Fashion advice subreddits are turning back the clock to protest Reddit

Which is your favorite 18th-century fit? | Image: Disney

The female and male fashion advice subreddits are protesting Reddit’s API changes and recent actions toward moderators by changing their focus in a hilarious way: now, posts on those subreddits must be about fashion from the 1700s. Both the r/femalefashionadvice and r/malefashionadvice subreddits switched over after putting the choice to a community vote, and the subreddits are now filled with wonderful threads asking about very old fashion.

One incredible thread in r/femalefashionadvice, titled “How to dress for a dinner party with the guy I rejected but now like? (1813),” is clearly a roleplay of Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice. “How do I dress in a way that says, ‘I am so grateful you saved my sister and my entire family,...

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Bethesda’s Indiana Jones game is exclusive to Xbox and PC

Image: Klobrille (Twitter)

Bethesda’s upcoming Indiana Jones game will be exclusive to Xbox and PC. Pete Hines, Bethesda’s head of global publishing, confirmed the exclusivity during theFTC v. Microsoft case today. Indiana Jones will also be available day one on Xbox Game Pass.

The game was originally announced in 2021, just months before Microsoft finalized its $7.5 billion deal to acquire ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Doom and Fallout studio Bethesda Softworks. The Indiana Jones game is being developed by MachineGames, the same studio behind the Wolfenstein franchise. It’s being created under a new Lucasfilm label, which is part of an increased focus on games from Disney.

All we’ve seen so far is a teaser video and no details on when the Indiana Jones...

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Ford receives $9.2 billion government loan for EV battery factory projects

Image: Getty

Ford will receive $9.2 billion as part of a conditional loan from the US Department of Energy to aid in the construction of three huge electric vehicle battery factories, the agency announced Thursday. The mammoth loan represents the biggest government offering to an automaker since the bailouts following the Great Recession of 2009.

The loan originates from the DOE’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (AVTM) program, which famously helped put Tesla on the map and more recently provided a boost for a joint venture of General Motors and LG Energy Solution to help fund the construction of a new lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility. Another recent recipient was Redwood Materials, the electric vehicle battery recycling and...

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Heatwaves are stressing out power grids all over the world

Photo by Nitashia Johnson / Bloomberg via Getty Images

Heatwaves are pushing power grids to their brink around the world — a risk that can make an already dangerous situation deadly.

When temperatures spike, people tend to need air conditioning the most. But that can put a lot of pressure on a power grid, potentially triggering a blackout if there isn’t enough electricity on hand. That’s the worst-case scenario grid operators across the world are scrambling to prevent.

The worst-case scenario grid operators across the world are scrambling to prevent

Close to 28.8 million people are under heat alerts today in the US. Texas grid operator ERCOT broke its June record for electricity demand on Monday after issuing a “weather watch” for June 15th through 21st and asking residents to voluntarily...

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TikTok’s COO has quit

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

V. Pappas, the chief operating officer of TikTok, has resigned, as first reported by The Information. In a memo Pappas posted to Twitter, they informed staff that they will no longer work as COO of the company, as they believe the ”time is right to move on and refocus.” Pappas will still stay at TikTok in an advisory role.

“Given all the successes reached at TikTok, I finally feel the time is right to move on and refocus on my entrepreneurial passions,” Pappas writes. “Few had imagined what the last five years would look like and with all the incredible innovation happening now with generative AI, robotics, renewable energy, genomics, blockchain and the IoT, clearly the future will again look much different.”

The news of Pappas’...

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TikTok’s COO has quit

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

V. Pappas, the chief operating officer of TikTok, has resigned, as first reported by The Information. In a memo Pappas posted to Twitter, they informed staff that they will no longer work as COO of the company, as they believe the ”time is right to move on and refocus.” Pappas will still stay at TikTok in an advisory role.

“Given all the successes reached at TikTok, I finally feel the time is right to move on and refocus on my entrepreneurial passions,” Pappas writes. “Few had imagined what the last five years would look like and with all the incredible innovation happening now with generative AI, robotics, renewable energy, genomics, blockchain and the IoT, clearly the future will again look much different.”

