Tinder is making it harder to get a blue verification checkmark

Image: Tinder

In an effort to better combat catfishing, Tinder is adding an extra step to its verification process. Instead of just taking a video selfie to get a blue verification checkmark, you’ll soon need to upload a photo of your driver’s license or passport.

Once you upload your ID, Tinder will check to see whether the picture on your ID lines up with your video selfie and the photos on your profile. Tinder will also look at the date of birth listed on your driver’s license or passport to confirm your age. You should be able to use other forms of ID, as Match Group spokesperson Kayla Whaling tells The Verge that “each market is different but state or government issued photo IDs will be accepted.”

You can still verify your profile by taking a...

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Violence spreads from sea to shining sea in A24’s latest Civil War trailer

Civil War’s latest trailer shows off a whole lot of guns, tanks, and bombs. | Image: A24

A24 has dropped its second trailer for Civil War, a dystopian action movie from director Alex Garland that imagines a fractured, near-future United States tearing itself apart. With a budget of $50 million, Civil War is A24’s most expensive film to date.

Civil War is now due to hit theaters on April 12th, two weeks ahead of its previous April 26th release date. Starring Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Nick Offerman, the movie follows a group of journalists navigating their way across the US as it descends into the second American Civil War.

Just like the first trailer that was released in December 2023, the latest doesn’t give us much else to go on. Portraying the US President, Offerman...

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Adobe Acrobat adds generative AI to ‘easily chat with documents’

AI Assistant in Acrobat can recommend questions that you may have about the contents of a document and then answer those inquiries so you don’t have to rummage through the file. | Image: Adobe

Adobe is adding a new generative AI experience to its Acrobat PDF management software, which aims to “completely transform the digital document experience” by making information in long documents easier to find and understand. Announced in Adobe’s press release as “AI Assistant in Acrobat,” the new tool is described as a “conversational engine” that can summarize files, answer questions, and recommend more based on the content, allowing users to “easily chat with documents” to get the information they need. It’s available in beta starting today for paying Acrobat users.

The idea is that the chatbot will reduce the time-consuming tasks related to working with massive text documents — such as helping students quickly find information for...

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Walmart to acquire Vizio TV maker in $2.3 billion deal

Image: Vizio

Walmart is planning to acquire TV maker Vizio in a deal valued at approximately $2.3 billion. Rumors of the deal emerged last week, and now the retail giant says the acquisition is official and part of a move to boost its ad business.

“The acquisition of Vizio and its SmartCast Operating System (OS) would enable Walmart to connect with and serve its customers in new ways including innovative television and in-home entertainment and media experiences,” says Walmart in a press release. “It would also create new opportunities to help advertisers connect with customers, empowering brands with differentiated and compelling opportunities to engage at scale and to realize greater impact from their advertising spend with Walmart.”

Vizio has more...

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The Garmin Forerunner 165 could be a great budget running watch

The Forerunner 165 series knocks off $200 | Image: Garmin

Garmin watches ain’t cheap. While the running community loves them, they’re often an investment, costing more than $500 for a midrange watch and going up from there. Which is why it’s neat that the new $249.99 Forerunner 165 and $299.99 165 Music are pretty affordable by Garmin’s standards.

In terms of features, the 165 sits between the $200 Forerunner 55 and the $450 Forerunner 265. But for the extra $50 over the 55, the 165 series comes with a 1.2-inch OLED display instead of a transflective display, 11 days of estimated battery life, more running features, and contactless payments. The Music version also allows you to sync playlists with Spotify, Deezer, and Amazon Music.

The design of the 165 is awfully similar to the 265, with...

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Samsung details a host of audio upgrades coming to its phones, tablets, and TVs

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Samsung has detailed its expanded support for a range of audio technologies including Auracast, 360 Audio, and Auto Switch in a new blog post. None are appearing on Samsung’s devices for the first time, but we now know how broadly they’ll be supported across the lineup. Samsung says updates will be progressively available from the end of this month for Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2 and Buds FE, in addition to the Buds 2 Pro.

