Google Fiber’s 20-gig service costs $250 per month

Google and Actiontec worked together to make this Wi-Fi 7 router to with with the 20-gig service. | Image: Google

Google is rolling out its 20-gig internet service offering to Fiber customers in select markets, with installations starting in Q1 2024. The ridiculously high-speed residential connection, first announced in October, also throws in the latest (though not yet certified) Wi-Fi 7 wireless networking hardware for customers who truly feel inclined to join in on the bleeding edge of connectivity.

The new 20Gbps internet service, which comes through Google’s GFiber Labs, won’t come cheap: it’ll cost customers $250 per month. Google plans to offer the connection initially in Kansas City, North Carolina (Triangle Region), Arizona, and Iowa. The service availability coincides with last-mile infrastructure upgrades by Google that include the...

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Google is finally saying goodbye to Google Play Movies & TV

Illustration: The Verge

Google is about to fully move on from the Google Play Movies & TV. It had already moved Android and iOS users to the Google TV app, removed the app from every Roku and most smart TVs, and pulled the app from Android TV in October. In a recently published support document, however, Google detailed the ways you’ll be able to watch the shows and movies you’ve bought through Google Play Movies & TV once the brand is gone for good in January.

If you have a TV or streaming device powered by Android TV, you can watch things you’ve purchased or things you want to rent from the Shop tab starting January 17th, according to Google. If you have a cable box or a set-top box that runs Android TV, you’ll watch / rent from the YouTube app starting that...

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The Verge’s 2023 holiday gift guide for moms

Photo Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales and Cath Virginia / The Verge

A collection of cool, calming, and creative gifts to show your appreciation for that special maternal figure in your life.

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The curtain’s coming down on Showtime... sort of

Now...they are together. | Image: Paramount Plus

The Showtime cable network feels like it’s in a quantum state, both very much dead and very much alive. Only, I think more people will understand quantum states than what’s going on with the network this week, which is now being renamed Paramount Plus with Showtime.

Try to squeeze that mouthful into a cable guide.

Variety is reporting that the rebranding of the traditional Showtime TV channel will go into effect on January 8th, 2024. Showtime’s parent company, Paramount, made the announcement today with a new launch video that indicates a small collection of Paramount Plus shows like Halo, Star Trek: Discovery, and Taylor Sheridan’s Mayor of Kingstown will be coming to the newly christened channel.

Notably absent from the list are...

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iOS 17.2 arrives with new Journal app and spatial video capture support

The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Apple’s iOS 17.2 update is now available for recent iPhones. The update includes Apple’s new Journal app, which is designed to get you writing about events in your life with prompts that draw from data on your phone as well as the option to record spatial videos.

Announced back at WWDC in June, the Journal app is a health- and wellness-focused feature that aims to get you reflecting on the small and big moments in your life. Although we found its interface a little basic when we tried it out in beta for ourselves, its superpower is its ability to recognize “Moments” based on your phone’s data, including locations you’ve visited, photos you’ve taken, or workouts you’ve done. It can then make writing suggestions based on these Moments.

T...

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Beeper’s iMessage app for Android is back — but it’s a downgrade

Image: Beeper

The faceoff between Apple and Beeper has entered another round. Days after Apple managed to block Beeper Mini from seamlessly sending and receiving iMessages on Android, Beeper says the app is up and running again — sort of.

See, Beeper Mini works a little differently this time: you must now sign in with an Apple ID, whereas previously it would automatically register you to iMessage via your phone number. Beeper says it’s working on a fix to restore phone number registration with iMessage, but until then, your friends won’t be able to send iMessages directly to your phone number. Instead, the blue bubbles will have to come to and from your email address. That’s not nearly as convenient, but at the end of the day, it’s still iMessage.

A...

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Major Reddit outage means posts and comments may not load

Image: The Verge

Reddit is experiencing a major outage that is stopping posts and comments from loading, depending on the situation.

I’ve observed a few different issues. When logged out, I can’t see any posts or comments at all; I’ll just get an error message or a blank page under the Reddit search bar. When logged in on an account that’s not on the old Reddit layout, posts load on the homepage, but when I click into a post from the homepage, comments don’t. (When using that account, posts wouldn’t load in specific subreddits, either.) Weirdly, on my account that uses the old Reddit layout on my desktop browser, I’m able to browse the platform just fine.

Reddit confirmed there was an issue in a post at 12:47PM ET. “We’re investigating an issue that’s...

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Epic v. Google: everything we’re learning live in Fortnite court

Photo illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Philip Pacheco, Bloomberg, Getty Images

In a redux of a case against Apple and iOS, Epic aims to dismantle barriers that could spell higher fees for app makers — and, Google argues, keep Android safe and competitive.