The news of Pappas’...

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Final Fantasy XVI is so fucking edgy

Image: Square Enix

It’s no secret that Game of Thrones has been a major influence on Final Fantasy XVI — the developers have said as much. “When we first started creating the game, we had our core team of about 30 members very early on buy the Blu-ray boxset of Game of Thrones and required everyone to watch it, because we wanted this type of feel,” producer Naoki Yoshida told Eurogamer earlier this year.

And man, does it show.

The first few hours of the roleplaying game feel designed to show you just how edgy Final Fantasy can be. The previous entry was a wholesome road trip about friendship, told through things like photography and cooking. This game goes in a completely different direction. Characters have sex on-screen (though it never gets all that...

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The Titan: here’s what’s going on with the missing Titanic wreckage tourist sub

The OceanGate Titan submersible underwater. | Image: OceanGate

Crews are searching for a small sub carrying five tourists was lost on its way to view the wreckage of the HMS Titanic.

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Sony’s PlayStation chief privately said Microsoft’s Activision deal wasn’t about Xbox exclusives

Photo by Alex Wong / Getty Images

We’re only minutes into the FTC v. Microsoft hearing, and we’ve already had a bombshell revelation. Sony’s PlayStation chief, Jim Ryan, believed that Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard wasn’t about locking games as Xbox exclusives, according to a newly unsealed email. Microsoft counsel revealed the exchange between Ryan and a former Sony CEO discussing the announcement of the deal last year.

“It is not an exclusivity play at all,” said Ryan. “They’re thinking bigger than that and they have the cash to make moves like this. I’ve spent a fair amount of time with [Phil] Spencer Bobby [Kotick] and I’m pretty sure we will continue to see Call of Duty on PlayStation for years to come.”

The surprise revelation runs counter...

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Twitch is going to let you pay to pin posts in chat

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Twitch is introducing a new feature, Hype Chat, that lets users pay to pin messages at the top of a streamer’s chat feed.

If you’ve seen YouTube’s Super Chats, which the company first announced in 2017, then Hype Chats should look pretty familiar. Streamers will be able to set how much Hype Chats cost (with a minimum of up to $100 and a maximum of up to $500), and based on how much you pay, you’ll have a better-looking chat. “Higher value Hype Chats will stay at the top of chat longer, have longer allowed character counts, and have more standout designs,” Twitch said in a blog post. Right now, the feature is only available on the web, Twitch spokesperson Adiya Taylor tells The Verge.

GIF: Twitch

Here’s what Hype...

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An infamous Final Fantasy XIV monster returns in Final Fantasy XVI

Image: Square Enix

Final Fantasy XVI, out today, is stuffed with neat little homages and references to the Final Fantasy games that came before it. One of the game’s menus features sprites of Clive, Jill, Torgal, or whoever else is in your party if you’re nostalgic for the old pixel art from the game’s early days on the NES. When you speak to Harpocrates and have acquired enough lore, the old victory fanfare plays. But there’s one homage that’s more likely to inspire fear than warm fuzzy feelings.

Red Comet is back, and he wants his revenge.

Come with me back in time to 2020 when critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV released patch 5.35 for the Shadowbringers expansion. The patch added typical post-expansion launch endgame activities, including a...

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Google is making it easier for students to access Adobe Express on Chromebooks

Image: Google

Google has announced a new integration with Adobe that will allow schools to easily distribute the Adobe Express platform on student Chromebooks.

Adobe Express is a free, cloud-based design application that provides basic content creation tools for graphics, videos, and the like. Google hopes that students and teachers will use the software to incorporate more digital art into their assignments.

“I’ve got three children, and one of my favorite activities every year is the science fair in the gymnasium,” says John Maletis, Google’s VP of ChromeOS product, engineering, and UX. “I envision an Adobe Express-powered science fair where you’ve got more immersive ways of explaining the experiment or the project.”

Generally, licensing a...