Take Auracast, for example — a relatively new Bluetooth technology that allows one device to broadcast an audio stream to a theoretically unlimited number of endpoints like speakers and headphones. Last year Samsung announced support for the technology for its Galaxy Buds 2 Pro earbuds and latest high-end TVs, and it came...

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Sony’s PlayStation Portal hacked to run emulated PSP games

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Sony’s new PlayStation Portal has been hacked by Google engineers to run emulated games locally. The $199.99 handheld debuted in November but was limited to just streaming games from a PS5 console and not even titles from Sony’s cloud gaming service.

Now, two Google engineers have managed to get the PPSSPP emulator running natively on the PlayStation Portal, allowing the PSP version of Grand Theft Auto 3 to run on the Portal without Wi-Fi streaming required. “After more than a month of hard work, PPSSPP is running natively on PlayStation Portal. Yes, we hacked it,” says Andy Nguyen in a post on X.

After more than a month of hard work, PPSSPP is running natively on PlayStation Portal. Yes, we hacked it. With help from xyz and @ZetaTwo p...

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Fujifilm announces the X100VI, its follow-up to a TikTok sensation

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Fujifilm’s X100V became so wildly popular that it felt like the camera was endlessly backordered at every camera retailer around. On the secondary market, prices for the rangefinder-style mirrorless camera shot up into truly silly territory after it had a big viral moment on TikTok. The X100V was so in demand that Fujifilm could’ve taken the easy route for a successor and still been guaranteed to have a hit on its hands.

The new model, being announced today, looks practically the same on the outside, but the X100VI includes meaningful improvements that will make it a more capable camera — in far more shooting environments — than any previous entrant in the X100 series. The flip side to those upgrades is that the price has climbed by...

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Porsche adds two new hybrids to its lineup of plug-in Panameras

Image: Porsche

Porsche announced two new plug-in hybrid Panameras, as the German automakers looks to hedge its bets by offering a broader set of electrified options.

Late last year, Porsche unveiled the third generation Panamera, which included the Panamera Turbo E-Hybrid as the first of four Panamera E-Hybrid models that will eventually be offered. Today, the automaker is adding two more: the Panamera 4 E-Hybrid and the Panamera 4S E-Hybrid. The fourth model will be announced at a later date.

Porsche says it is responding to “significant demand for efficient and dynamic E-Hybrid powertrains” with the release of these two new variants. Indeed, hybrids are increasingly in demand in a variety of markets, even as sales growth of pure battery-electric...

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Nintendo will announce part of its 2024 Switch lineup later this week

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

This year’s first Direct will take place Wednesday morning at 9AM ET, and, according to Nintendo, the 25-minute presentation will feature Switch games “coming in the first half of 2024 from our publishing and development partners.”

We didn’t need to consult the video game oracles to know a Nintendo Direct was on the way. Not only have Microsoft and PlayStation shared their upcoming release schedules, but taking a look at the dates of the last handful of Directs revealed that Nintendo is fond of the first week of February.

A #NintendoDirect: Partner Showcase is coming! Watch on-demand via YouTube on 2/21 at 6am PT for around 25 mins of info focused on #NintendoSwitch games coming in the first half of 2024 from our publishing and...

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Rice is not included in Apple’s official guidance for a wet phone

Getting water on phones happens to the best of us. Lucky for us, there’s one household staple the internet consistently suggests will draw that liquid out and save phones: uncooked rice. But contrary to popular advice, Apple, like most people in tech support, explicitly advises against putting your wet phone in a bag of rice.

“Don’t put your iPhone in a bag of rice. Doing so could allow small particles of rice to damage your iPhone,” Apple support documents said.

The support documents first spotted by Macworld are technically addressing what to do when you get the liquid detection alert on your iPhone. They’re not just out to put a long lingering internet myth to bed.

To that end they also suggested avoiding using an external heat...

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Wyze says camera breach let 13,000 customers briefly see into other people’s homes

Image: Wyze

Wyze’s problems with letting its security camera customers briefly see into other customer homes is a lot worse than we thought.

Last week, co-founder David Crosby said that “so far” the company had identified 14 people who were able to briefly see into a stranger’s property because they were shown an image from someone else’s Wyze camera. Now we’re being told that number of affected customers has ballooned to 13,000.

