Google is changing Chrome’s lock icon because nobody knows what it means

Some of you likely do know what this lock icon represents, but most Chrome users apparently don’t. | Image: The Verge

The padlock icon indicating website security has appeared in the URL bar of web browsers for so long that it’s practically become part of the furniture at this point — which is exactly why Google is planning to retire it from Chrome later this year. On Tuesday, the search giant announced that the lock will be replaced by a new “tune” icon with the release of Chrome 117 in September as part of a wider Material You-themed redesign of the browser.

The reasons for the update go beyond just “prettying” up Chrome: Google claims that in a study it conducted in 2021, only 11 percent of participants actually understood the intended purpose of the lock icon. It first appeared back in the ’90s following Netscape’s introduction of HTTPS, a protocol...

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The best Garmin watches for training and everyday life

Garmins aren’t just multisport behemoths anymore. | Illustration by Will Joel / The Verge

Few brands are as synonymous with outdoor sports as Garmin. You’ll find these fitness trackers and smartwatches on dozens of wrists at any 5K, marathon, or Ironman. You’ll also find Garmin devotees among divers, thru-hikers, golfers, kiteboarders — you name it. But these devices aren’t just for athletes. The company’s made significant strides in its lifestyle offerings, so regardless of your fitness level, there’s a Garmin for everyone.

If you’re coming from a more traditional smartwatch, Garmin’s core strengths lie in fitness, GPS, adventuring, and durability. These are hardy devices that are meant to withstand the elements and last weeks on a single charge. Several models come with offline maps, advanced navigational features, and more...

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The new Pokémon Trading Card Game app is finally launching this June

Pokémon Trading Card Game Live’s launch has been delayed so many times since The Pokémon Company first announced it back in 2021 that it often seemed like the Pokémon TCG Go successor might never see the light of day or make it out of beta. Come this summer, though, that’s all changing.

After almost two years of assuring folks that it was dropping “soon,” The Pokémon Company announced today that Pokémon TCG Live for iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows will officially launch on June 8th alongside the release of the upcoming Scarlet & Violet—Paldea Evolved card set. Before Paldea Evolved hits physical stores on June 9th, players will be able to buy and play with digital cards from the set through the Pokémon TCG Live app, and those who log on...

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Andreessen Horowitz saw the future — but did the future leave it behind?

Illustration by Sean Dong for The Verge

The venture capital firm was known for hyping its portfolio. But in the era of tech skepticism and rising interest rates, is it still ahead of the curve?

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Microsoft’s Xbox Wireless Headset is on sale for its best price to date

Microsoft’s official headset offers more bells and whistles than you might expect for the budget-friendly price. | Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge

Gaming headsets can get expensive fast — just look at Turtle Beach’s latest flagship headset if you need a good case in point. Fortunately, budget-friendly wireless options do exist, offering a way for players to achieve more immersive sound quality without draining their bank account. This is especially true now that Microsoft’s Xbox Wireless Headset is seeing a rare $15 discount at Amazon, dropping the affordable headset down to a mere $85.

In terms of features, Microsoft’s official Xbox headset offers a lot of bang for your buck. The attractive matte black accessory is compatible with the Xbox Wireless protocol, meaning it works with both Xbox One and Xbox Series X / S consoles, and it even offers Bluetooth support for concurrent...

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Double Dragon is coming back this summer with a new co-op brawl

Image: Modus Games

The streets are about to get a lot more pixelated: Double Dragon is coming back. Publisher Modus Games announced a revival of the classic side-scrolling beat-’em-up franchise, with development handled by studio Secret Base. The new title is called Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons, and it’s launching on a wide range of platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X / S, Xbox One, PS4, and PS5. It’s expected to launch this summer.

Before we get into how it plays, it’s important to note that Rise of the Dragons has a pitch-perfect beat-’em-up premise:

New York City in the year 199X: the city has been devastated by nuclear war. Its citizens fight for survival as riots, crime and chaos flood the streets. Criminal gangs terrorize what...

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Fortnite arrives on Amazon Luna today

Image: Epic Games

Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular games, has also become a de facto test of the public’s interest in streaming games like they stream YouTube or Netflix. It’s been completely free to stream from Nvidia’s GeForce Now or Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming to almost any device you own, no download and no paid subscription required.

Today, Amazon Luna is joining them. “Fortnite has been the most requested game from Luna customers in the U.S. and we’re thrilled to bring the title to the service,” reads a statement from Amazon devices and services VP Daniel Rausch.

Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge.

