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Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge
The Thread protocol offers a robust mesh network designed to solve many of the smart home’s biggest problems. But only if everyone can agree on how to use it.
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Illustration: The Verge
The next time you want a quick gut check on whether a sentence is grammatically accurate, Google Search might have the answer. 9to5Google has spotted a “grammar check” feature that will offer suggestions on whether a given phrase is grammatically accurate. For example, type “the quick brown fox jump over the lazy dog” into the search engine and Google will highlight that you probably meant “jumps” instead of “jump.”
Although most people probably don’t care about the grammar of their search phrases, we suspect this tool is meant to be more general purpose. If one of your sentences looks off when you type it into a messaging app for example, Google’s hope seems to be that you’ll give it a check with Google Search — because anything that...
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Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart are all slashing the price of the next-gen console for a limited time. | Image: Sony
Earlier this week, we saw a rare deal drop on the PlayStation 5 — only for it to disappear as quickly as it arrived. Thankfully, if you missed out on the unexpected deal at Monoprice, you now have another chance at saving $50 on Sony’s next-gen gaming console.
Right now, the disc-based PS5 is on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and GameStop starting at $449, the lowest price we’ve seen on the standalone console since it launched at the tail end of 2020. Typically, we only see discounts on various bundles, which conveniently pair the console with titles such as God of War Ragnarök, Final Fantasy XVI, and Horizon Forbidden Westbut rarely dip below the $500 threshold.
The PlayStation 5 is a fast, powerful console that’s capable of...
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Laura Normand / The Verge
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he’s “ready today” to fight Elon Musk, who owns Twitter (currently rebranding as X), and said that although he had previously suggested August 26th as the date for their cage match, Musk hasn’t confirmed. “Not holding my breath,” said Zuckerberg, who also included a screenshot of Musk’s post on X / Twitter about lifting weights to prepare.
In response to Musk’s announcement that the fight would be “live-streamed on X” with proceeds going to a charity for veterans, Zuckerberg suggested they “use a more reliable platform that can actually raise money for charity.” The Meta CEO also said he loves the sport and “will continue competing with people who train no matter what happens here.”
Zuckerberg also...
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Image: Gen Con
A pair of thieves waltzed into Gen Con 2023 and stole as much as $300,000 of gaming cards in Indianapolis (via IndyStar). The cards, which were sitting in boxes on a pallet, were stolen using a pallet jack while vendors were setting up for the long-running yearly gaming convention that Dungeons and Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax started.
As for what cards were taken, that’s unknown. IndyStar reported that a worker at a local Indianapolis board game store thought the packaging resembled that of Magic: the Gathering, Pokémon Trading Card Game, and the unreleased Disney Lorcana. Ravensberger, the company that makes Disney Lorcana, tweeted that all of its product is accounted for. Convention-goers waited for as much as 16 hours for the card...
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Image: Warner Bros.
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has officially made $1 billion globally at the box office, becoming the fastest Warner Bros. release to hit the milestone. It’s the second film to hit the milestone so far in 2023 behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
Barbie is the first movie from a solo female director to hit the mark, joining just a few other female-directed films that have grossed over a billion dollars internationally: Frozen and Frozen II (both co-directed by Jennifer Lee alongside Chris Buck) and Captain Marvel (co-directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck).
Here’s to our incredible Barbies and Kens from all around the world for making our Barbie dreams come true. We’re excited to share that #BarbieTheMovie has hit $1 Billion at the Global Box...
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Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Apple could have a Mac Mini powered by its new M3 chip in the works for 2024, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in his Power On newsletter today. Gurman says Apple is now testing a computer at its campus under model identifier Mac 15,12, but whether it's a Mac Mini is his speculation.
Gurman says the company is testing an eight-core CPU and a 10-core GPU Mac with 24GB RAM that’s running macOS Sonoma 14.1. Those specs are similar to the base model M2 Mac Mini, except for the memory installed — so far, entry-level Apple silicon Macs have started at 8GB RAM. (I wouldn’t read anything into that though; it would be very surprising if Apple jumped to 24GB for the base model.)
Gurman points out that in Apple’s earnings call, the company said...
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Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images
Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s cage match will be livestreamed on Musk’s Twitter, currently rebranding as X, according to a tweet from Musk posted early this morning. Musk says the proceeds will go to charity for veterans.
Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino reposted Musk’s tweet with a comment that she is clearing her calendar. On Zuckerberg’s side, though, things appear to be quiet for the moment, as he has not commented on Threads or Instagram so far this morning.
The cage match goes back to June, when the two billionaires agreed to the fight via a series of social media posts on their respective platforms (Musk on Twitter, Zuckerberg on Instagram). Talk of the fight has been relatively quiet since the end of June though, and in...
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Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images
Yes, I know he doesn’t care about hypocrisy — he’s just in it for the attention, and I guess I’m giving it to him! But I think it’s worth pointing out that this tweet is a brand-new level of BS.
If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill.
No limit.
Please let us know.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2023
Where was this unlimited legal defense fund when Elon Musk saw a man he knows personally firing seven engineers for criticizing their employer on Twitter?
Oh, wait, I’ve got it backwards! Elon Musk was the man who fired those seven engineers. It was him.
One more tiny thing to point out: do you really think the guy who refused to pay Twitter’s...
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Illustration: The Verge
The Google Pixel Watch 2 could get much better battery life thanks to a new, more efficient processor and may even gain ultra-wideband (UWB) support, according to the typically-reliable Kamila Wojciechowska, writing for Android Authority.
The new leak says the rumored Pixel Watch successor will use the more efficient 4nm Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 Plus chip, backing up previous reports.
The new chip could significantly improve its performance and potentially bring multi-day battery life to the platform. The first Pixel Watch used a much slower 10nm Exynos 9110, which got up to, at most, 15 hours of battery life in The Verge’s Victoria Song’s review last year.
Apple uses UWB to enable precision-finding of its AirTags and newest AirPods Pro,...
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Image: Lucid Motors
Lucid Motors has announced it is reinstating “original pricing across the full air lineup,” dropping the price of two of its vehicles below $100,000, according to a press release the company shared with The Verge. The new base prices, “while supplies last,” will be $125,600 for the Air Grand Touring (down from $154,000), $95,000 for the Air Touring (down from $107,400), and $82,400 for the Air Pure (down from $87,400).
Those aren’t quite the old prices for all three, as the Lucid Air was $77,400 previously and the Lucid Air Grand Touring was originally more expensive $139,000, but it’s still a significant discount on the luxury EV maker’s vehicles. Lucid Motors also tweeted the new prices, but didn’t call out that they were lowered,...
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Amazon’s ad-supported e-reader is down to $64.99 for the rest of today. | Image: Amazon
Happy Saturday, readers! It feels like just yesterday that Amazon was unleashing what felt like a never-ending deluge of discounts and deals as part of its annual Prime Day event. And although the two-day affair is certainly over, some retailers are already bringing back Prime Day pricing on a host of items. Take Best Buy and Target as an example, both of which are selling Amazon’s ad-supported Kindle for just $64.99 ($35 off), its lowest price to date.
Amazon’s newest entry-level Kindle is, in many ways, a budget version of the most recent Kindle Paperwhite from 2021. The e-reader packs a 6-inch display with crisp 300ppi resolution, as well as easier access to ePub files and a USB-C port for relatively fast charging (finally). The...
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Illustration: Beatrice Sala
The FBI is investigating a ransomware attack that shut down emergency rooms in several states (via The Guardian). Ambulances were diverted while California-based Prospect Medical Holdings, which has hospitals in several states, “took our systems offline to protect them” and launched an investigation in partnership with “third party cybersecurity specialists,” it said in a statement to multiple outlets.
The Crozer-Chester Medical System (CCMS) in Springfield, Pennsylvania reverted to paper records after most of its computers went offline, and doesn’t expect them back online until next week, according to CBS News. Representatives of CCMS confirmed it was a ransomware attack, reported CNN Friday evening, as did the Eastern Connecticut...
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With an electrified cargo bike, I can move faster and farther without straining under load.
The conversion is tedious but not difficult if you have the right tools. Just expect the unexpected.
The VergeWith sound quality worthy of Technics’ name and unique three-way multipoint, the EAH-AZ80 are a comprehensive package worth their $300 price.
