IRS will finally let most Americans file taxes online next year

Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images

Starting next year, most US taxpayers will be able to file their taxes completely paperless with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The move will precede the agency’s initiative of getting to total paperless processing by the 2025 tax season, saving 200 million sheets of paper annually and cutting tax processing times in half.

This isn’t some IRS tax preparation service that kicks services like TurboTax from your life — although the agency plans to test its own free tax prep service for some taxpayers next year. However, taxpayers can switch to paperless filings in 2024, which could speed up their refund time by “several weeks.”

Digital filings can reduce headaches for taxpayers and IRS staff since correspondence like document...

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Apex Legends: Resurrection is another fresh start for EA’s battle royale

Image: EA

More than four years after its explosive launch shook up the battle royale market, Apex Legends is looking for yet another fresh start (no, that fresh start doesn’t include any updates about cross-progression or 120fps on consoles) when its new season, Resurrection, launches on August 8th at 1PM ET.

In the new season, the Apex developers are undertaking a campaign to rework and revisit existing elements, starting with one of the game’s older characters, Revenant.

Season 17 added a well-received new character in Ballistic and brought some needed changes to maps like World’s Edge, plus a new firing range area to train in. Unfortunately, it also added enough scoring changes to the ranked system that an unprecedented number of players...

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Nothing is already launching a more affordable sub-brand

Nothing may only have been around for a short couple of years, but the startup is already launching an affordable sub-brand. Speaking during the company’s latest community update, Nothing CEO Carl Pei said that the company’s new “CMF by Nothing” brand aims to offer “a new range of products that make better design more accessible.”

The first pair of products carrying the branding will be a new pair of earbuds and a smartwatch. Both will arrive later this year, with more details promised in the coming months. In case you’re wondering, “CMF” apparently stands for “Color, Material, and Finish” in reference to the design philosophy of a similar name. While the main Nothing brand will focus on “design innovation” that’s “premium” and uses the...

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The best tech gifts for under $50

The Chromecast with Google TV (4K) is one of our favorite streaming devices and costs less than $50.

If “budget-friendly” and “high-quality” sound like oxymorons to you, you’re in for a surprise. As it turns out, youcan buy a number of great gifts without completely draining your savings account, which makes it easy to pick up a present for your anniversary, a birthday party, or one of the many other gift-giving occasions strewn throughout the year.

Finding the right gift can still be tough, though, even when there is a sea of inexpensive items for under $50 to choose from. That’s why we’ve put together a selection of techy gift ideas, ranging from disposable cameras and wireless earbuds to the latest video doorbells. We’ve also highlighted an array of last-minute gifts that are more unique than your run-of-the-mill gift card —...

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Brave releases its own privacy-preserving image and video search

Brave Search will still redirect users to alternative services for more advanced image and video search capabilities for now. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Brave, best known for its privacy-focused web browser, is adding image and video search to Brave Search that now relies on the company’s own private index instead of Bing or Google.

In a press release published on Thursday, Brave says this new image and video feature for Brave Search — the default search engine used by the Brave browser — is designed to preserve user privacy and be resistant to censorship. Certain capabilities like advanced filters for license type and aspect ratio will not be immediately available but will be added “soon,” according to Brave.

Image: Brave

Now, any images retrieved while using Brave Search (as pictured) will utilize the company’s own index instead of relying on third-party APIs.

...

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Mutant Mayhem is a grody and gorgeous reintroduction to the TMNT

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. | Image: Paramount

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is a classic retelling of its pizza-obsessed heroes’ origin story that’s elevated by phenomenal art direction.

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Patreon issues are causing paused payouts and canceled subscriptions

Image: The Verge

Two simultaneous issues with payments on Patreon are causing problems for both creators and fans.

Some Patreon creators are unable to access their earnings due to an issue with a payout provider. The issue first began earlier this week with creators saying their payout attempts were failing.