Google thinks free streaming is important enough to give it a dedicated section in Fortnite search results....

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The biggest deal in gaming hangs in the balance

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

After a surprise decision by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) last week, the biggest acquisition in gaming history hangs in the balance. Microsoft’s $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard has been blocked by UK regulators, and EU regulators are due to make a decision in the coming weeks.

In Status Update (above), we look back at the history of this deal over the past year, Microsoft and Sony’s battles over Call of Duty, and exactly why regulators are concerned over this giant purchase. The CMA’s decision could be a giant blocker for this giant deal, so what happens next? Microsoft is getting ready to fight, so expect an appeal that will drag on for months and a messy fight with the FTC, too.

For now, all eyes...

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Finally, you can put an AMD processor in the Framework Laptop

Two Frameworks enter... | Image: Framework

Framework has announced the 2023 edition of its modular 13-inch laptop. The big news is that not only is there a 13th-Gen Intel configuration for sale, but there’s also an AMD Ryzen 7040 option available. That’s right. Finally, an AMD option.

One of the difficulties I had in reviewing last year’s Framework Laptop was that the Intel processor didn’t quite measure up to everything else that was great about the device. I’m obsessed with the Framework as a concept — what’s not to love about a repairable, fully upgradable notebook? — but as a daily driver, it was a bit unremarkable, and battery life was particularly disappointing.

We’ve seen great battery life from the Ryzen 7000 series so far this year, and that could be just what this...

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Snapchat is already testing sponsored links in its My AI chatbot

Image: Snap

Snap has already begun experimenting with sponsored links in its My AI chatbot. During the NewFronts advertising event on Tuesday, the company announced that the bot will start surfacing paid links that are relevant to a conversation.

For example, Snap says if you’re using My AI to figure out what to have for dinner, the bot might suggest a sponsored link that leads to a local restaurant or delivery app after providing an initial response. It might even surface links for an airline or hotel if you’re chatting with My AI about planning a trip.

Snapchat just revealed its ChatGPT-powered My AI chatbot in February, which can do things like hold conversations, suggest AR filters, and generate photos. After initially releasing My AI...

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BlackBerry director Matt Johnson on why the iPhone won and why most tech movies suck

The BlackBerry started as a messy prototype — and eventually kind of took over the world. | Illustration by William Joel / The Verge; Image: IFC Films

You probably already know the story of BlackBerry. Its demise was as spectacular and public as anything you can think of, from a top-of-the-world gadget that people referred to as an addiction — the CrackBerry phenomenon was no joke — to just another of the many things left for dead by the iPhone. Talking about the BlackBerry now is like talking about, I don’t know, the Walkman or the Flip camera. They lived, they died, the end.

And yet, I was totally riveted by BlackBerry, the new movie directed by Matt Johnson about the rise and fall of Research In Motion (RIM) and the epic product it created. The movie is stylistically somewhere in the middle of The Social Network, General Magic, and Silicon Valley, following a ragtag bunch of...

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The best entertainment of 2023

Image: Lucasfilm Ltd.

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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Dashlane is getting rid of its insecure master password

Dashlane’s new Passwordless Login uses device authentication, so you can log in to your vault on your computer by scanning a QR code. | Image: Dashlane

Password manager company Dashlane is replacing the master password with a new device-based / biometric “Passwordless Login” solution to better protect users’ password vaults. That means Dashlane users will no longer have to create and remember a single password that must be guarded from the world — lest it succumbs to a dastardly phishing scheme that compromises your whole digital life (and probably your identity).

Dashlane’s Passwordless Login follows the company’s early support for the rising cryptographic keys solution known as passkeys. However, while Dashlane’s new master password replacement solution also uses cryptographic keys, it's not the same as passkeys, which is the password-free authentication solution developed by FIDO...

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Star Wars: Visions Volume 2 is pure signal in a franchise full of intergalactic noise

Tichina, a character from PunkRobot’s Visions Volume 2 short “In the Stars.” | Image: Disney Plus / Lucasfilm

Star Wars: Visions’ second season is a breathtaking reminder of how freeing living outside of the canon can be.

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AMD makes Ryzen 7840U official, claims it can beat Apple M2

A render of an AMD Ryzen 7000 chip. | Image: AMD

It’s no secret that AMD has a new low-power laptop chip with potent integrated graphics. Companies like Asus, Aokzoe, and Ayaneo are sticking it — or its Z1 Extreme spinoff — into their handheld gaming PCs. But the AMD 7840U was originally designed for thin and powerful laptops, and the company’s finally beginning to share that story today.

