Is your X ad revenue sharing payment smaller than you expected?

Image: The Verge

Now that X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has managed to repeatedly send out its ad revenue sharing payments on time without any last-minute delays, engineer Eric Farraro is answering questions from users who still aren’t getting the payments they expect. Reasons include: 1) X users only earn ad revenue from other paying X users, 2) advertisers aren’t paying much to reach the demographic that the creator attracts, 3) the posts didn’t get a lot of replies, or 4) their content is not suitable for ads.

That first reason is one that X hasn’t exactly hidden. Here’s how Farraro puts it in his new explanation:

Ads are shown, but the audience is not Verified. Revenue is only earned for ads shown to Verified users. This is one of many...

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Apple’s new video reactions are making therapy incredibly awkward

This may not be what you want to see during a video therapy session. | Image: Apple

SimplePractice, a company that offers a telehealth platform, is warning patients about Apple’s new video reactions feature that might let people unintentionally add heart emoji or virtual fireworks during a telehealth video call. Awkward.

As shown in a Mastodon post by Matt Haughey — who says he had a friend who saw the fireworks on a therapy call after giving a thumbs up in response to a question from his therapist — SimplePractice is notifying patients that Apple devices “may show emojis during video calls” and that SimplePractice doesn’t have control over the settings. SimplePractice also discusses the reactions in an FAQ and has instructions on how to turn reactions off on both iOS and macOS.

The video reactions are a big new feature...

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YouTube is the latest large platform to face EU scrutiny regarding the war in Israel

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

European Commissioner Thierry Breton sent a letter to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai reminding him of the company’s obligations under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) as a large online platform to keep illegal content and disinformation from being shared on YouTube surrounding Israel’s war with Hamas.

“Following the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel, we are seeing a surge of illegal content and disinformation being disseminated in the EU via certain platforms,” Breton wrote. He added that YouTube has an obligation to protect children and teens in the EU from violent content on the platform, must promptly take action in response to notices from the EU, and have “proportionate and effective mitigation measures in place”...

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Comcast cable internet with 2-gigabit uploads is rolling out soon

Photo by Smith Collection / Gado / Getty Images

Comcast is about to roll out gigabit-plus internet speeds for both upload and download without needing fiber upgrades that run all the way to the house. The company will offer a new “X-Class” service upgrade that supports up to 2 Gbps downloads and uploads starting in Colorado Springs, Colorado, next week. The city was one of the first places that Comcast launched its 2 Gbps internet service last year, although at that time, it still only supported 200Mbps uploads.

Comcast started testing symmetrical multi-gigabit DOCSIS 4.0 technology in 2022 using multiple cable modems and a 10-gig node (which is used for the Xfinity 10G brand name to highlight what’s theoretically possible, even if it’s not happening any time soon).

Comcast says...

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Nvidia is raising the price of GeForce Now, but not in the US

Image: Nvidia

Enjoying Starfield on GeForce Now, where the cloud gaming service is one of the best ways to play? Starting November 1st, it’ll cost you $6 more in Canada, £2 more in the UK, or an additional €2 in Europe per month for the must-have Ultimate plan. Six-month plans are going up by $20 CAD, £10, and €10, respectively.

Nvidia spokesperson Jordan Dodge tells me the United States is currently exempt from the price changes. “No price change happening in the US,” he says.

The company says the hikes “account for increased operational costs” in the specific countries where they’re rolling out, according to a customer help page, and that GeForce Now founders can still pay grandfathered pricing as originally promised.

GeForce Now...

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Here’s Mario’s new voice actor

Image: Nintendo

After months of speculation, conspiracy theories, and false alarms, we finally know the name of Mario’s new voice actor: Kevin Afghani. On Friday, Afghani announced the news on X (formerly Twitter), saying, “Incredibly proud to have voiced Mario and Luigi in Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Thanks to Nintendo for inviting me into the Flower Kingdom!”

Incredibly proud to have voiced Mario and Luigi in Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Thanks to Nintendo for inviting me into the Flower Kingdom!

— Kevin Afghani (@KevinAfghani) October 13, 2023

Nintendo confirmed the news in an email, saying simply, “The voice actor’s name is Kevin Afghani.” The news comes after iconic voice actor Charles Martinet stepped away from the role in August to become a Mario...