At the same time, some Patreon subscribers are getting notices that their payments are being flagged as fraudulent by their banks. As a result, fans are seeing canceled subscriptions, with some saying they’re unable to see the list of creators they were subscribed to before. On Reddit, one creator said they suddenly lost hundreds of subscribers on August 1st.

Patreon spokesperson Ellen Satterwhite says the two issues are unrelated. Satterwhite says...

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Excel’s esports revolution is coming back to ESPN this week

You’ve never seen anyone Excel the way the pros Excel. | Image: The Financial Modeling World Cup/David Pierce

It’s the Sheeter Bowl! The VLookup Cup! Merge Madness! Whatever you want to call it, the Excel World Championship is coming back to ESPN this week. On Friday morning at 7AM ET, as part of ESPN’s annual “The Ocho” event, a few of the world’s foremost Excel experts will battle to solve puzzles on the biggest stage in sports.

The Ocho is an ESPN event designed to show off otherwise un-televised sports — Excel is on the docket alongside “2023 Slippery Stairs,” the “Pillow Fight Championship,” and competitions in everything from belt-sanding to sign spinning — but it’s still a big deal. When competitive Excel showed up on the network last year, the sport found a whole new audience. More than 800,000 people have since watched the full 2.5-hour...

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8BitDo’s drift-free Ultimate Bluetooth Controller is selling for a new low of $55.99

Image: 8BitDo

Nobody likes stick drift in their game controllers, but everybody loves a good deal. So this sale on the 8BitDo Ultimate Bluetooth Controller and its drift-free Hall effect sticks is a perfect solution. You can get the white version of the controller with its included charging / receiver dock for $55.99 ($15 off) at Amazon.

8BitDo’s Ultimate controllers come in a few flavors (both wired and wireless), but this Bluetooth version is made for the Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, and Windows PCs. It’s got some pro-level software features — like button remapping, stick and trigger response curves, and custom profiles — that you can tweak via an app, and it even has two mappable rear buttons. But its biggest strength is its magnetic Hall effect...

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The best gaming mice to buy right now

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Wired or wireless, stripped-down or packed to the gills with buttons or RGB or both, these are the best gaming mice you can get right now.

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Instagram is making it harder for people to spam you with DM requests

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Instagram is trying to make it more difficult for people you don’t follow to spam you with unwanted DM requests. After testing the feature in June, Instagram now only lets users you don’t follow send a one-message invite before they can start chatting with you.

That message can also only contain text, so that means you should no longer see any unsolicited photos, videos, or voice messages popping up in your message requests. Previously, Instagram let users send an unlimited number of message requests, which could get out of hand pretty quickly.

Image: Instagram

Now, users can only send you more than one message once you’ve accepted their request to connect. Message requests live in the Requests button located above...

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HBO Max was renamed Max, and Warner Bros. Discovery lost subscribers

Image: The Verge

Warner Bros. Discovery lost 1.8 million subscribers in the three months following the launch of Max.The losses weren’t exclusive to the Max streaming service, though.In its earnings report on Thursday, the company reported having 95.8 million global subscribers across all of its services — down from 97.6 million at the end of the first quarter of this year.

Despite this, the executives at Warner Bros. Discovery don’t seem too worried. During an earnings call, the company’s chief financial officer, Gunnar Wiedenfels, attributed the downward trend to “overlapping subscriber bases between Max and Discovery Plus” as well as “expected churn” following the end of The Last of Us season 1 and the series finale of Succession.

CEO David Zaslav...

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90 percent of Ray-Ban Stories owners aren’t using Meta’s smart glasses

Various technical issues impacting Meta’s Ray-Ban Stories have contributed to poor user experience and a 13 percent return rate. | Photo by Amanda Lopez for The Verge

Meta is struggling to retain users for its Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses, with over 90 percent of consumers having seemingly abandoned the platform, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. Internal company documents viewed by the publication revealed that around 27,000 of the 300,000 units reportedly sold between September 2021 and February 2023 are still being regularly used each month. Last April, Meta was reported to have sold just 120,000 pairs of the Ray-Ban Stories — less than half its 300,000 goal at that time.