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The best smart locks you can buy right now

Illustration: The Verge

Never get locked out again with a smart lock you can control from your phone, with your voice, or with just a touch of your finger.

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Heavy-duty trucks would be required to have automatic emergency braking under new US rule

Image: Rolf Vennenbernd / picture alliance via Getty Images

Semi trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles would be required to come standard with automatic emergency braking (AEB) under a new rule proposed today by the Biden administration. The announcement follows a similar rule for all new passenger vehicles proposed last month and is part of a larger effort to slow the increase in fatal traffic crashes in recent years.

The new rule would require heavy vehicles that weigh in excess of 10,000 pounds to come equipped with AEB, a technology that uses forward-facing cameras and other sensors to automatically apply the brakes when a crash is imminent. The system would be required to bring a vehicle to a complete stop at speeds as low as 6mph and as high as 50mph, the National Highway Traffic Safety...

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iPhone is dumb and besotted with Pixel in Google’s latest ad campaign

Image: Google

Google has found a fun new way to dunk on Apple with an ad campaign for Pixel phones that straddles the line between cute and cringe. The search giant has released five videos — under the campaign name “Best Phones Forever” — which depict sitcom-like interactions between anthropomorphized versions of the Pixel 7 Pro and some sort of iPhone Pro. And it kinda seems like the phones want to bone each other?

Google has pitched this as “what happens when two phones stop being rivals and start being friends,” though the campaign largely focuses on the iPhone’s apparent shortcomings compared to Pixel phones — such as astrophotography, security, and Apple’s lack of foldable devices. The iPhone is basically portrayed as an outdated, inexperienced...

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PSA: your friends at Verge Deals are here to guide you through Amazon Prime Day

Amazon Prime Day is coming around once again on July 11th and 12th, making this a good time to remind you of our overall Verge Deals coverage, our deals newsletter, and all the deals-y stuff we’re going to be covering for you during the upcoming shopping event.

We’re always on the lookout for quality tech deals to save you money on the stuff that’s actually worth spending your money on, and outside of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Prime Day marks one of the best chances of the year to get some major discounts. Many of the gadgets we review will likely drop to their best prices to date — or at least close. It’s also an occasion with a whole lot of marketing noise and supposed “epic deals” that, frankly, can often suck. That’s why we...

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This $400 Bumblebee robot can dance, kick, and pick itself up from a fall

Image: Robosen

After creating the ultimate Optimus Prime toy, Hasbro and Robosen are back with yet another Transformers figure, and this time, it’s a 14-inch programmable robot modeled after Bumblebee. With a price tag of $399, this miniature Autobot can walk, squat, kick, lean, dance, and even pick itself up from the ground. But there is one thing it can’t do: transform.

That’s probably one of the reasons why this Bumblebee figure is several hundred dollars less than its self-transforming Optimus Prime counterpart, which costs a cool $700 plus an extra $750 for the auto-converting trailer if you really want to go all out. But if you’re okay with the fact that this bot doesn’t actually do any transforming — or are just a huge fan of the Transformers...

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Five AI tools creators should know

Currently, the most sought-after application of AI video technology is text-to-video AI. | Alex Parkin

Currently, the most sought-after application of AI video technology is text-to-video AI. The idea is anyone will be able to type a prompt into a text field, and within seconds — or, more likely, minutes — a video will be created using an AI model. Some of the biggest companies in tech are researching this. Meta announced Make-A-Video, Google has announced Imagen Video and Phenaki, and Nvidia says it’s getting involved, too.

All of those projects aren’t available for public use, and the output of these systems is far from photorealistic: figures warp and morph, and there are obvious changes between frames. But the demos are public statements of research and development in the text-to-video field from large — and powerful — companies.

As...

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The FTC’s case against Microsoft could quickly turn into Xbox vs. PlayStation

Image: Microsoft / Sony

Microsoft is battling a key US regulator here, but the real war looks like it will be Microsoft vs. Sony.

