Nvidia RTX 4060 review roundup: you deserve better

Nvidia doesn’t have a picture of the 4060 specifically, but here’s a representation of the 4060 lineup from its marketing video. | Image: Nvidia

Linus Tech Tips is calling it a “wet fart of a GPU.” Hardware Unboxed says it’s “a slap in the face to gamers.” Here’s how GamersNexus begins its conclusion: “This isn’t as egregiously embarrassing as the 4060 Ti.”

They’re all talking about the Nvidia RTX 4060, a 1080p-focused graphics card which launches tomorrow for $300 — and probably isn’t worth that price.

Not everyone thinks it’s a bad card. I’ve poured through reviews today, and some conclude that it is, at least, one of the best 1080p cards you can currently buy brand-new. Here’s Andrew Cunningham with Ars Technica:

It’s not an exciting upgrade, but if you asked me which GPU I would buy for an $800 to $1,000 gaming PC, the RTX 4060 would be the one I’d point to, especially with...

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The best doorbell cameras

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge, Shutterstock

We pick the best video doorbell cameras for keeping an eye on people, packages, and anything else that comes across your front porch.

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Best gaming laptop in 2023: seven laptops to get your game on

All the best gaming laptops at every size and price

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Reddit is telling protesting mods their communities ‘will not’ stay private

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Reddit is pressuring moderators who have set their subreddits to private to reopen their communities this week, according to messages seen by The Verge. The company has given moderators deadlines to lay out their plans for reopening but said that they can’t stay closed.

The timeframes given generally indicate a deadline of sometime Thursday afternoon. Reddit was vague about the exact repercussions but seemed to suggest this was the final warning stage.

“This community remaining closed to its [millions of] members cannot continue” beyond a the deadline, the admin (Reddit employee) account ModCodeofConduct wrote in a note to one of the biggest Reddit communities that’s still private.

“That is not going to continue”

After a mod replied,...

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Microsoft CEO says he wants to end Xbox exclusives but blames Sony

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella appears at court for FTC v. Microsoft. | Photo by Loren Elliott / Getty Images

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says he’d “love” to get rid of console game exclusives but blames Sony for defining the market and competition. Nadella made the comments as part of testimony in FTC v. Microsoft today, discussing Microsoft’s cloud gaming strategy, internal gaming targets, and much more.

When discussing the ideal of Microsoft being focused on software across as many platforms as possible, Nadella was asked about Xbox exclusives. Here’s what he said:

If it was up to me I would love to get rid of the entire exclusives on consoles, but that’s not for me to define especially as a low share player in the console market. The dominant player there [Sony] has defined market competition using exclusives, so that’s the world we live in....

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Plex lays off more than 20 percent of its staff

Image: Plex

Plex laid off 37 people on Monday, a figure that represents more than 20 percent of the company’s staff, according to a Slack message from CEO Keith Valory obtained by The Verge. The layoffs affect “every department,” Valory wrote.

Plex offers a popular media server app that lets people upload and stream their own content, but in recent years, it’s bet big on adding free, ad-supported (FAST) movies and shows and live TV. But like many others in streaming, it seems Plex has found it can be tough to make money in the business right now.

Plex’s ad business has been “significantly impacted” by the downturn in global advertising markets, Valory said, and “unfortunately, we cannot know how long ad markets and pricing will continue to be...

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How self-driving do we need our self-driving cars to be?

Photo: Vjeran Pavic Illustration: Alex Parkin

There’s a big debate happening in the self-driving car world: what’s the best way for these vehicles to see the world around them? Both Tesla and those autonomous taxi startups, like Waymo and Cruise, use powerful machine vision systems to help their cars navigate the world, but that’s where the similarities end. A Tesla’s view of the world is provided entirely by cameras, whereas Cruise and Waymo use an array of different kinds of sensors, most critically lidar. Short for “Light Detection and Ranging,” lidar systems use pulses of lasers to map the environment with impressive fidelity, though at a much higher cost.