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Netflix’s Squid Game reality show has an official release date

Image: Netflix

Squid Game: The Challenge, Netflix’s reality show based on Squid Game that will pit 456 people against each other for $4.56 million, will debut on November 22nd, the company announced on Friday. For people based in the US, I’m guessing that means a lot of families will be watching this show over Thanksgiving vacations.

Netflix announced the series in June 2022, surprising no one after the humongous success of Squid Game following its 2021 debut. However, the lead-up to release has been a little bit bumpy, as the company had to defend itself following reports of some medical issues on set.

The Challenge isn’t the only opportunity for people to try Squid Game-like events. Netflix just opened up ticket sales for Squid Game: The Trials, an...

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I am dying to know who purchased a new Wii U in September

Image: Nintendo

We take a break from the Microsoft-Activision Blizzard news cycle to bring you this important announcement: 11 years after its arrival, six years after Nintendo ceased its production, and just a few months after it also shut down its online store, someone just bought a brand-new Wii U.

The news comes to us via Mat Piscatella, video game industry analyst at Circana (formerly NPD), a company that regularly publishes video game retail data.

1 new Wii U was sold in the US in September. First time a new Wii U sold since May 2022. Last time a new Vita unit sold was in November 2021, when 3 (!!) were purchased.

Is any of this at all meaningful? No. Sales fun facts that do not matter.

— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) October 13, 2023

That...

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Watch iFixit tear down the Meta Quest 3 in this beautifully shot video

Image: iFixit

David called the Meta Quest 3 “better than its predecessors in almost every way” in our full Verge review — but what’s it like on the inside? iFixit now has the answer in a brilliant teardown video that gets right up close to the gadget’s delightfully shiny guts.

You won’t find a curved battery in here like the “largely unfixable” Quest Pro, but you do get a curved heatsink above the fan — and, of course, the Time of Flight depth sensor that the Quest Pro apparently decided to scrap. iFixit’s Shahram Mokhtari says it can even attach to a Quest Pro’s board, though it’s not clear whether you could get it to work there.

Image: iFixit

It took some prying to get here.

Image: iFixit

Curved...

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Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard’s deal for cloud gaming rights, explained

Photo by Rolf Vennenbernd / picture alliance via Getty Images

Microsoft’s giant Activision Blizzard deal is complete, and it means Ubisoft has now obtained cloud streaming rights for Call of Duty, all other current Activision Blizzard games, and any coming over the next 15 years. It was a key concession from Microsoft that helped get the deal over the line with UK regulators. But what does it all mean?

Ubisoft will now control where Call of Duty and other Activision Blizzard games show up on cloud gaming services, with the exception of EU countries and the various cloud gaming deals Microsoft signed previously. If you live in a country that’s part of the European Economic Area (EEA) — which includes EU countries and also Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway — then you’ll get a free license to stream...

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Godzilla’s got some new friends in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ latest trailer

Aside from one depiction of Godzilla, the very first trailer for Apple TV Plus’ upcoming Monarch: Legacy of MonstersMonsterVerse series was surprisingly light on kaiju appearances. But Apple’s latest ad for the show puts more than a few of its titular monsters front and center, and — delightfully — each one looks either sick and / or terrifying as hell.

Aside from old man Lee Shaw (Kurt Russell), no one seems to fully understand what kind of organization Monarch is and why they’re so interested in massive unidentified terrestrial organisms (MUTOs) in the new trailer. But many people, like Cate (Anna Sawai), know that Monarch was there during Godzilla’s attack on San Francisco and that it’s hiding secrets from the public that would...

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Best Buy will no longer carry physical movies in 2024, and I am no longer whole

Shoutout to Best Buy store No. 265, the movies were always well organized. (I would know.) | Photo by Umar Shakir

It’s hard to imagine walking into a Best Buy with no library of movies and music that once dominated the center of most stores. If you walked into Best Buy in the late ’90s to early 2010s, you were always greeted by a curated selection of the latest releases of movies and CD albums right at the entrance. The sections shrunk down over the years into just a few aisles, and now The Digital Bits reports the company is about to remove physical media altogether, and Best Buy later confirmed the report to Variety.

