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Photo by HUSSEIN FALEH/AFP via Getty Images Some tens of thousands of people woke up on Christmas Day to doubled wages and a higher-than-expected bank balance after Santander did an oopsie, depositing £130 million ($176 million) into accounts held by its UK customers. Santander would now like the money back, please. The deposit mishap was the result of a mysterious “scheduling issue,” according to The Times , which first reported the story. The bank confirmed to The Verge that some payments were accidentally doubled. (Santander is characterizing it as a “technical issue.”) Those transactions included those from 2,000 businesses, as well as accidental deposits across 75,000 accounts of individuals and companies like a corporate Ebeneezer Scrooge who’d been scared into generosity. S... Continue reading…

Amelia Holowaty Krales CES has dropped the last day of its 2022 tech conference in Las Vegas, and the show will now end on January 7th, the Consumer Technology Association announced today. The shorter schedule is “an additional safety measure” in the face of a surge of COVID-19 diagnoses. Over the last two weeks, a number of large companies — including BMW , Intel, AMD, GM, Google, T-Mobile, Amazon, Microsoft and the company formerly known as Facebook — have dropped their physical presences at the conference. It’s the largest tech conference in the world, which typically pulls more than 10,000 people in each year. The CTA’s president and CEO has said the show “will and must go on.” Yesterday the US set a grim new record in COVID: the highest number of... Continue reading…

The US will continue to work with other countries’ space programs on the International Space Station through 2030, NASA announced today . That will allow for an uninterrupted transition to a planned commercial space station (or stations!) in the late 2020s. Funds for the ISS have already been approved through 2024. NASA administrator Bill Nelson told The Verge in May that he wants to continue work on the ISS through 2030. The ISS’s future was called into question in 2018 The ISS’s future was called into question in 2018, when a draft budget proposal from President Donald Trump’s administration had scheduled ending support for the space station in 2025. More recently, escalating tensions between the US and Russia have threatened the... Continue reading…

Fires continue to burn into the evening in neighborhoods on December 30, 2021 in Louisville, Colorado. | Photo by Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images Devastating fires in Colorado cap off a year of awful drought across the US. Dry conditions helped set the stage for blazes that scorched hundreds of homes and forced tens of thousands to evacuate just ahead of New Year’s Eve. The fires have been raging through suburbs near Denver since December 30th. Strong winds fanned the flames and knocked out power. About 6,000 acres and at least 500 homes had burned by Friday morning. But there were no casualties, which Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle called “miraculous” given the severity of the fire in a press briefing . Families had “minutes” to evacuate their homes, Governor Jared Polis said. More than two-thirds of Colorado’s land is experiencing “severe” drought, according to the US Drought... Continue reading…

A pair of non-fungible token projects are testing the boundary between plagiarism and parody. Digital marketplace OpenSea has banned the PHAYC and Phunky Ape Yacht Club (or PAYC) collections, both of which are based on the same gimmick: selling NFTs with mirrored but otherwise identical versions of high-priced Bored Ape Yacht Club avatars. Now the dueling projects are selling their apes while dodging bans from other marketplaces, becoming the latest example of how the NFT world handles copied art. Bored Ape Yacht Club (or BAYC) NFTs are some of the most expensive crypto art assets — they recently overtook CryptoPunks as the highest-priced NFT avatars with the cheapest available ape selling for $217,000. Like other avatars, though,... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales The rollout of the first major update for Google’s Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro has been slow and plagued by reports of problems. Now the company says it paused releasing the December 2021 update to investigate reports of calls dropping and disconnecting. The news arrived in a post on the Google Support forums (via Droid-Life ) that says a new version with all the previously announced features and a fix for the disconnection issue should be ready by late January. If you’re not having any problems, then you can keep using the new software for now, but for those afflicted by the connection issues, Google only suggests reverting and factory resetting your device as an option. Hey Pixel Community, The Pixel team paused the December software... Continue reading…