Lidar has become a surprisingly bitter bone of contention for those competing for a self-driving future. Former Uber CEO...

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It’s taken one day for customers to report broken Pixel Fold screens

The Fold’s inner screen — as on any folding phone — is much more susceptible to damage than your typical phone display. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

The Google Pixel Fold was only officially released yesterday, and unfortunately, we’re seeing some of the first major casualties of Hot Foldable Summer. Reports of broken and damaged screens are starting to trickle in, ranging from “Hmm, that might not be great” to “Oh dear God, the humanity.”

First, there’s the very unfortunate incident that Ron Amadeo over at Ars Technica experienced: OLED death in no uncertain terms. He reports that a tiny bit of debris likely got into the inner screen’s small “gutter” between the screen protector and bezels and was smashed into the panel by the two halves of the phone closing. A Fold owner on Redditis also reporting some small dents in this same area of the screen — they haven’t noticed the screen...

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Sony just spilled confidential PlayStation information because of a Sharpie

Photo by Anthony Wallace / AFP via Getty Images

Sony has just revealed lots of highly confidential information about its PlayStation business by mistake. As part of the FTC v. Microsoft hearing, Sony supplied a document from PlayStation chief Jim Ryan that includes redacted details on the margins Sony shares with publishers, its Call of Duty revenues, and even the cost of developing some of its games.

It looks like Sony redacted the documents with a black Sharpie — but when you scan them in, it’s easy to see some of the redactions. Oops.

The court has scrambled to remove the document, but the damage is done; reporters and Sony’s competition have already downloaded all the documents while they were in the public domain. Among other things, the document shows that Horizon Forbidden...

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Jony Ive’s LoveFrom designed a new seal for the UK’s outer space sustainability initiative

The Astra Carta seal | Image: Sustainable Markets Initiative

Jony Ive and his team at LoveFrom have made a new design for King Charles III called the “Astra Carta” seal. The seal is meant to represent the UK’s call to action for public and private sectors to work together on responsible and sustainable use of outer space. It marks his second project for King Charles this year after LoveFrom made a royal emblem to herald the King’s recent coronation earlier.

The seal, which is animated on the sustainability initiative’s official site, is a circular badge with the all-caps Latin words “ASTRA CARTA” planted in the middle beneath a crown. In the center, a blue dot represents the planet Earth, while constellations, the Sun, the Moon, and the flowery path taken by Venus surround it. Around the outside...

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AI-generated tweets might be more convincing than real people, research finds

Image: OpenAI

People apparently find tweets more convincing when they’re written by AI language models. At least, that was the case in a new study comparing content created by humans to language generated by OpenAI’s model GPT-3.

The authors of the new research surveyed people to see if they could discern whether a tweet was written by another person or by Chat-GPT. The result? People couldn’t really do it. The survey also asked them to decide whether the information in each tweet was true or not. This is where things get even dicier, especially since the content focused on science topics like vaccines and climate change that are subject to a lot of misinformation campaigns online.

Turns out, study participants had a harder time recognizing...

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Vizio is giving its TV software a much-needed overhaul

Home Screen will be available for “most” Vizio smart TVs from 2016 and later. | Image: Vizio

Today, Vizio is announcing a completely overhauled homescreen experience for its TVs that will eventually make its way to models dating back as far as 2016. The new interface looks sleeker and more modern than the company’s existing SmartCast OS. And Vizio went the direct route with branding: the new software is just called Home Screen.

Take one look at the revamped user experience and it’s immediately clear where Vizio drew inspiration from: this basically looks like its own streaming service. All the telltale signs are there. A column of navigation icons on the far left? Check. There’s the usual hero slot at the top with immersive artwork, custom typefaces / logos, and autoplaying video.

It’s much easier to tell at a glance which...