No more physical media means Best Buy will stop carrying DVDs and Blu-rays, bringing an end to maybe the last enjoyable place you could go to browse around, and a place I would always have nostalgia for after working there in my...

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Meta says it’s cracking down on violent content following Hamas attacks

Image: Nick Barclay / The Verge

In the three days following the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel on October 7th, Meta says it removed “seven times as many pieces of content on a daily basis” for violating its Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy in Hebrew and Arabic versus the two months prior. The disclosure came as part of a blog post in which the social media company outlined its moderation efforts during the ongoing war in Israel.

Although it doesn’t mention the EU or its Digital Services Act, Meta’s blog post was published days after European Commissioner Thierry Breton wrote an open letter to Meta reminding the company of its obligations to limit disinformation and illegal content on its platforms. Breton wrote that the Commission...

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Victrola’s Sonos-ready Stream Onyx turntable is on sale for $200 off

The Victrola Stream Onyx turntable wirelessly transmits audio to Sonos speakers. | Image by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Yes, it’s sad that Amazon’s fall Prime Day event is over, but the future — and even the present — still looks bright for deal hunters. Black Friday is just over a month away, after all, and some of the best Prime Day deals are still hanging around. Right now, for example, you can pick up the Victrola Stream Onyx turntable from Amazon, Best Buy, and direct from Victrola for a record low of $399.99 ($200 off).

Save for a few differences when it comes to materials and color, the Stream Onyx is similar to the $800 Stream Carbon we tested last year. Like the Carbon, the belt-driven turntable can wirelessly transmit audio to Sonos speakers, which gives users the unique ability to stream vinyl straight to their entire Sonos system without the...

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The Google Pixel 8 is almost the perfect camera for parents

Even toddlers are no match for Google’s new camera features. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Until August 2021, my Google Photos library was basically a wall of cat photos. Then, a small human entered the picture, and you can see a distinct dividing line in my photographic priorities: one day it was Cat, the next day, Baby.

Many of the other parents I know have experienced the same phenomenon. And while cats aren’t the most willing photo subjects on earth, well, have you met a toddler? They are agents of chaos. This makes for a special kind of dilemma: you must photograph Baby because they are the cutest being to ever grace the planet, but they also refuse to sit still or stop moving for even one goddamn second while you take a picture.

Have you met a toddler? They are agents of chaos

This spurs you to take even more photos in...

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Apple’s new Godzilla series crushes its biggest challenge

Anna Sawai as Cate in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. | Image: Apple TV Plus

Apple TV Plus’ Monarch: Legacy of Monsters series kicks off with a surprisingly compelling set of new perspectives that make a familiar story feel fresh.

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How to watch the rare ‘ring of fire’ solar eclipse without burning your eyes

The last annular eclipse in 2021 as viewed in Toronto. | Photo by Mark Blinch / Getty Images

Many eyes will turn to the sky on Saturday to catch a glimpse of an extremely rare “ring of fire” solar eclipse. But experts are cautioning against looking directly at the eclipse to avoid serious eye damage.

An annular eclipse occurs while the Moon is near or at the farthest point in its orbit around the Earth. The Moon, which appears smaller in the sky because of this distance, passes directly in front of the Sun, creating this “ring of fire” effect.

People across the contiguous United States and part of Alaska should be able to see the eclipse. Most regions will only see a partial eclipse, in which only a part of the Sun is covered up by the Moon.

A fuller eclipse will be viewable in parts of Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah,...

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ADT’s next security system could be a worthy Nest Secure successor

The discontinued Nest Secure hub (left) and the new ADT security system hub (right) show some indications of Google’s influence on the design. | Images: Google / ADT

It appears security company ADT is about to launch a more fitting successor to Nest Secure than the half-baked ADT Self Setup system it rolled out last year. The new system, called ADT Smart Home Security, features more polished sensor hardware, a sleeker base station with a backlit keypad (like the Nest Guard), and door window sensors that can be disarmed using an on-device button (like the Nest Detects). This was a handy feature of Nest’s system for easily disarming it when your dog needed to pee at 2AM.