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LG’s brilliant C3 OLED just hit its lowest price ever at Amazon and Best Buy

LG’s latest OLED offers more processing power than the C2 and a bevy of gamer-friendly features, including a 120Hz refresh rate. | Image: LG

Memorial Day weekend is known for being one of the best times of the year to buy a TV, so it was no surprise when LG’s new C3 OLED dropped to a new record low last month. What is surprising, though, is that the TV is even cheaper than it was in May less than a month later.

Right now, you can buy LG’s 55-inch C3 OLEDat an all-time low of around $1,497 ($403 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and direct from LG. Both larger and smaller sizes are on sale as well, including the 48-inch configuration, which is available for a new low of $1,249.99 ($250 off) from Best Buy and LG.

In a nutshell, LG’s new C3 boasts the kind of impressive black levels, vivid colors, and rich contrast that have come to characterize OLED TVs in recent years. It also...

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Final Fantasy XVI has a neat trick to help you follow its epic story

Image: Square Enix

I am a person who often struggles with vast, world-spanning fantasy stories. I just can’t keep track of all of the people and places and other proper nouns that make up the world. The result is that I spend a lot of time reading wikis to help me get through things like The Lord of the Rings or The Witcher — but that’s not very helpful in the moment when I’m watching a pivotal scene unfold. But Final Fantasy XVI, which just launched on the PS5, has a helpful tool to make it a whole lot easier to follow its complex tale.

The feature is called Active Time Lore — a nice play on the Active Time Battle combat system of past games — and it’s sort of like the X-Ray tool offered by Amazon Prime Video, only for a video game. It works like this: at...

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Motorola Razr Plus review: the right moves

The Razr Plus is a much better phone than the preceding models. It’s a little fiddly, but for the right kind of person, it presents a rewarding experience.

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Goodnight Phone

Panel 1: “Goodnight Phone,” a comic by Gina Wynbrandt. The title card is a nighttime cityscape under a full moon.

Panel 2: A woman in a green puffer jacket walks into a room painted pink. She is looking at her phone. A notification labeled “All About You” pops up. She is at average energy and cash and has achieved the “Work Day Complete” badge. Also, her phone is telling her she’s hungry.

Panel 3: The woman is cooking a pot of pasta, following the instructions on her phone (it’s telling her to stir). A notification awarding “Cooking XP” pops up.

Panel 4: The woman is taking a selfie while eating the pasta she’s just cooked. Her phone awards her a “5K selfie milestone” badge.

Panel 5: The woman is brushing her teeth and gets a...

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Netflix’s Skull Island buries its giant monsters under too many quips

Image: Netflix

It goes without saying that when people show up to watch King Kong, or Godzilla, or King Kong vs. Godzilla, they’re there to see big monsters wreak havoc. Sometimes there are interesting human stories, but they mostly serve to frame those giant monsters we love so much. And that’s the first mistake that Skull Island, an animated spinoff on Netflix, makes: for most of the first season, the story is focused almost entirely on people. The second? Those people are almost uniformly annoying and chatty. The show turns things around by the end, but to get there, you’ll have to withstand a nonstop barrage of quips and one-liners.

As the name implies, Skull Island takes place on... Skull Island, home of King Kong. There are a few different groups...

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DuckDuckGo’s privacy-focused browser is available for Windows now

Duck Player is the kind of privacy-first feature DuckDuckGo hopes to build more of. | Image: DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo’s browser is finally available for Windows users. About nine months after launching its browser for Mac, the privacy-focused search engine company is bringing a very similar product to Windows users. It’s available now, and its pitch is the same as ever: DuckDuckGo is a browser and a search engine that doesn’t collect your data and doesn’t track you across the web.

The DuckDuckGo browser looks and works like Chrome or Edge, with a row of tabs across the top and a large text box for searching and typing URLs. (DuckDuckGo’s search engine is the default when you install the browser, but you can change that if, for some reason, you care deeply about browser privacy but not search privacy.) DuckDuckGo does offer a couple of its own...