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Hundreds of actors are ready to strike if SAG-AFTRA doesn’t secure a truly ‘transformative deal’

Image: SAG-AFTRA

Ahead of SAG-AFTRA’s current labor contract with the AMPTP expiring on June 30th, hundreds of the union’s members have signed an open letter to leadership warning that they are more than ready to strike if a new deal properly addressing all of their concerns isn’t hammered out.

Earlier this week, SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher and national executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland posted a curious video update in which they said that they couldn’t provide any real details about the union’s negotiations with the AMPTP for confidentiality reasons.

SAG-AFTRA’s members already voted in favor of authorizing a strike earlier this month. But the latest update from the union’s leadership raised red flags that over 300 actors, including...

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Nintendo’s N64 controller for the Switch is available once again

Nintendo’s remake of the classic Nintendo 64 controller is available for $49.99. | Image: Nintendo

Nintendo Switch Online subscribers have another fresh chance to buy one of the biggest nostalgia trips of a controller. The reissued Nintendo 64 controller for the Switch is back on sale on Nintendo’s site for $49.99. These drops don’t come very frequently and, on recent occasions, have still been selling out within hours of becoming available, so it’s best to move fast if you want one for yourself. Though, if you want the purchase to qualify for free shipping, you’ll also want to add an inexpensive item to reach Nintendo’s $50 threshold.

The major caveat here is that Nintendo limits sales of the controller to paying Switch Online members, meaning you have to subscribe to one of its plans (starting at $3.99 per month, or $19.99 per...

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Android TV is adding a tab for renting and buying movies — because some of us still do that

The Shop tab is rolling out today both in the US and globally. | Image: Google

Free ad-supported streaming TV is the burgeoning new trend that everyone’s getting in on, and we’ve all got our favorite shows on Netflix and other services, but what about those times when you just want to spontaneously rent or, dare I suggest, buy a movie? If you’ve got a TV or streaming box that runs Google’s Android TV platform, those archaic rentals and digital purchases are about to get a little more convenient — and easier to find. Starting today, Android TV is adding a Shop tab to the main navigation that will appear alongside Search, Home, Discover, and Apps.

“The shop tab lets you explore movies to buy or rent and make purchases directly on your Android TV,” Google wrote in a blog post. “So whether you are searching for a new...

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Microsoft wanted to acquire Square Enix as part of plan for mobile Game Pass

Final Fantasy VII Remake. | Image: Square Enix

As part of its big wave of acquisitions, Microsoft considered adding Square Enix, the publisher behind the Final Fantasy series, to its Xbox portfolio. The news comes from internal documents released as part of the FTC v. Microsoft hearings, which previously revealed that Microsoft had considered other big names like Sega and Bungie.

According to the documents, Microsoft had a number of reasons for being interested in Square Enix. Part of it was to bolster Xbox’s historically scant presence in Asian markets. There was another obvious reason: to add more content to drive growth of Xbox Game Pass through new blockbuster Square Enix releases as well as the company’s extensive back catalog.

A more surprising reason for the potential...

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LG just released an HD webcam for its TVs

LG has released its $99 Smart Cam. | Image: LG Electronics

LG Electronics announced today it’s releasing a webcam for its TVs called the LG Smart Cam (VC23GA). It’s a $99 1080p camera with dual microphones, a physical privacy shutter, and support for webOS’s multi-view feature, which shows two apps in a split-screen view on the TV. The webcam is supported on any TV running webOS 22 or webOS 23.

LG is pitching this camera as a way to do videoconferencing at home using the webOS RemoteMeeting app, LG’s web-based videoconferencing service. On the fitness side, it’s compatible with Exercite, which uses the webcam to analyze your movements and give you live feedback, and Flexit, a fitness platform with one-on-one wellness and exercise coaching. There’s also a K-pop dance app called Home Dance by 1M,...

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Sony’s PlayStation chief says publishers hate Xbox Game Pass

Photo by Alex Wong / Getty Images

FTC v. Microsoft day three was all about Sony’s objection to the Activision Blizzard deal, its bet against Game Pass, and a cloudy future.