The company hasn’t announced this system, so there are no pricing details or a release date, but The Verge received a tip linking to hidden support pages on its website containing all the hardware details. Based on these, we can glean...

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How to customize the lock screen in Android 14

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

You spend a lot of time looking at your lock screen, so it’s worth making sure that it’s tailored to your tastes — and with the right information on display, it can save you several dozen phone unlocks a day as well. While Google’s new Android 14 OS is hardly packed full of headline-grabbing new features — most of the upgrades are subtle and incremental — one area that has seen a noticeable revamp is the options for customizing the lock screen.

These extra customization options follow what Apple did with iOS 16: you’ve now got more control over the way the clock and the widgets look on your lock screen, alongside all the settings that were already in place, which I’ll recap.

Here’s how lock screen customization works now, as tested on a...

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Microsoft and Activision Blizzard: the latest news on the acquisition

A screenshot from Call of Duty: Warzone_, Activision Blizzard’s free-to-play FPS game._ | Image: Activision

Everything you need to know about gaming’s biggest acquisition yet.

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Franz is the creepy thing that lives in your phone

A promotional rendering of Franz — she’s much more cartoonish (usually) in the app. | Image: Ice-Pick Lodge

On Christmas Day 2021, a man took a crossbow to Windsor Castle with plans to kill Queen Elizabeth II. (He failed.) In court, the would-be assassin claimed he’d been egged on by a virtual companion named Sarai on the AI platform Replika. A virtual friend “always agrees with you when you talk with them,” warned an expert quoted by the BBC in an article about the saga last week, deeming the chatbot system dangerous. “It always reinforces what you’re thinking.” Including, it seems, regicide.

Virtual companions have become a popular novelty in the past few years, and the BBC article offers a pervasive truism about them: that real people are drawn to digital personas because they’re irresistibly attentive, affirming, and accommodating. It is...

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How will driverless cars ‘talk’ to pedestrians? Waymo has a few ideas

Image: Waymo

For years, developers have been working on ways for driverless cars to communicate intent to other road users, either through audio recordings or visual cues. Today, Waymo says it wants to be one of the first companies to put some of these methods into practice.

The Alphabet-owned company’s driverless Jaguar I-Pace vehicles will use their roof domes, which are wrapped in LED displays, to communicate messages to other road users. For now, the company is going with just two messages: for pedestrians in front of the vehicle, shifting grey and white rectangles meant to communicate that the vehicle is yielding to them, and for drivers behind the vehicle, a yellow pedestrian symbol to let them know there’s a pedestrian crossing.

The symbols...

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Bobby Kotick will stay at Activision Blizzard until the end of this year

Now that the Microsoft acquisition is complete, Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision Blizzard, is set to leave the company after the end of this year.

In an email sent to employees and published on Activision Blizzard King’s website, Kotick wrote that he’s excited about the future of the company under the bright green Xbox umbrella. He also wrote that in order to facilitate a smooth transition, he intends to stay on temporarily as CEO of ABK, reporting to the CEO of Microsoft Gaming, Phil Spencer.

“Phil has asked me to stay on as CEO of Activision Blizzard King, reporting to him, and we have agreed that I will do that through the end of 2023,” Kotick wrote. Kotick, who became CEO of Activision in 1991, stands to receive upward of $375...

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Read Xbox chief Phil Spencer’s memo welcoming Activision Blizzard employees to Microsoft

Image: Laura Normand / The Verge

Microsoft just finalized its giant $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard earlier today. Xbox chief Phil Spencer has now welcomed Activision Blizzard King employees to Xbox in an internal memo to all of Microsoft’s full-time employees today.

“We couldn’t be more excited that Activision Blizzard employees are our colleagues, co-workers, and teammates,” says Spencer. “Bobby Kotick has agreed to remain in his role through the end of 2023, reporting directly to me, to ensure a smooth and seamless integration. We look forward to working together as a unified team and we will share more updates on our new organizational structure in the coming months.”

Spencer will now visit the Activision, Blizzard, and King offices in the coming...