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TimeSplitters studio Free Radical Design appears to shut down as Embracer fallout continues

Image: Free Radical Design

Free Radical Design, the Nottingham, UK-based studio that had been working on a revival of the PS2-era TimeSplitters franchise, appears to have shut down. Its website has been replaced with the message “404 Company Not Found :-(” as of this writing. Several employees have posted about today being the company’s last day, and many more have set their LinkedIn profiles as “#OpenToWork.”

In its current form, Free Radical Design dates back to 2021 when it was announced that a new studio had been set up to “bring the TimeSplitters franchise back to life” under the ultimate umbrella of the rapidly expanding Embracer Group. Series creators Steve Ellis and David Doak were brought on board to help with the revival.

But fast-forward to May this...

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Elon Musk unbans conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and hosts interview with him on X

Alex Jones in 2022. | Photo by Joe Buglewicz / Getty Images

Elon Musk reinstated the X account of Alex Jones over the weekend, then welcomed the conspiracy-spreading radio host back to the platform by participating in a live interview with him. During the course of Musk’s hour-and-a-half appearance on the call, Jones blamed his reputation as a fabulist on “the media and PR firms” and praised Musk for allowing him to return to X and tell his own story.

Jones was banned from the platform then known as Twitter in 2018 for “abusive behavior” that involved comparing a CNN reporter to “the Hitler Youth.” At that point, he was already well known for spreading lies about the Sandy Hook school shooting, where 20 children and six adults were killed, baselessly claiming it was fake or part of a government...

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Netflix picks tennis and Rafael Nadal for its next live sports stream

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Netflix is planning yet another live sports event — and this time, it’s a tennis match pitting veteran tennis player Rafael Nadal against Carlos Alcaraz, who’s currently ranked number two in the world.

The streamer is calling the event The Netflix Slam, and it will air on March 3rd, 2024 from the Michelob Ultra Arena at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. While it seems Spanish tennis champs Nadal and Alcaraz will headline the competition, Netflix says it’s going to announce “additional players and matchups” at a later date. The stream will air as a dual broadcast for both English and Spanish-speaking markets.

Image: Netflix

Netflix hosted its first live sporting event last month, which paired Formula 1...

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The AV industry sends an SOS to Pete Buttigieg

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The autonomous vehicle industry is in trouble and is looking for help from an unlikely source: US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

A coalition of lobbying groups sent Buttigieg a letter last week imploring him to support AV development or risk being outpaced by China. The subtext, of course, is the crisis facing GM subsidiary Cruise, which grounded its fleet recently in the aftermath of a crash involving one of its driverless cars.

The letter makes no mention of the situation with Cruise, instead focusing on the looming threat of competition from China. Signatories include the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association, which represents Cruise, Waymo, Zoox, Motional, and others, as well as the US Chamber of Commerce and the...

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Apple might soon pay artists more for offering their music in Atmos

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Most of today’s biggest music releases already come with a Dolby Atmos mix alongside the traditional stereo version, but Apple is apparently determined to increase the format’s adoption even further. Bloomberg is today reporting that the company is planning to give “added weighting” to songs that offer an Atmos mix; this could potentially increase the royalties that artists receive from Apple Music. Intriguingly, the report notes that “listeners wouldn’t necessarily have to play the Atmos version of a song for artists to benefit. It only matters that the song is offered in that format.”

The change in weighting hasn’t yet been announced by Apple. But with more and more artists and studios churning out spatial audio mixes like clockwork,...

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The Sonos Era 100 is back down to its Black Friday best price of $199

The Era 100 is a sharp-looking little speaker in either white or black. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

One of our top picks of all Black Friday deals was the Sonos Era 100 smart speaker, and we’re happy to report that deal has returned. Right now, you can get the Era 100 in black or white for its lowest price of $199 ($50 off) at Amazon Best Buy, B&H Photo, or direct from Sonos.

The Era 100 is one of Sonos’ latest Wi-Fi-connected speakers, offering some impressive sound in a compact package. It may not have the spatial audio tricks of its much bigger Era 300 cousin, but the Era 100 can fit just about anywhere in your home, and if you own a turntable, you can even pump that audio through a multiroom Sonos system by way of a simple USB-C adapter.

Read our review of the Sonos Era 100.

If you want to score a sizable deal on some of the many...

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If you want to use your phone’s digital key to drive your car, look for this logo

Image: BMW

As digital keys become more widely used among car owners, a consortium of auto and phone makers are working to ensure that people can trust that this new technology is secure and will always work across multiple devices.

The Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC) is an industry group that includes most major car companies, like Ford, GM, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, and Mercedes-Benz, as well as phone makers like Apple, Samsung, and Xiaomi. The consortium announced a new certification program for digital keys that use near-field communication (NFC). NFC-equipped phones must be tapped against the car’s door handle to unlock it, rather than using a key or key fob.

“A global compatibility of products and services for a seamless experience... regardless...

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Google Messages might let you edit texts after they’re sent

Screenshot: Google

Google could be developing a new feature for its Messages app that would let you edit a message after having sent it, according to code spotted by TheSpAndroid. References to the feature first appeared in a beta version of the app on November 19th, and there are four flags that appear to reference it, though attempting to enable them reportedly doesn’t do anything.

The evidence of the in-development feature has cropped up as support for editing messages is becoming increasingly common in other messaging apps. Apple added the option for iMessage users to edit sent messages with iOS 16 last year, and WhatsApp released a similar feature earlier in 2023. In both cases, you have a limited amount of time to edit sent messages — two minutes for...

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Be skeptical about QR codes, warns the FTC

Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warned the public against scanning any old QR code in a consumer alerts blog last week. Naturally, the warning comes down to security and privacy — bad actors can put QR codes in inconspicuous places or send them via text or email, then just sit back and wait for a payday in the form of money, logins, or other sensitive information.

The New York Times reported that John Fokker, who heads threat intelligence at cybersecurity company Trellix, says Trellix found over “60,000 samples of QR code attacks” in the third quarter this year alone. The Times wrote that the most popular scams involved payroll and HR personnel impersonators and postal scams, among others. Early last year, police in several Texas...

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Apple’s iPad plans for next year could be a lot less confusing

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Apple is reportedly making some changes next year that it hopes will make it easier for people to fit a specific iPad to their needs. For instance, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman wrote in his Power On newsletter today that the next iPad Air will get an M2 chip in addition to the larger second model that’s been rumored.

One of the other ways Apple is reportedly tackling the issue is to drop the 9th-generation model that’s been dangling off of the front of the lineup since last year’s pricier 10th-generation iPad redesign launched. Gurman says sending the 9th-gen iPad out to pasture will let the company “slowly phase out some of its older Pencils.” Presumably, the 2015 Apple Pencil will be the first to go, once there’s no Lightning port...

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Google finally gives ChatGPT some competition

Image: William Joel / The Verge

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 17, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. If you’re new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.

This week, I’ve been watching A Murder at the End of the Worldand (finally!) Barbie, reading about Gary Gensler’s war on crypto, robot trucks, and Taylor Swift’s world takeover, playing Puzzmo’s Really Bad Chess, and catching up on all the super-popular TikToks I missed this year.

I also have for you a new Mastodon app, a bunch of new AI tools, a whole new Fortnite universe, an espresso maker, and much more. And I have some thoughts about messaging. Let’s dig in.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas...

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Apple responds to the Beeper iMessage saga: ‘We took steps to protect our users’

Beeper Mini brought iMessage to Android. It didn’t last long. | Image: Beeper

A few days after the team at Beeper proudly announced a way for users to send blue-bubble iMessages directly from their Android devices without any weird relay servers, and about 24 hours after it became clear Apple had taken steps to shut that down, Apple has shared its take on the issue.

The company’s stance here is fairly predictable: it says it’s simply trying to do right by users, and protect the privacy and security of their iMessages. “We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage,” Apple senior PR manager Nadine Haija said in a statement.

Here’s the statement in full:

At Apple, we build our products and services with industry-leading privacy and...

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Teslas will be able to automatically call 911 if you get in a crash

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Tesla will release its 2023 Holiday Update next week with a few big changes, including one that lets Teslas call 911 automatically if the car’s airbags deploy in a crash. On Thursday, the company announced the update is coming next week, and it highlighted other coming features like Apple Podcasts support, rear-screen Bluetooth headset support, an updated version of the park assistance with 3D visuals, and new blind spot indicators.

Apple Podcast support joins Apple Music, which Tesla added last year. Not a Tesla App reported yesterday that Tesla owners can sync podcasts with Apple devices. The site added other details about update 2023.44.25; for instance, Tesla owners won’t need a separate USB stick for every light show they want to...

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Epic used Fortnite OG to lure players back to a very different game

Image: Epic Games

You could say that Fortnite is entering a new phase. With the launch of Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing, and Fortnite Festival, the game is now more than a popular battle royale — it’s a platform designed to house lots of different kinds of experiences. That shift was preceded by an event that brought the game back to its roots with Fortnite OG, which returned to the original battle royale map alongside classic weapons and vehicles. And that was a very intentional strategy from Epic Games.