The revelation came from an email sent to customers entitled “An Important Security Message from Wyze,” in which the company copped to the breach and apologized, while also attempting to lay some of the blame on its web hosting provider AWS.

“The outage originated from our partner AWS and took down Wyze devices for...

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Constellation adds a dark and creepy tone to Apple’s growing sci-fi lineup

Image: Apple

Slowly but surely, Apple TV Plus has morphed itself into arguably the premier destination for streaming science fiction. (Or at least streaming sci-fi not named Star Wars or Star Trek.) There are adaptations like Silo and Foundation; original stories like Invasion, For All Mankind, and Severance; and even a franchise spinoff with Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. There’s a nice range to the service’s offerings — and now it’s adding another flavor with the premiere of Constellation. In its first few episodes the show is dark, creepy, and will mess with your mind in a way that makes it just the thing for those already missing True Detective: Night Country.

The first three episodes of Constellation premiere on February 21st, and they follow an...

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The US will relax pollution-limiting rules for vehicle emissions

A charging station outside of a Toyota Store in Blauvelt, New York, on February 5th, 2024. | Image: Kena Betancur / VIEWpress / Getty

President Biden’s administration plans to pull back on strict new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules that would have forced US automakers to turn EVs into their main business by 2032. That’s according to The New York Times, which wrote yesterday that industry players had moved the administration to give them more time to bring down EV costs, and for a nationwide charging infrastructure to be more fully built out.

The Times writes that labor leaders pressured Biden to give them more time to extend union membership to those working in new US EV plants. As the article notes, labor union support is crucial as Biden faces re-election where he’s straddling a dire climate situation and attacks from candidate and former President Donald...

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Apple to be fined over $500 million under EU antitrust law

Image: The Verge

Apple will reportedly have to pay around €500 million (about $539 million USD) in the EU for stifling competition against Apple Music on the iPhone. Financial Times reported this morning that the fine comes after regulators in Brussels, Belgium investigated a Spotify complaint that Apple prevented apps from telling users about cheaper alternatives to Apple’s music service.

The issue comes down to Apple’s efforts to keep apps and users corraled inside its App Store payments system. Spotify complained in 2019 that Apple’s policies muted competition against Apple Music, kicking off an EU investigation the next year. The EU whittled its objections down to oppose Apple’s refusal to let developers even link out to their own subscription...

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How to live your life in text files

Illustration: William Joel / The Verge

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 26, 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 playing with the redesigned You.com for AI research, trying out the Phanpy Mastodon client, getting back intoZombies, Run after reading Vee Song’s great story about Fantasy Hike, and reading the new “lost chapter” of The Martianbefore probably just rereading The Martianagain.

I also have for you some non-earbud earbuds, a nerdy video about nerdy stuff, a new to-do list app, a new thing in ChatGPT, and much more. Let’s do it.

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

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Apple Pay is down for Chase customers, and perhaps others

Not today.

It appears that Apple Pay is down, particularly for Chase customers — Verge staffers have had their cards declined while trying to pay with Chase cards using Apple Pay, while using the same physical card works just fine. Several people on Threads confirmed the same issue when I asked — although people with non-Chase banks like Citi appear to be using Apple Pay just fine.

Apple’s system status page says that Apple Pay and Wallet have a maintenance in progress which started at 12PM — which is a pretty weird time to start a maintenance that disrupts payments. The page also says that “Some Maryland Users may have issues,” but we’ve had reports in both New York and LA, so it appears we’re all into crab cakes and football today.

...

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Reddit has a new AI training deal to sell user content

Illustration: The Verge

Reddit will let “an unnamed large AI company” have access to its user-generated content platform in a new licensing deal, according to Bloomberg yesterday. The deal, “worth about $60 million on an annualized basis,” the outlet writes, could still change as the company’s plans to go public are still in the works.

Until recently, most AI companies trained their data on the open web without seeking permission. But that’s proven to be legally questionable, leading companies to try to get data on firmer footing. It’s not known what company Reddit made the deal with, but it’s quite a bit more than the $5 million annual deal OpenAI has reportedly been offering news publishers for their data. Apple has also been seeking multi-year deals with...