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POV: You’re being attacked by someone much better than you at Super Rumble_._ | Image: Meta
What are the ethics of repeatedly targeting an eight-year-old in a video game? What if that eight-year-old is demonstrably better than you at the game but is currently being forced to talk to his mom and isn’t really paying attention, and this is your best and probably only chance to mount a comeback? How much trash can you talk after you kill the eight-year-old a few times? What if that eight-year-old has been talking trash to you for the better part of the last hour while gleefully shouting “Expecto Patronum” every time they fire their shotgun?
These are the kinds of questions you’re forced to answer in Super Rumble, the new game for the Meta Quest. (They’re the same kinds of questions you’ll find anywhere in the metaverse and on most...
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Image: The Writers Guild of America
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) met yesterday with representatives of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) to confidentially discuss resuming talks, but the meeting ended without a definite agreement to resume negotiations(via Deadline).After the AMPTP withdrew to “consult with their member studios,” the WGA sent an email to its members disclosing the particulars of the discussion, saying studios had leaked details of the meeting to the press.
In the Friday talk, according to the WGA letter published by Deadline, the AMPTP said it was willing to offer more for “a few writer-specific TV minimums,” and was willing to discuss studio AI use, but wouldn’t consider success-based residuals or preserving writers’...
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Image: The Verge
In news that isn’t very surprising given the recent history of Twitter, which Elon Musk is currently rebranding to X, the company won’t be able to make some promised payments on time. The X Support account says that because its “Ads Revenue Sharing” program is so popular, “We need a bit more time to review everything for the next payout and aim to get all eligible accounts paid as soon as possible.”
From the linked support page:
August 4, 2023 update: The volume of people signing up for revenue sharing has exceeded our expectations. We previously said that payments would occur the week of July 31st. We need a bit more time to review everything for the next payout and hope to get all eligible accounts paid as soon as possible.
Thank you...
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Threads.net, as of August 2023. | Image by Meta; Screencap by Sean Hollister / The Verge
If you go to Threads.net to access Meta’s popular Twitter clone, you’ll still find a spinning placeholder galaxy — but that should change in the next few weeks, according to a new tweet from CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
“Search and web coming in the next few weeks,” he tweets, saying he’s “excited about the team’s pace of shipping.”
Meta took a gamble on launching a barebones Twitter alternative at breakneck speed while Twitter continued to crumble, and it may have paid off — my colleague Alex Heath recently wrote that Threads hit 100 million signups faster than any consumer software product in history.
But more than half of those users didn’t stick around, according to Reuters, and while that may be expected for any software product,...
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Google’s sample of the code scanner API auto-zoom. | Image: Google
You might soon not have as much trouble reading far away QR codes on your Android phone. Google is working on a new code scanner that automatically detects a QR code in the camera frame, zooms in, and reads it. The feature isn’t quite making its way to devices just yet — but it’s in the latest APIs Google is making available to developers.
Specifically, it's Google’s code scanner API that’s been updated with the new ability. It works in Google’s QR Code Scanner system app, but can also be implemented into other apps.
If developers implement the code scanner API, users won’t have to grant camera permissions — saving developers time by not having to build a custom experience. The API leverages Google’s on-device machine learning to...
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Illustration: The Verge
The government’s antitrust case against Google just got significantly smaller. In a filing on Friday, a US district court judge dismissed several of the claims that the Department of Justice and a coalition of states brought against the company, including allegations that Google Search harms competing services.
The decision stems from a pair of lawsuits that the DOJ and a group of 38 state attorneys general filed against Google in 2020. While the DOJ and states originally filed separately, the suit has since become mostly consolidated. The suit accuses Google of anti-competitive behavior on a number of fronts, including designing its search engine to disadvantage competitors like Yelp, Expedia, and Tripadvisor.
However, Judge Amit Mehta...
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Image: NBC 4
On Friday, a massive gathering of people showed up at New York City’s Union Square for a giveaway hosted by two social media influencers, mega-popular Twitch streamer Kai Cenat and another streamer, Fanum. Cenat and “a few other people” have been arrested, NBC 4 reports.
Some Subway trains had been bypassing Union Square because of the gathering, but the NYCT Subway X account said later that the L train is now making the stop.
Cenat and Fanum have continued posting to social media, sharing and deleting images on their Instagram stories, including one with the text, “I love you guys to the fullest you guys are amazing, THE LOVE FROM HOME BASE IS REAL, Please be safe.”
Image: Kai Cenat / Fanum (Instagram)
Cenat is the...