According to Epic’s executive VP Saxs Persson, the launch of Fortnite OG was meant to create a stir ahead of this rollout of new games. “We had a goal of re-activating a lot of our 500 million accounts that maybe weren’t playing Fortnite anymore, and...

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The quiet plan to make the internet feel faster

Illustration by Hugo Herrera / The Verge

A few months ago, I downgraded my internet, going from a 900Mbps plan to a 200Mbps one. Now, I find that websites can sometimes take a painfully long time to load, that HD YouTube videos have to stop and buffer when I jump around in them, and that video calls can be annoyingly choppy.

In other words, pretty much nothing has changed. I had those exact same problems even when I had near-gigabit download service, and I’m probably not alone. I’m sure many of you have also had the experience of cursing a slow-loading website and growing even more confused when a “speed test” says that your internet should be able to play dozens of 4K Netflix streams at once. So what gives?

Like any issue, there are many factors at play. But a major one is...

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Fortnite Festival is Rock Band without the plastic instruments

Image: Epic Games

Epic released a trilogy of new games inside of Fortnite this week. It started with Lego Fortnite, continued with Rocket Racing, and is wrapping up today with Fortnite Festival, developed by Guitar Hero studio Harmonix (which Epic acquired in 2021). It’s all part of an ambitious plan to turn Fortnite from a hit battle royale into a platform filled with all kinds of different experiences. And in the case of Fortnite Festival, it’s a full-blown music game inside of Fortnite. Think of it like Rock Band — but without the plastic instruments.

What that means is you’ll be hitting notes along to popular songs, but instead of doing that on a toy guitar or drum set, you’re using a game controller or mouse and keyboard. The basic flow is identical,...

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Apple’s 10th-gen iPad is actually worthwhile when it’s $100 off

Plus, it comes in this awesome yellow color. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

We’ve found Apple’s latest generation of its base-model iPad to be a bit awkwardly priced from the start. At $449 it’s a little close to the much nicer iPad Air and simultaneously a lot pricier than its ninth-gen predecessor. But that all looks different when you knock a Benjamin off of it — because right now you can get the 10th-gen iPad with base 64GB of storage for $349 ($100 off) or expanded 256GB for $499 (also $100 off) at Best Buy until December 11th. This matches its Black Friday best pricing, making it a much better purchase.

The 10.9-inch tablet has a speedy A14 Bionic chip and USB-C charging port with a colorful design and gesture-based controls like its pricier brethren. As for handwritten note-taking, you can either use the...

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How to build a bike lane in America

Illustration by Sisi Kim for The Verge

Advocates are working across the country to make their communities safer and more accessible for cyclists, but not every effort is successful.

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Finishing every part of Mario Wonder is no peach

Mario Wonder is just so gosh darn charming I didn’t want to stop playing. | Image: Nintendo

My mission to 100 percent Super Mario Bros. Wonder officially started a couple of weeks ago, but really it began in the late ‘80s.

As a kid, I was certifiably bad at Mario. We didn’t have our own Nintendo console, so any time I spent playing Mario prior to that was at a friend’s or cousin’s house. I’d hold the second controller and wait my turn, marveling at how they just knew where the hidden boxes were, where to jump to the top of the screen and skip ahead three levels, and how to get to the very top of the flagpole every single time. As I struggled to clear the first few stages before running out of lives, it seemed obvious to me that I lacked some instinct that made my friends good at Mario and made me objectively terrible.

A few...

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Hirokazu Kore-eda is so back

Well Go USA

The director of Monster talks about the complexities (and simplicities) of portraying multiple points of view

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EcoFlow Glacier review: a solar-powered fridge, freezer, and ice maker

Fire and ice make everything nice.

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Microsoft’s Edge Copilot AI can’t really summarize every YouTube video

Image: The Verge

One feature added to Microsoft’s AI Copilot in the Edge browser this week is the ability to generate text summaries of videos. But Edge Copilot’s time-saving feature is still fairly limited and only works on pre-processed videos or those with subtitles, as Mikhail Parakhin, Microsoft’s CEO of advertising and web services, explained.

As spotted by MSPowerUser, Parakhin writes,“In order for it to work, we need to pre-process the video. If the video has subtitles - we can always fallback on that, if it does not and we didn’t preprocess it yet - then it won’t work,” in response to a question.

In order for it to work, we need to pre-process the video. If the video has subtitles - we can always fallback on that, if it does not and we...

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