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Sky launches TV webcam for video calling and watch parties

Sky’s Live camera sitting on top of one of its TVs. | Image: Sky

Comcast-owned British broadcaster Sky has launched a new camera that’s designed to add more social, fitness, and gaming features to its smart TVs. The Sky Live camera attaches magnetically to the top of Sky Glass smart TVs and connects via USB-C and HDMI. It lets you watch TV simultaneously with other households, supports making video calls over Zoom, can track home workouts, and also comes with Kinect-style motion-controlled games.

Sky Live costs £290 (about $370) upfront, but it’s also available to buy for £6 per month on a 48-month contract, or £12 per month on a 24-month contract. But The Guardian notes that Sky is also offering introductory deals that bring the cost of the camera down to £3 a month when bought alongside a TV. The...

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Adobe XD put on life support ahead of Figma acquisition

Adobe’s own product design platform may be dropped entirely in favor of Figma. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Days appear to be numbered for Adobe XD. As spotted by developer Alex Ivanovs, the UX / UI product design platform is no longer available as a standalone app under Adobe’s Creative Cloud launcher, effectively sunsetting the software for folks who hadn’t already purchased it.

Considering Adobe is in the process of acquiring Figma, a remarkably similar set of design tools, this news isn’t entirely unexpected. But it doesn’t mean that the Adobe XD app is dead. Not yet anyway.

Anais Gragueb, Senior Manager for Creative Cloud & Innovation Public Relations confirmed to The Verge that Adobe will continue to support Adobe XD for existing customers. If you didn’t purchase an XD subscription before it was pulled then the app will still be...

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Mark Zuckerberg is ready to fight Elon Musk in a cage match

Zuckerberg says he recently completed “the Murph Challenge” workout in just under 40 minutes, which is insane. | Mark Zuckerberg / Meta

Here we go.

After Elon Musk recently tweeted that he would be “up for a cage fight” with Zuckerberg, the Meta CEO shot back by posting a screenshot of Musk’s tweet with the caption “send me location.”

I’ve confirmed that Zuckerberg’s post on his Instagram account is, in fact, not a joke, which means the ball is now in Musk’s court. “The story speaks for itself,” Meta spokesperson Iska Saric told me.

I’m up for a cage match if he is lol

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 21, 2023

Screenshot: The Verge

Zuckerberg posted this on his verified Instagram account Wednesday.

The backstory here: since I recently reported more details about Meta’s forthcoming Twitter competitor, Musk has been taunting Zuckerberg on Twitter...

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Meta is increasing the performance of its Quest 2 and Pro headsets

The Meta Quest 2 is about to get performance enhancements (and not a new strap). | Image: The Verge

Mark Zuckerberg announced the Meta Quest 3 VR headset at the beginning of this month, which should bring enhanced capabilities for those who want to upgrade their Quest 2. But that more performant Quest 3 won’t be here until September, so in the meantime, Meta promised a future update will boost the Quest 2’s (and Quest Pro’s) performance and keep the hardware supported for much longer.

Meta is now rolling out those changes in the v55 update. The Quest 2 will get a 19 percent GPU speed increase while Quest Pro owners will get an 11 percent jump. Both of the VR headsets are also getting up to 26 percent performance increases in CPU power as well, according to Meta.

The performance upgrades should give users overall smoother game...

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A first-of-its-kind climate trial just ended — will it work?

Lead claimant Rikki Held, 22, confers with members of Our Children’s Trust legal team before the start of the nation’s first youth climate change trial at Montana’s First Judicial District Court on June 12th, 2023, in Helena, Montana. | Photo by William Campbell / Getty Images

A landmark US climate trial over whether the state of Montana is violating young people’s right to a healthy environment came to an early close on Tuesday. Its outcome could shift policy in a state with one of the biggest coal reserves in the nation and might even influence a slew of other suits outside of Montana.

The case, Held v. Montana, was filed by a group of 16 youths ranging from five to 22 years old. They say they “have been and will continue to be harmed by the dangerous impacts of fossil fuels and the climate crisis,” according to the complaint filed in March 2020. Similar suits have been filed by young people across the US. But last week, the Montana case became the first in the nation to make it to trial.

Its outcome could...

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