Wondercise Studio is a mish-mash of a social media network and Apple Fitness Plus. | Image: Wondercise At CES 2022, Wondercise is looking to shake up connected fitness with a series of intriguing launches, including a new stationary bike, TV app, and trackers. However, the Taiwanese company’s most intriguing launch is Wondercise Studio — a social media platform for fitness that lets anyone livestream their own class, complete with real-time metrics and performance feedback from fitness trackers. Wondercise describes Studio as a “social media platform with a fitness focus,” but the reality is it’s more of a mish-mash of every bit of fitness tech currently out there. Users can voice and video chat with each other during livestreamed classes. Anyone can host their own class, and users also “follow” other users or instructors as you would on... Continue reading…

Apple’s AirPods Pro wireless earbuds are a go-to pick that’s often on sale. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the holidays may have come and gone, but there are still some great discounts available on Apple’s AirPods. In fact, we’ve actually been seeing some deals that are even better than they were during the recent shopping holidays. Since Apple launched the third-gen AirPods in October and unveiled its new AirPods lineup, we’ve seen the starting price of the second-gen, entry-level model drop from $159 to $129. Even better, we’ve seen many retailers starting to heavily discount the second-gen AirPods as well as the more expensive AirPods Pro and Max, which offer noise cancellation and better sound quality than the standard model. We’ve even recently seen some significant discounts on the third-gen AirPods,... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge On Wednesday, New York City announced it has ordered 184 fully electric Ford Mustang Mach-Es for use by law enforcement and emergency response workers. The vehicles are set to be delivered by June 2022, as part of an $11.5 million contract that will remain in place for five years. The city said the Mach-Es would be used by the New York Police Department, New York City’s Sheriff’s Office, the Department of Correction, the Department of Parks and Recreation, the Department of Environmental Protection, and other emergency management and response departments. New York City plans to buy over 1,250 electric vehicles in 2022, transitioning all law enforcement vehicles to electric ones by 2035. “Law enforcement vehicles are the largest and most... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Update December 30th, 11:48AM ET: And it appears that due to an astounding lack of defenses against bots, Amazon is already sold out, again. Sony’s latest gaming console, the PlayStation 5, is one of many gaming gadgets that are hard to find in stock right now due to mostly online-only sales. If you are trying to get your hands on one, Amazon has PS5 consoles in stock right now , while supplies last. The consoles are only available for Amazon Prime subscribers, continuing a trend of retailers restricting access to consoles for paying subscribers only . If you can’t add it to your cart, keep trying — occasionally the sites restock over a period of a few minutes. We will update this post once Amazon confirms it’s out of stock. We are... Continue reading…

The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is one of many e-readers currently available as part of a discounted bundle at Amazon. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge When it comes to finding a device to use to read your ebooks, you have a few options to choose from. You can always buy a tablet or use your smartphone, but those devices are multipurpose and can be used for a ton of things, like surfing the web or doom-scrolling on Twitter. If you are looking for something to strictly read books, e-readers, while niche, are designed to store all of your books in a virtual library with limited functionality. Amazon, one of the pioneers of the e-reader, has dominated the space for years with its Kindle lineup, which consists of several unique models with their own pros and cons. Below, we’ve listed each model currently available for purchase. Sometimes, there isn’t a deal for one, or any, of the... Continue reading…

Sony’s WF-1000XM4, the best true wireless earbuds you can buy, are still on sale for $248. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Whether you’ve got a stack of gift cards burning a hole in your pocket or ended up with two air fryers that you don’t have room for, there are still plenty of deals to help you stretch your spending before the new year. Below we’ve outlined some of the best tech deals, sales, and promotions from a variety of retailers across a number of categories to make sure you don’t end up with two stand mixers when you didn’t even need one. Select a category Smart home deals Gaming deals Headphone and earbud deals Smartwatch deals 4K TV deals Laptop, Chromebook, and tablet deals Streaming device deals Other deal highlights Smart home deals While they certainly aren’t for everyone, the usefulness of Amazon’s Echo devices makes them an excellent... Continue reading…