AMD claims the new chip can give Apple a run for its money, besting the 2022 MacBook Air’s M2 processor in “application performance” by up to 75 percent and taking on the Intel Core i7-1360P by even more than that in both productivity and graphics, as you’ll see stated fairly vaguely in the charts below.

Image: AMD

Versus Apple M2.

Image: AMD

Versus...

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Warehouses are afflicting air and noise pollution on millions of Americans

The wall of a giant warehouse comes right up to a homeowner’s property on April 26th, 2021, in San Bernardino, California. | Photo by Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

With millions of Americans now living in close proximity to a warehouse, it’s time to start treating these drab, feature-less buildings like pollution hotspots, says a recent report by the Environmental Defense Fund. Warehouses are quickly popping up all over the US, bringing truck traffic and tailpipe emissions with them. And yet there is no federal database to see where current or proposed warehouses are located, unlike other major sources of pollution like oil and gas facilities.

In the absence of federal data, the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) completed its own analysis of warehouses in the 10 states where they’ve gained tremendous ground recently. Over the past decade, warehouses have surpassed office spaces to become...

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The Joe Rogan AI Experience shows how hard it is to replace a real podcaster

The real Joe Rogan at a comedy club in 2019. | Photo by Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images

On a recent podcast episode, you can hear Joe Rogan ask OpenAI founder Sam Altman whether society should be concerned about fake AI content. “How will we be able to tell what’s real and what’s not?” It was a particularly fitting question for the episode — since the entire hourlong conversation was generated by AI.

Depending on whom you ask, AI is either an existential threat to every creative industry, a groundbreaking technology that will advance human civilization, or a kind of fun, dumb toy that is ultimately a pale imitation of the real deal. The creator of The Joe Rogan AI Experience, a sort of AI-generated fanfic YouTube podcast that depicts imaginary conversations between Rogan and a new guest every episode, kind of believes all...

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You don’t need a password any longer to sign in to your Google account

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Google’s next step into a passwordless future is here with the announcement that passkeys — a new cryptographic keys solution that requires a preauthenticated device — are coming to Google accounts on all major platforms. Starting today, Google users can switch to passkeys and ditch their passwords and two-step verification codes entirely when signing in.

Passkeys are a safer, more convenient alternative to passwords being pushed by Google, Apple, Microsoft, and other tech companies aligned with the FIDO Alliance. They can replace traditional passwords and other sign-in systems like 2FA or SMS verification with a local PIN or a device’s own biometric authentication — such as a fingerprint or Face ID. This biometric data isn’t shared with...

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Microsoft is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

Illustration: The Verge

Microsoft Edge is a good browser but for some reason Microsoft keeps trying to shove it down everyone’s throat and make it more difficult to use rivals like Chrome or Firefox. Microsoft has now started notifying IT admins that it will force Outlook and Teams to ignore the default web browser on Windows and open links in Microsoft Edge instead.

Reddit users have posted messages from the Microsoft 365 admin center that reveal how Microsoft is going to roll out this change. “Web links from Azure Active Directory (AAD) accounts and Microsoft (MSA) accounts in the Outlook for Windows app will open in Microsoft Edge in a single view showing the opened link side-by-side with the email it came from,” reads a message to IT admins from Microsoft.

W...

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Now you can post Horizon Worlds photos to your Instagram Story

Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta’s VR social platform is getting a new feature to help you show off what a fun time you’re having in the so-called “metaverse” with all your Instagram and Facebook followers. With its v108 update, Horizon Worlds can now share photos and videos directly to your story on either platform. Meta is also using the update to test a couple of tweaks to the service’s safe zone feature.

It’s previously been possible to share content from Horizon Worlds to Reels — Instagram and Facebook’s TikTok-style vertical video feed feature — as reported by TechCrunch last October. But now you also have the option of posting Horizon Worlds’ Wii-level graphics to Meta’s stories, where they can sit alongside real-world photographs of holidays, meals, and...

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The Verge’s 2023 Mother’s Day Gift Guide

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

From transparent chargers and TikTok gems to the latest wearables, we’ve curated a batch of unique gifts fit for any mom worth celebrating.

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ChatGPT can now find you a house

Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Today in partnerships that I did not at all see coming, Zillow has announced the launch of a new plug-in for ChatGPT. It is called, as you might expect, the ChatGPT plug-in. And if you enable it, you will be able to do what you’d expect something called the Zillow ChatGPT plug-in to allow you to do: search for a house.