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Jon Hamm as Orson. | Lionsgate
Lionsgate’s new dark comedy from director Joachim Back plays more like a lengthy ASMR video starring Jon Hamm.
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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
YouTube’s higher-quality 1080p option is now available for all Premium subscribers on desktop globally, spokesperson Paul Pennington confirmed to The Verge. The company officially launched the “enhanced bitrate” 1080p in April on iOS after an earlier test.
I don’t pay for Premium, but I’ve seen the enhanced bitrate option on a handful of videos on Friday as I browsed YouTube in Chrome on my MacBook Air. When I try to click the enhanced bitrate, YouTube prompts me to subscribe to Premium to be able to use it. (If you decide to subscribe to Premium to get the better bitrate, you should know that the service is a bit more expensive than it used to be.)
Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
An ad for the Meta Quest 3...
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Image: Blizzard
Calling reintroduces Overwatch fans to Sojourn, a central figure in Overwatch’s expanding narrative.
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Photo by Sjoerd van der Wal / Getty Images
VanMoof, the e-bike company that declared bankruptcy in the Netherlands last month, is for sale. A number of buyers are rumored to be circling the popular Dutch brand, but the one potential bidder making the most noise is also the one least likely to be successful.
The two administrators who were chosen by the Dutch court as trustees for VanMoof are telling the local press that several bids have been made. “In the coming days, the bids will be compared with each other and discussed with the stakeholders,” said curators Jan Padberg and Robin de Wit, according to Bright. The aim is to reach a final agreement within a few days.
“In the coming days, the bids will be compared with each other and discussed with the stakeholders.”
The...
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Image: Canoo
Ulrich Kranz, the Apple car executive who served as the former CEO of the EV startup Canoo, is facing some legal trouble. On Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against Kranz and former Canoo chief financial officer Paul Balciunas over claims they provided “unreasonable revenue projections” to investors, as first reported by Bloomberg.
As outlined in the lawsuit, the SEC states that Kranz and Balciunas told investors Canoo would make $120 million in 2021 and $250 million in 2022. However, the SEC alleges that the pair “should have known that these projections were unreasonable” because the projects it used to calculate these amounts “were unlikely to materialize.” The SEC also claims that Kranz failed to...
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Illustration: Samar Haddad / The Verge
While my personal computers have mostly been Windows and my phones Android, I do use a Mac for work, and I’ve always been envious of the ease with which people in the Apple ecosystem can move files from one device to another using AirDrop. Google introduced a similar feature called Nearby Share in 2020, but it only shared files between Google products. Now, Windows has finally introduced its version of Nearby Share, allowing you to easily move files between Windows and Android systems.
When it first appeared, I installed the beta of Nearby Share to a Windows 11 system and used it to move photos between that and my Pixel 6, and it worked like a charm. Now that it’s official, here are some step-by-step instructions on how to set up Nearby...
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That’s right, my phone and I have had an important relationship talk. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Lately, I have been playing a game with myself, and I’d like to invite all of you to play with me. It’s called the Phone Challenge.
As readers of this fine blog establishment know, I spend all day reading the entire internet and writing some of it. During what I think of as the High Pandemic Era (2020–2021), I was surprised to discover that despite gazing at my laptop screen all day and rarely leaving the house, I was still somehow spending four hours a day on my phone.
Seemed like a lot, to be honest.
Since then, I’ve been trying to see how low I can go without sacrificing my social relationships. Sure, I have internet friends — or, as I think of them, the people who live inside my phone. But I also stare at a laptop all day! And yes, I...
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My Gudetama plushie is 76 degrees Fahrenheit. Supposedly. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge
Have you ever wondered what the temperature of your desk surface is? Me neither, but the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 says it’s a balmy 81 degrees Fahrenheit. The other day, it said my cat’s fluffy belly was 88 degrees. My arm was apparently 86 degrees, and a cup of tea, Earl Grey, hot, was roughly 112 degrees. Just before I sat down to write this, it said my stainless steel fridge door was 79 degrees. The inside of the fridge was merely “Low.”
Why am I telling you this? Well, last year, Samsung introduced an infrared temperature sensor on its Galaxy Watch 5 lineup but didn’t really do anything with it at launch. This year, it’s promoting Thermo Check — a third-party app that lets you check the temperature of various things — as a way to...