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The DICE Awards show is the celebration developers and fans deserve

Image: IGN

The Baldur’s Gate 3 developers won Game of the Year, again, during the 27th annual DICE Awards. But in stark contrast to their 2023 Game Awards win, this time they actually got to speak.

“We don’t have shareholders, but we also don’t think about them,” said Larian Studios head of production David Walgrave. “Building a community, building a player base, building games that are actually fun is going to make you the most money.”

His words were a direct shot at Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors, who said during a recent earnings report that the company’s “overruling principle is to always maximize shareholder value in any given situation.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 has been crowned game of the year several times over, with its previous game of the...

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I printed chocolate on a 3D printer and ate it

A chocolate rose printed on the Cocoa Press.

I hate to be the bearer of bad-for-the-waistline news, but yes — you can now buy a 3D printer that prints chocolate. The Cocoa Press has been in development for an entire decade. Now, it’s finally here, and I’m pretty sure it’s singlehandedly responsible for one of the pounds I put on over Christmas.

At least it’s not cheap or easy enough to tempt most people yet.

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This holiday season, I took delivery of a $3,995 prebuilt printer — you can DIY it for $1,750 or less — and thirty sticks of perfect-fit chocolate with which to fulfill my delicious aims.

I attached the printer’s screen, went through setup, popped a dark chocolate “cocoa core”...

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Wyze cameras reportedly let owners see into a stranger’s home — again

Image: Wyze

Five months ago, we wrote about how your Wyze webcam might have let strangers peek into your house. It appears to have happened again.

After an extended outage that Wyze linked to problems with AWS, ten different Redditors are reporting that their Wyze app showed them images from a security camera that wasn’t their own — giving them glimpses of a stranger’s porch or living room. Some of the videos were from entirely different timezones.

“One of my cameras notified me of an event from inside someone else home with them in it walking around,” begins one post. “I just got a motion detection notification with a picture for someone else’s house that isn’t mine!” reads another.

“Why did I get someone else’s notification which showed...

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You should play Splatoon with your family

Family reunion!

Usually my younger siblings wait until I’m done with work — they’re in earlier time zones than I am, so they’re being polite — then the group chat lights up: “Splat.” “Splat.” “Splat.”

This is our shorthand for “It’s time to play Splatoon 3.”

I am not what you would call a gamer, but I did buy a Nintendo Switch in 2020. That’s kind of when this all started. I am the oldest of five, and most of my younger siblings love video games. In the interest of bonding, I started hanging out with them on FaceTime while we played Animal Crossing together. In 2022, one of my brothers got Splatoon 3. Eventually, most of the rest of us did, too. Now four of us (and one of my brothers’ significant others) play Splatoon together.

I am writing this, in...

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Here are the best Apple Watch deals right now

The entry-level Apple Watch SE is a gateway smartwatch if there ever was one. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Editor’s note: Following a lost bid to halt a recent ban on selling its newest Apple Watches, Apple has begun selling the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 without blood oxygen measuring features. Read more about the ban here.

In September, Apple launched its latest batch of smartwatches, introducing the Apple Watch Ultra 2 ($799) alongside the new Apple Watch Series 9 ($399). Each wearable has its own pros and cons, as does the second-gen Apple Watch SE ($249), but the introduction of the new wearables also means there are now more Apple Watch models on the market than ever before — and a lot more deals to be had.

But with all of those options, which one should you pick? Generally speaking, you want to buy the newest watch you can...

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OpenAI can’t register ‘GPT’ as a trademark — yet

Image: OpenAI

The US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has denied OpenAI’s application to register the word GPT, which means generative pre-trained transformer, saying GPT is too general a term to register and can prevent competitors from correctly describing their products as a GPT.

OpenAI argued in its application that GPT is not a descriptive word — that GPT isn’t such a general term that consumers would “immediately understand” what it means.

The PTO wrote in its February 6th decision that it doesn’t matter if consumers don’t know what GPT means — because those who do use the technology understand GPT refers to a general type of software, not just OpenAI products.

Since the rise of generative AI, many other AI services have added GPT to product...