The sunglasses, which allow users to take pictures, listen to music, and send / receive Facebook and WhatsApp messages, have seemingly been blighted with various technical problems that have contributed to a poor...

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Waymo says Austin, Texas, will be its next robotaxi city

Photo by Andrej Sokolow / picture alliance via Getty Images

Waymo’s fourth robotaxi city will be Austin, Texas. It will be a bit of a homecoming for the Alphabet-owned self-driving company.

Waymo said that it will kick off the process for a commercial robotaxi service in the city later this year. But that doesn’t mean passengers can hail one of the company’s driverless vehicles quite yet; Waymo’s playbook is to start with manual testing, following by supervised testing, fully autonomous driving, and then, eventually, passenger services. The company has been testing its vehicles on the streets of Austin since March, laying the groundwork for the eventual launch of a commercial ridehailing service.

But the company’s history with the city stretches all the way back to October 2015, when Waymo gave...

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Samsung’s new ‘flagship’ repair centers will provide more types of phone fixes and faster

Faster repairs and more walk-in repair types? Music to our ears. | Image: Samsung

Samsung and its repair provider, Asurion, have announced that certain uBreakiFix locations will be getting an upgrade, helping them turn around Galaxy phone repairs faster. By the end of the year, 50 existing repair centers across the US will be designated as Samsung flagship locations, equipped with specialized tools and larger parts inventory for Galaxy devices. It’s a helpful step toward making phone repairs less painful, which remains a deeply uncomfortable process — just ask anyone who’s cracked a phone screen in the past, oh, decade or so.

Some repair centers in parts of Texas, Orlando, and Los Angeles have already been upgraded to flagship status, and Samsung says that the program will continue to roll out throughout 2023. Staff...

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Call of Duty now shows you when a cheater has been booted right in the kill feed

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

There’s nothing worse in an online multiplayer Call of Duty lobby than facing a cheater that ruins the game, but players can now revel in the satisfaction of seeing them booted in real time. Activision’s proprietary Ricochet anti-cheat system will now notify Call of Duty lobbies when a cheater has been removed from a game. It’s the latest shot in an ongoing battle to kick cheaters out of PC games.

The notifications are being added to season five of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0, which kicked off on Wednesday and also includes the ability to equip a dog.

RICOCHET has entered the chat ️

Starting in Season 05, the kill feed will notify lobbies when #TeamRICOCHET and it's systems have removed a problem player from the...

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LG’s ‘wireless’ and wildly expensive 97-inch OLED TV sees first global release

LG’s eye-catching 97-inch Signature OLED M TV, which is almost completely free of wires save for a single power cord, finally has a price and release date outside of South Korea.

The TV is notable for its “Zero Connect Box,” that you plug your set-top boxes, games consoles, and Blu-ray players into and which beams content wirelessly to the TV at up to 4K 120Hz. So aside from power, you’re not plugging anything into the TV itself.

LG says the 97-inch OLED Signature (model 97M3) will be available in the UK from September priced at £27,999.99 (about $35,400). It’ll be joined by two other TV sizes, the 83-inch OLED evo for £7,999.99 (about $10,000) and the 77-inch OLED evo for £5,999.99 (about $7,600), which are equipped with the same “Zero...

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LG’s 27-inch OLED is ushering in a new age for monitors

The LG 27GR95QE-B is a tantalizing taste of what’s to come.

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Microsoft leaked its internal tool that enables secret Windows 11 features

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft has accidentally leaked its internal “StagingTool” app that is used by employees to enable secret unreleased Windows 11 features. The software giant typically tests experimental or hidden Windows 11 features in public builds of the operating system, but Windows enthusiasts have until now had to rely on third-party tools to get access to secret features that Microsoft hasn’t yet enabled for all testers.

The accidental release of Microsoft’s StagingTool yesterday was part of the company’s “bug bash” event this week, where engineers encourage feedback from Windows 11 testers to squash any remaining bugs before a big update. Microsoft is expected to deliver its next big Windows 11 update in September, including native support for...