Even for Xiaomi, the 12 and 12 Pro offer huge main camera modules. | Image: Xiaomi Xiaomi is at it again — putting another fantastically huge camera on a flagship phone. This time, it’s the Xiaomi 12 Pro with a 50-megapixel main sensor and f/1.9 standard wide lens. It’s not the very biggest sensor Xiaomi has used in a phone, but the combination of a wide aperture lens and sizable imaging chip makes it... well, just look at the thing. On the technical side, it’s a Sony IMX707 chip, which Xiaomi says it’s the first to use in a mobile device. Gizmochina points out that the 707 appears to be a very light refresh of the IMX700, which makes that claim a little less exciting. Either way, it’s a large 1/1.28-inch type sensor. Sony combines its 1.22μm pixels, which are already fairly large for a mobile camera sensor, to create... Continue reading…

james webb space telescope Following the revolutionary and successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, into space on Christmas day, NASA announced some unexpected news about the telescope’s future: its science mission is likely to last “significantly more” than 10 years — more than double the minimum time for the mission. Initially, JWST was projected to be operational for 5 to 10 years, but NASA’s latest analysis released today found that the telescope will likely have enough propellant to support scientific operations for even longer. According to NASA, the extra propellant is thanks to the precision of the Ariane 5 rocket that the JWST was on when it was launched into space. It is also due to the precision of the first and second mid-course... Continue reading…

Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images We have bad news if you’re on winter break and hope to play some Fortnite , as Epic Games has confirmed its battle royale shooter is down — and this time it’s not to help expand the game’s lore . According to a tweet from its own status page , “ Fortnite is currently unavailable and players are unable to log-in while we investigate an issue. We’ll provide more info when we have a solution to bring services back online.” Fortnite is currently unavailable and players are unable to log-in while we investigate an issue. We'll provide more info when we have a solution to bring services back online. pic.twitter.com/B3wXvu5SL6 — Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) December 29, 2021 pic.twitter.com/233nt73aDw — andrew webster (@A_Webster) December... Continue reading…

A drill rig at Controlled Thermal Resources’ (CTR) Hells Kitchen Lithium and Power project in Calipatria, California, U.S., on Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021. Demand for electric vehicles has shifted investments into high gear to extract lithium from geothermal wastewater around the Salton Sea in California’s Imperial Valley. | Bing Guan/Bloomberg via Getty Images This year, the clean energy sector finally started grappling in earnest with one of its biggest challenges: how to get enough minerals to build solar panels, wind turbines, and big batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage. Figuring that out will be critical for escaping fossil-fueled ecological disaster. It’ll also be crucial for policymakers and industry to move forward without throwing certain communities under the bus in the transition to clean energy. Instead of cutting through landscapes with oil and gas wells and pipelines, clean energy industries and their suppliers will open up the Earth to hunt for critical m

Real-time collaborative chat, as exemplified by apps such as Slack, has become a common way to communicate between colleagues and friends, especially since last year when so many of us transitioned to working from home. Google has apparently taken note of this and is pitting itself against Slack by taking two of the features from its corporate Workplace app suite — chat and spaces (previously called rooms) — and integrating them into its standard Gmail app. Google Chat allows you to hold chat sessions with friends and groups of friends either on an informal or formal basis. The former can be done just between two people or between several in what Google calls a group conversation. The latter is done via a separate area that Google... Continue reading…