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Sony’s portable PlayStation Portal is back in stock

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Sony’s PlayStation Portal is a bit of an odd, single-purpose device but it’s been flying off shelves since it came out in mid-November — and right now it’s back in stock. The dedicated Remote Play device for the PlayStation 5 is available once again for its usual asking price of $199.99 from Sony’s PlayStation Direct storefront.

The Portal’s sole focus is to stream games off of your PlayStation 5 via Wi-Fi and into your hands on its eight-inch touchscreen LCD. It’s not that different from using Remote Play on an iPad or a phone with a Backbone One controller, but the all-in-one solution does support the full suite of DualSense haptics — including adaptive triggers and tilt controls.

If you own a PS5 and like the idea of taking your...

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The Nintendo Switch 2 will now reportedly arrive in 2025 instead of 2024

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Switch 2 rumor mill continues to grind. The original reporting on the Switch 2’s release date pegged it for a fall 2024 release in time for the holiday rush. Now, according to sources speaking to VGC, Nintendo is telling publishers the console’s release date is slated for Q1 2025.

And VGC isn’t the only one: a video from a Brazilian journalist and “similar whispers” reported by sources speaking to Eurogamer suggest the window has been pushed to Q1 2025 as well.

A release in early 2025 could see the Switch 2 (which is not the confirmed name of the console) launching at the same time of year as its predecessor, which arrived in March 2017. Two of VGC’s sources confirmed that they were developing Switch 2 games planned for early 2025.

T...

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Vudu’s name is changing to ‘Fandango at Home’

Image: Fandango

Fandango has decided to completely rebrand Vudu, a streaming video service that’s been around for over a decade, to Fandango at Home. “We will still have the same great films, shows, deals, and bundles, plus your library will stay right where it’s always been,” the company said in a post on X (via 9to5Google).

After many years of operation under Walmart, Vudu was purchased by Fandango in 2020. There haven’t been many obvious changes to the service since then; this rebranding is easily the biggest. Fandango shut down its previous FandangoNOW service when it scooped up Vudu, so perhaps it’s not a surprise that the company ultimately wanted its own name back in there. (It had already stuck “Fandango” beneath Vudu in the app’s logo.)

Vudu...

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Amazon — like SpaceX — claims the labor board is unconstitutional

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon claims the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is “unconstitutional” in a new legal document filed on Thursday, according to a report from The New York Times. The e-commerce giant joins the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX in making similar accusations after facing numerous labor complaints from employees.

Amazon made the filing in connection with a 2023 NLRB case, which accuses Amazon of breaking labor rules by threatening and discriminating against unionizing workers at a Staten Island, NY warehouse, the NYT reports.

In the filing, lawyers for Amazon argue the company hasn’t violated any rules. But, as noted by the NYT, it also adds that “the structure of the N.L.R.B. violates the separation of powers.” In other words, Amazon is...

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Android 15’s first developer preview has arrived

Android 15 is beaming down from the mother ship. | Image: Google

Our first official glimpse of Android 15 is here. It includes a lot of under-the-hood tweaks to strengthen communication between hardware and software — and it comes at a time when Google has been tightening its working relationship with frenemy Samsung. Focusing on the platform’s holistic health and working more closely with hardware partners makes a lot of sense. That’s especially true if the goal is to compete with the company traditionally known for sleek hardware and software integration: Apple.

The first developer preview is available starting today, with public betas arriving early this spring as Google works toward platform stability in June. A handful of the updates relate to Android’s Dynamic Performance Framework that helps...

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Tommy Tallarico’s never-actually-featured-on-MTV-Cribs house is for sale

Image: Francois Guillot / AFP via Getty Images

Remember Tommy Tallarico? The famous video game composer who claimed he created Roblox’s infamous “oof” sound effect, then got into a legal dispute with the game’s developers asking for an unspecified amount of money for continued use of the sound effect? Eventually, the matter was settled, and ultimately, Roblox removed the sound from the game entirely.

Y’know, Tommy Tallarico! The guy who claimed he was the first American to work on the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise despite the fact his first Sonic credit was for Sonic and the Black Knight in 2009, a full 17 years after Sonic The Hedgehog 2 was developed and released in America.

He’s also guy who boasted several Guinness World Records, including one for being the person “who has worked...

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