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Zelda and Mario boost Nintendo to record profit

A profitable pair of plumbers. | Image: Illumination

Nintendo just had a bumper quarter thanks to the releaseof The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, as well as the Super Mario Bros. Movie. “Both sales and profits were notably large for a first quarter” the company noted in today’s earnings release, which covers the three months through June 30th.

Net sales stood at ¥461.3 billion (around $3.2 billion), a 50 percent increase versus last year, while operating profit rose 82.4 percent to ¥185.4 billion (around $1.3 billion). Bloomberg notes that it’s the highest first-quarter profit recorded by the company, beating its previous 2020 high set in the the first year of the pandemic just after the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

The benefits of the release of Zelda and the...

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Alienware’s new Aurora R16 desktop sheds gobs of plastic for a 40 percent smaller build

Alienware has clearly heard the feedback. Its prebuilt Aurora desktop PC needs work, particularly in the cooling department. So the new Alienware Aurora R16 is laser-focused on fixing that — to the point the company is largely ditching its trademark out-of-this-world look.

The new Aurora R16 has largely the same basic steel chassis inside, with the same 25.2 liters of space for your components. But its boxy new design ditches multiple pounds of plastic to make the entire computer 40 percent smaller in volume — shrinking all the way down from 60.7 liters to 36 liters in total. The goal of not being “impeded by plastics” was specifically for increased airflow, Alienware told journalists.

Image: Alienware

The result is...

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Meta and the UFC are teaming up on a UFC-themed experience in Horizon Worlds

Image: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta and the UFC are working together to make a special UFC-themed experience in Meta’s Horizon Worlds social VR platform, according to a Meta blog post on Wednesday.

In the UFC zone, you’ll be able to watch 4K, 180-degree streams of fights, socialize with other players about UFC, see a virtual recreation of the Octagon, and compete in in-world games to get “exclusive unlockable rewards” and eventually become “a UFC Hall of Famer.” It’s set to launch sometime in November.

I’m not a UFC fan, so I don’t think I’ll be spending much time in the zone. But the dedicated UFC space in Horizon Worlds is just one of a growing number of tailored experiences from Meta to try and get people to hang out on the platform. (It’s reportedly struggled to...

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Elon Musk says he’s going to talk to Tim Cook about adjusting the Apple tax

Illustration: Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Image: Getty Images

Elon Musk is talking about the Apple tax again. In a post on Wednesday, the billionaire said he “will speak with @tim_cook” to see if the Apple CEO would adjust the 30 percent commission the company takes on in-app purchases.

Right now, Apple takes a 30 percent cut on all in-app purchases on iOS, including the subscriptions sold by creators through Twitter, or X. Musk says he wants to change this so that Apple only takes a 30 percent commission on the portion of the payout kept by Twitter.

Super Important to Support Creators!

If you can afford it, please subscribe to as many creators on this platform as you find interesting.

People from every corner of the world post incredible content on , but often live in tough circumstances, where...

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Reddit is experiencing ‘major’ outages

Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

Reddit is experiencing some big issues at the moment. I can’t load any Reddit pages on my browsers where I’m logged into the site — usually, I run into an error message, though I’ve also hit a blank white screen. If I try to visit the site while logged out, pages load fine.

Things aren’t just down for me. A few colleagues here at The Verge are having some troubles loading pages as well, and Downdetector shows a peak of around 30,000 reports of issues of some kind as of this writing.

Reddit has identified a fix and is implementing it, according to a 5:34PM ET message on the company’s status site. The status site also says that there is a “major outage” on desktop web, mobile web, and the company’s native mobile apps. In response to an...

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DJI’s new Osmo Action 4 camera delivers brighter footage for more money

Image: DJI

DJI is launching the latest iteration of its sports action video camera: the Osmo Action 4. At $399, the new standard combo option is about $70 more expensive than the Osmo Action 3 it’s succeeding — but the company is promising “remarkable low-light performance” with the new one thanks to a new, larger 1/1.3-inch image sensor.