Specifically, those who have the plug-in enabled can tell ChatGPT what kind of property they’re looking to purchase or rent, sharing criteria like location, price, and bedroom count. ChatGPT will then dive into Zillow’s database and spit out some options for you.

Generative AI is changing the way people search for information

The plug-in is available for “a select number of ChatGPT users today, with broader access...

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Reddit reworks sharing from its apps and the look of link embeds for better social reach

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Reddit’s blog post today admits it “didn’t make it easy” to share content like cool conversations and memes to other social platforms — but now it’s finally doing something about it. Reddit is enhancing link embeds for messaging apps and adding more sharing functions like sharing directly to Instagram stories right from Reddit’s app.

If you’ve ever tried to share a Reddit link from the official app on, for instance, iMessage on an iPhone, you might recall it not having a particularly content-rich preview. Now the company is enhancing it with a more robust visual preview of the content, its subreddit name, and the number of upvotes and comments it has.

Image: Reddit

The new preview for Reddit shares in iMessage.

...

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Twitter backtracks, lets emergency and traffic alert accounts keep free API access

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

After putting its API behind a paywall, Twitter is now reversing course and making an exception for emergency and transportation agencies — some of which have already left the platform.

In a tweet sent out from the Twitter Dev account on Tuesday, the platform says “verified gov or publicly owned services who tweet weather alerts, transport updates and emergency notifications” can continue to use the API free of charge. Exactly what the company means by “verified” is unclear. Does it only apply if the agency has enabled a new “verified” account, and do they have to pay to get checkmarks on any sub accounts that may require API access?

We already started seeing the effects of these API changes last month when several emergency and...

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TikTok’s head of US trust and safety is leaving

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

TikTok’s head of trust and safety for the US, Eric Han, is leaving the company on May 12th, according to two people familiar with the matter and an internal memo to employees I’ve seen.

His departure comes as TikTok is still trying to clench a deal to avoid a ban by the US government. Han has been leading TikTok’s safety teams in the US for several years, and in December, he was named the head of trust and safety for TikTok US Data Security (USDS), a separate entity created to convince the government that the app shouldn’t be banned.

In the memo to employees announcing his departure, Andy Bonillo, interim USDS general manager, said he will be “stepping in to lead USDS T&S on an interim basis” until “we identify Eric’s replacement for the...

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What’s it like on Bluesky right now, anyway?

Photo by: Villa Elio / AGF / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Early last week, barely anyone had heard of Bluesky. On Wednesday, it was just one of many alternatives vying for attention as users grow increasingly dissatisfied with how the new regime is running Twitter. By Thursday, Bluesky — still in an invite-only beta — had seen an unprecedented jump in number of users, had attracted the (positive) attention of several notable politicians and celebrities, and had gotten a pundit besieged by angry, unblockable posts.

What’s happening on Bluesky isn’t a secret — screencaps of its madcap, exuberant weekend are all over Twitter. But an invite is necessary to really experience the pandemonium. The question What’s it really like over there? is essentially what is driving user growth. From inside these...

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The best laptop you can buy in 2023

Image: William Joel/The Verge

The best laptops for you, from ultraportables to high-powered editing machines

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Here are the best iPad deals right now

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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How to hack the right-click menu in Windows 11

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

The right-click menu in Windows 11 is an essential shortcut to a host of features and tools, adapting to the context of what you’re clicking on along the way. You can use it to copy and paste files, edit images, interact with the clipboard, pull up the properties of a file, print documents, share files with other people, and lots more besides.

What you might not know is you can customize this right-click menu for yourself, bringing in the applications and the shortcuts you use the most and getting rid of those you don’t need. It makes the menu more useful than ever, with the potential to ramp up your computing productivity even further.

There are a couple of ways to go about making changes to what you see in the Windows 11 right-click...

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How to create an iCloud Shared Photo Library in iOS 16

iCloud Shared Photo Libraries let up to six people contribute photos and videos to a single place. | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Almost everyone has been guilty, at some point or another, of forgetting to send a picture or video to friends and family. The good news is that iOS 16 now lets you create an iCloud Shared Photo Library to make it easier to share memories with loved ones on their iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

An iCloud Shared Photo Library is exactly what it sounds like: it allows up to six people to contribute photos and videos to a single collection. Everyone who has access to the shared library can add, edit, or delete content. You can also choose to either upload photos to the shared library manually or automatically when your phone detects you’re near other members. For example, if you invited Mom and Dad to a shared library, you can set it up so that...

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