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The Google-Fitbit integration needs work

The Pixel Watch 2 made better use of Fitbit’s expertise this year, but it’s not great that the app had yet another major outage the day the devices shipped. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Change is hard to do well — a lesson Google’s been learning all too well when it comes to wearables. The transition from Wear OS 2 to 3 has been messy, and so has the ongoing integration of Fitbit into Google’s greater ecosystem. On the eve of the Pixel Watch 2 and Fitbit Charge 6 shipping to customers, just as reviewers published their takes on the second-gen smartwatch, Fitbit suffered its second major app outage this year.

The outage was a doozy. Fitbit’s own status page has a lengthy breakdown, but the gist is that around 3PM ET on October 11th, roughly 50 percent of users who use Google accounts to log in to the site saw blank tiles and screens, error messages, and missing data. That escalated to 4 percent of all users an hour...

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Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 review: a simple, smart purchase

Google’s midrange ‘Chromebook Plus’ cohort is off to an excellent start.

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Microsoft completes Activision Blizzard acquisition, Call of Duty now part of Xbox

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

Microsoft has finalized its $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard, the publisher of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Diablo. The Verge exclusively reported last week that Microsoft was planning to close today, and now it’s official. The acquisition required 20 months of battles with regulators in the UK and US, but Microsoft has closed its Activision Blizzard deal after defeating the Federal Trade Commission in a US federal court and restructuring the deal to appease the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the UK.

“We love gaming. We play games, create games, and know first-hand how much gaming means to all of us as individuals and collectively, as a community. And today, we officially welcome Activision Blizzard...

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Biden administration doles out $7 billion for hydrogen hubs

Joe Biden visits the Cummins Power Generation Facility in Fridley, Minnesota, on Monday, April 3rd, 2023. Last year, Cummins announced Fridley would be the site of its first electrolyzer manufacturing facility in the US. | Photo by Elizabeth Flores / Star Tribune via Getty Images

The Biden administration will funnel $7 billion into seven different “hubs” for hydrogen production across the US. It’s part of President Joe Biden’s plan to transition the nation to clean energy, even though the environmental benefits of hydrogen still hinge on overhauling the way the fuel is traditionally made.

Hydrogen combustion creates water vapor, unlike fossil fuels that release greenhouse gas emissions when burned. That’s seen as especially valuable for cleaning up aviation, maritime shipping, and heavy industries like steel that are more difficult to run on renewable energy and batteries. The tricky part with hydrogen is cleaning up pollution from the process of making it. Most hydrogen today is made using fossil fuels, and a...

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How the next generation of semiconductor factories kicked up a fight over environmental review

US President Joe Biden arrives for a ceremony at the groundbreaking of the new Intel semiconductor manufacturing facility near New Albany, Ohio, on Friday, September 9th, 2022. | Image: Gaelen Morse / Bloomberg via Getty Images

Lawmakers’ push to revive US chip manufacturing has triggered new concerns about pollution regulation, inadvertently subjecting semiconductor factories to federal environmental review for the first time. But while a bipartisan bill would exempt the factories to support a still-struggling American industry, some environmental advocates worry it could weaken the nation’s bedrock environmental law.

Since the 1990s, semiconductor manufacturing has shifted from the US to Asia. Around that time, it was becoming cheaper to build fabs and hire workers in Asia. Studies into hazardous chemicals at fabs and lawsuits over worker exposure to them in the US were also emerging.

Now, a global chip shortage — and a desire to counter China’s manufacturing...

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AI brings back the voice of a deceased Cyberpunk 2077 actor for Phantom Liberty

Image: CD Projekt Red

Cyberpunk 2077’s recently released DLC Phantom Liberty uses an AI-edited voice to emulate the performance of a deceased actor, the studio has confirmed. The actor in question is Miłogost “Miłek” Reczek, who provided the Polish-language voice of doctor Viktor Vektor in a localized version of the original game. He passed away in 2021 before reprising his role for the DLC.

News that AI would be used to approximate Reczek’s performance first emerged around a month ago prior to the release of Phantom Liberty. But it gained widespread attention this month after developer CD Projekt Red issued a statement explaining its decision. Localization director Mikołaj Szwed says that the company considered re-recording the entire role (both the...

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