting cards, and social media posts. Think of it as a combination of DALL-E and Adobe Express, albeit with significant limitations.

Image:...

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The next Forza will help blind players race by listening to ‘beeps and boops’

Image: Microsoft

Forza Motorsport is arriving later this year with all the usual improvements in visual immersion and fidelity you’d expect from the latest Forza. But it’s also going to let players who are blind or have low vision race around tracks by listening for beeps and boops. These clever audio cues make Forza Motorsport the most accessible Forza title ever created.

Turn 10 Studios has teamed up with accessibility consultant and blind gamer Brandon Cole to tune these audio cues and make racing blind in Forza Motorsport a reality. In the past, Cole has worked with Naughty Dog to improve accessibility in The Last of Us on PlayStationand has been pushing for game developers on this issue for more than a decade.

Prior to this work, Cole wasn’t super...

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Meta’s avatars are getting new body shapes and improved hair

Image: Meta

Meta is introducing new body shapes and improved textures for hair and clothing for its avatars, the company announced on Thursday. The updates seem like good steps forward in helping people better represent themselves, but while you’re roaming around Meta’s Horizon Worlds VR social platform, you still won’t see other people’s legs.

For the new body types, Meta says that you’ll be able to select from “a wider range of body shape options, including two curvier body shapes” beginning this month, according to a blog post. The company is also “refining” some existing body types to make them more differentiated from the rest.

For hair and clothing, the company is adding “additional detail and realism,” and you might see more sparkle in...

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AMD has apparently resolved the issue burning out Ryzen 7000 X3D CPUs

Image: Speedrookie (Reddit)

AMD says it has resolved the voltage issues that have apparently been causing the company’s new 7000X3D series processors to randomly burn out, killing both the CPU and motherboard. The company has now distributed a BIOS firmware update to its board partners that place voltage restrictions on the AM5 socket motherboards they ran in, which should prevent the affected CPUs from operating beyond their intended limits.

“We have root caused the issue and have already distributed a new [AMD Generic Encapsulated Software Architecture] that puts measures in place on certain power rails on AM5 motherboards to prevent the CPU from operating beyond its specification limits, including a cap on SOC voltage at 1.3V,” AMD spokesperson Matthew Hurwitz...

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Armored Core VI crosses the Rubicon in August

FromSoftware

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon has a release date: August 23rd. To mark the announcement, FromSoftware has revealed a new trailer and a blog sharing gameplay details and more.

Armored Core VI takes place on the ruined planet Rubicon that was devastated by the detonation of a volatile but highly sought energy source called coral. As an armored core pilot, your job will be to complete missions, fighting back against the other forces desperate to get their hands on the material.

Through the glimpses of gameplay in the trailer, combat in Armored Core VI looks blisteringly fast with heavy mechs darting about the battlefield. According to game director Masaru Yamamura, the new assault boost feature lets mechs swiftly close the distance...

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Dropbox is laying off 500 people and pivoting to AI

Photo by Thomas Trutschel / Photothek via Getty Images

Dropbox is laying off around 500 employees, making up about 16 percent of the company’s entire workforce. In a memo to employees, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston attributes the layoffs to a rocky economy — but also says that the cuts will allow the company to build out its AI division.

“In an ideal world, we’d simply shift people from one team to another. And we’ve done that wherever possible,” Houston writes. “However, our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early-stage product development. We’ve been bringing in great talent in these areas over the last couple years and we’ll need even more.”

Shared the difficult decision to reduce our workforce with the Dropbox team today. We’re committed to...

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My week with Dyson’s absurd wearable air purifier

The Dyson Zone is not the most practical device, but then again, did you really expect that from air-purifying noise-canceling headphones?

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Colorado governor signs first right-to-repair law for farmers

Photo by Sergei Supinsky / AFP via Getty Images

Colorado has become the first US state to pass a law that gives farmers the right to repair their own equipment. Governor Jared Polis signed the bill into law on Tuesday, requiring manufacturers to provide access to the parts, software, tools, and documentation necessary for farmers or independent repair shops to fix agricultural equipment.

“This is a common-sense bipartisan bill to help people avoid unnecessary delays from equipment repairs,” Governor Polis says in a statement. “Farmers and ranchers can lose precious weeks and months when equipment repairs are stalled due to long turnaround times by manufacturers and dealers. This bill will change that.”

The move marks a step forward in the right-to-repair movement. It addresses a...

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