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The greatest tech books of all time

Technology craves a narrative but often has a short memory for history. As a publication that contributes to that — The Verge lives in the news cycle, after all — we wanted to praise the form of writing that lasts: the book. How else do we move forward if we can’t remember the past? So we set out with the audacious goal to define the best books about tech out there.

We were less interested in works that are supposedly influential and more in ones that have endured, with ideas that are still relevant today, stories that have captured something essential about technology, and writing that’s made us stand up in our seats. These books don’t project a single vision of what tech is but continue to challenge what it can be.

We imposed a few...

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Here’s the OnePlus folding phone expected for later this year

Image: OnLeaks via SmartPrix

After OnePlus confirmed that it’s launching a foldable phone earlier this year, now we finally have some information about what to expect. A set of leaked specs provided to MySmartPrice by OnLeaks reveals that the device, which may be called the OnePlus V Fold, could come with an impressive 7.8-inch inner display.

That’s larger than the 7.6-inch inner screens on both the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 and the Google Pixel Fold, but it still doesn’t beat the China-exclusive Xiaomi Mix Fold 2, which comes with an 8-inch inner display.

Both the OnePlus V Fold’s 6.3-inch outer display and the larger inside screen are expected to have OLED panels with 2K resolution and 120Hz refresh rates. The leak hints at the addition of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8...

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TikTok could launch an online store next month

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

TikTok is readying an online shop for US customers, according to a report from Semafor.

The storefront would live inside the TikTok app under an e-commerce tab. An array of curated items as well as products listed for sale through TikTok Shop, its existing in-app shopping feature, would be for sale. The feature could launch as soon as next month.

TikTok has been trying to make online shopping happen in the US for a while. The current TikTok Shop feature allows brands to sell products in the app — though rollout has reportedly been slow as the company faces threats by lawmakers of a ban due to alleged national security risks. The company has also tried to launch live shopping via streaming video in the US, but it’s been slow to catch on...

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1Password now lets you manage user accounts in its apps

Image: 1Password

After years of having to manage 1Password user accounts on the web alone, the company is finally bringing family account management to the app itself. Beginning Tuesday, administrators (otherwise known as “Family Organizers”) can manage the user accounts connected to a 1Password Family membership from the company’s macOS, Windows, Linux, and Android apps instead of having to log in to the website, the company announced in a blog post. The new feature will be coming to the company’s iOS app “later this week.”

Administrators can now invite new members or guests to a 1Password Family account by navigating to the Manage Accounts section within the app menu. These users can monitor the status of the invitations they send out, with options to...

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The EU wants to crack down on rogue efforts to alter the atmosphere

Photo by Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images

It’s surprisingly easy for someone to mess with the makeup of Earth’s atmosphere, regardless of the consequences that could have for our planet. Now, as part of its plans to address security risks posed by climate change, the European Union is calling for talks on a potential international framework on how to treat deliberately atmosphere-altering technologies, AKA geoengineering.

The idea with geoengineering is to deploy new technologies that might be able to cool the planet down. The tactic that’s caused the most uproar lately is called solar geoengineering, which are basically attempts to manipulate the planet’s ability to reflect sunlight back into space.

The issue is that scientists aren’t quite sure how much good that would do or...

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Sony’s WH-1000XM5 headphones are more than $80 off right now

Sony’s latest flagship headphones tout a new design while retaining the superb noise cancellation for which the series is known. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Whether you fully intend to celebrate our nation’s independence this weekend or skip it entirely, that doesn’t change the fact the Fourth of July remains one of the best times of the year to pick up a smorgasbord of discounted tech. Unsurprisingly, a number of retailers have launched a selection of early sales in the run-up to the holiday — including eBay, which is giving shoppers a chance to save 20 on select gadgets when they use promo code SAVE4JULY4TH at checkout.