With the new sensor, Osmo Action 4 can capture more light through its f/2.8 aperture 155-degree ultrawide lens, which is similar to the one affixed to the Action 3. In addition, Action 4 can shoot footage in 10-bit D-Log M for higher dynamic range, giving you more color correction flexibility in the editing room. Action 4 also supports larger 512GB microSD cards to hold potentially larger video files.

...

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White Castle will bring more AI to its drive-thrus

Image: Getty Images

White Castle, yes of Harold and Kumarfame, wants to roll out AI-enabled voices to over 100 drive-thrus by 2024 in the hope that people can get their sliders faster with maybe less arguing with someone over speakers.

Working with speech recognition company SoundHound for the technology, White Castle will have an AI voice on its speakers interacting with customers and figuring out what the orders are. The companies promise it will process orders in just over a minute.

If you’ve been at a drive-thru recently, you would know that the menu board and speakers are now big and fancy. But you also know that it still involves yelling from the driver’s seat, barking out orders, and an employee often mishearing words.

White Castle’s AI-enabled...

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One does not simply buy the One Ring — unless you’re Post Malone

Image: Brook Trafton / TikTok

[In her best Cate Blanchett impression]

The world is changed.

It began with the forging of the great IP crossover between Magic: The Gathering and Lord of the Rings. In addition to rendering J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved characters as powerful Magic cards, Wizards of the Coast also printed special thematic versions of the game’s Sol Ring card modeled after the book series’ rings of power.

Three (hundred) were made for the elves, immortal, wisest, and fairest of all beings. Seven (again, hundred) for the dwarf lords, great miners and craftsmen of the mountain halls. And nine (you guessed it, hundred) rings were made for the race of men, who, above all else, desire serialized, double-rainbow foil Sol Rings.For within these rings was bound the...

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Philips Hue may dive into smart home security with four cameras and door sensors

Image: Philips Hue

Philips Hue is making a move on the smart home security world with plans to debut four cameras in the near future, according to Hueblog.com, which has reported reliable smart home leaks in the past (via SmartApfel.com). The Hue line will also introduce a new door and window contact sensor, according to the report.

The article, which was written in German and translated by Google Translate, named the four cameras in English:

• Hue Camera Wired — €199.95 (about $218.79 USD)
• Hue Camera Wired Desktop — €229.99 (about $251.66 USD)
• Hue Camera Battery — €249.95 (about $273.50 USD)
• Hue Flood Light Camera — €349.95 (about $382.92 USD)

Yesterday, the same blog reported that Eric Rondolat, CEO of Philips Hue parent company Signify, said on an...

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We might be waiting awhile for the next version of AirTags

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Apple first launched its AirTags trackers in April 2021, but if you’re waiting to get one until a second generation is released, you might be waiting a long time: the next version of AirTags will “likely go into mass production” all the way in the fourth quarter of 2024, according to a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Kuo didn’t specify if going into mass production means that the trackers will be available in that timeframe or if that milestone is just Apple ramping up supply ahead of putting the devices on sale. Kuo did say that the tracker could have ties to Apple’s forthcoming Vision Pro headset: “I believe that spatial computing is a new ecosystem that Apple wants to build, using...

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The WGA and the AMPTP are having their first meeting since the writing strike began

Image: The Writers Guild of America

Though it won’t necessarily lead to an immediate end to Hollywood’s ongoing writing strike, the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers are scheduled to have a meeting this Friday — their first since the strike began three months ago.

Variety reports that WGA chief negotiator Ellen Stutzman has agreed to meet with AMPTP president Carol Lombardini this Friday in response to a direct request from the AMPTP head to discuss next steps that could lead to labor contract negotiations resuming. In a statement shared to its members on Tuesday evening, the WGA confirmed that Lombardini and Stutzman are set to speak and stressed the importance of paying attention to the union’s official channels.

“We’ll...

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