There are pages upon pages of eligible products — I should know, I combed through 15 of them — but one of the better deals that’s still available is for Sony’s WH-1000XM5s, which are going for $318.40 (about $82 off) on eBay via Electronic Express. The XM5s continue to be...

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Playing Lanebreak on the Peloton Tread turned me into an immersive fitness believer

Something about visualizing intervals in a virtual landscape makes hard workouts easier. | Image: Peloton

I hate treadmills.

I understand their usefulness and why a person might want one. But for me, they’re a last resort, only to be used when weather conditions make outdoor exercise unsafe. I’ve tried so many times over the years, but treadmill running is so boring. It doesn’t matter if it’s a high-tech treadmill with scenic runs, incredible engineering, or a selection of streaming apps — I can’t help but feel like a hamster on a wheel. So I’m as shocked as anyone that I enjoyed playing a demo level of Lanebreak on the Peloton Tread_._

Lanebreak starts rolling out to Peloton treadmills today, but the game itself isn’t new. It’s an in-app video game that Peloton launched for its bikes last year. It’s essentially what you’d get if you mashed...

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GM now has home energy products to sell alongside EVs

GM hasn’t provided a price or release date for any of its new Ultium Home products. | Image: GM Energy

GM Energy — the energy company created by GM to sell batteries, charging equipment, solar panels, and software to residential and commercial customers — just announced its first batch of energy management products that will be available under its residential business unit, Ultium Home. Three distinct product bundles will be available at launch: two are designed to take advantage of the bidirectional charging capabilities of certain GM EVs, while a third doesn’t require an electric GM vehicle at all.

Compatible GM EVs equipped with the company’s bidirectional V2H (vehicle-to-home) charging tech lets homeowners use their parked vehicle as a backup energy source that can power their homes during outages. For them, there are two Ultium Home...

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Windows 11 tests letting you sign into websites with your fingerprint or face

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft is improving Windows 11’s support for the new passkey standard that aims to replace passwords with a more secure and convenient way of logging in. A recent Insider Preview Build (23486) now lets you use Windows Hello natively to create and sign in to supported applications and websites using passkeys, where you’ll be asked to prove your identity using a PIN, fingerprint, or face-scan.

According to Microsoft, you can set up the feature by going to a website that’s added passkey support, create a passkey in its settings, and then log out to get the option to sign in with the new security method. On Edge or Chrome, the option to sign in with a passkey should be under the “Windows Hello or external security key” option. Saved...

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DoorDash launches hourly rates and location sharing for couriers

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

DoorDash is making a big change to the way couriers get paid. In an announcement on Wednesday, DoorDash says it will start giving couriers the ability to earn hourly rates on top of tips.

With the update, couriers will now see the option to “earn by time,” which offers a guaranteed hourly minimum rate for the time they spend on making deliveries. According to DoorDash, the clock starts as soon as a courier accepts an order and ends when it’s dropped off.

Image: DoorDash

DoorDash couriers will be able to choose the ‘earn by time’ option.

That marks a big shift from the way things are currently set up, which has couriers earning a base pay based on various factors about an order, like time, distance, and...

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EU advances rules that wrestle control of user data away from Big Tech

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

The European Parliament and Council of the EU have reached a provisional agreement on a new Data Act that aims to regulate how consumer and corporate data can be used and accessed in the bloc. The agreement was welcomed by EU industry chief Thierry Breton, who called it a “milestone in reshaping the digital space” that will create “a thriving [EU] data economy that is innovative & open — on our conditions.”

In short, the legislation aims to give end users in the EU more control over the data generated when using connected devices, Reuters notes. As a press release from the European Commission (which proposed the act last year) explains, this includes letting users access the data generated by smart objects, machines, and devices, and...

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How Jsaux rode the Steam Deck to escape the Amazon wilderness

Where Valve makes just one accessory for its Steam Deck, Jsaux makes dozens, with some answering pretty niche needs.

A Chinese accessory maker with an alphabet-soup name struck while the iron was hot. Now, it wants to be the next Anker.

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