Chinese astronauts Nie Haisheng and Liu Boming waving their hands during a spacewalk out of the space station core module Tianhe in August of 2021 | Photo by Tian Dingyu/Xinhua via Getty Images China filed a complaint this month with the United Nations , arguing that it had to conduct evasive maneuvers of its space station to avoid potential collisions with two of SpaceX’s internet-beaming Starlink satellites. The country is requesting that the UN’s Secretary General remind countries of their obligations under international space law, though China did not specify exactly what actions it wants to be taken. In the complaint , dated December 6th, China details two instances on July 1st, 2020 and on October 21st, 2021 when the nation had to maneuver the core module of its space station, called Tianhe, out of the way of two separate Starlink satellites. The three Chinese astronauts currently living on Tianhe had just arrived to the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge An update to Tumblr’s iOS app censors a long list of tags to comply with Apple’s strict safety guidelines . The platform explains that it’s changing iOS users’ ability to access sensitive content, affecting their experience when it comes to searching for content, scrolling through the “Stuff for You” and “Following” sections of the dashboard, and could even prevent access to blogs that are flagged. Tumblr says it has to “extend the definition of what sensitive content is” to “remain available within Apple’s App Store,” and it seems that Tumblr stretched it pretty far. Tags are what make posts searchable on Tumblr; posts with censored tags won’t appear on a users’ dashboard, nor will they show up on the platform’s search page. A Twitter... Continue reading…

Samsung’s Family Hub smart fridge will now be part of its colorful, customizable Bespoke line. | Image: Samsung The smart fridge has long been the butt of many IoT-related memes, but Samsung is betting that maybe all smart fridges needed to nab a spot in your kitchen was a more colorful look. The company will show off its newest iteration of the smart fridge at CES 2022 next week, and while it still can’t reliably determine what food you need and automatically order it so you don’t even have to think about shopping, it can be a pretty shade of blue. The Samsung Family Hub fridge is now a part of Samsung’s Bespoke appliance line. First introduced in 2021, the Bespoke range is a selection of modular, configurable appliances with a clean, modern look and customizable colors and finishes. Image: Samsung The Family Hub fridge... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Update 12:59PM ET, December 28th: Best Buy has sold out of PS5s for now, but it has started selling the Xbox Series X . If you’re currently shopping for a PlayStation 5 console and have been recently striking out with restocks at Walmart, Costco, and other retailers, you have another chance right now at Best Buy. The electronics retailer just opened up a fresh batch of PlayStation 5 consoles for $499.99 . Best Buy is only selling the disc-based version, however, not the Digital Edition. Be sure to log in and queue up on Best Buy’s site, with your billing and shipping info saved. Click the “Add to Cart” button on the right to jump into the waiting line, and stay calm. You don’t need to refresh the automated system, though, you may be... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Amazon’s Alexa told a child to touch a penny to the exposed prongs of a phone charger plugged into the wall, according to one parent who posted screenshots of their Alexa activity history showing the interaction ( via Bleeping Computer ). The device seemingly pulled the idea for the challenge from an article describing it as dangerous, citing news reports about an alleged challenge trending on TikTok. According to Kristin Livdahl’s screenshot, the Echo responded to “tell me a challenge to do” with “Here’s something I found on the web. According to ourcommunitynow.com: The challenge is simple: plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs.” In a statement to the BBC , Amazon said: “As soon... Continue reading…

People walk outside the Apple Store on the Upper West Side on March 12th, 2021 in New York City. | Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images As initially reported by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman , all of New York City’s Apple Stores have joined the list of locations closing their doors to most customers amid a spike in the number of COVID-19 infections. Image: Apple.com Services at Apple Upper West Side Last week, Apple closed seven stores in North America in a single day as positive tests among employees rose, and MacRumors points out that even before this announcement, the Apple website listed more than 20 locations that were closed today due to the effects of the pandemic. For people in New York City, the stores are still accessible if you have an appointment to pick up an online order. All other services, like its Genius Bar tech support or shopping... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge An unauthorized NFT drop celebrating infosec pioneers has collapsed into a mess of conflicting takedowns and piracy. Released on Christmas Day by a group called “ItsBlockchain,” the “Cipher Punks” NFT package included portraits of 46 distinct figures, with ten copies of each token. Taken at their opening price, the full value of the drop was roughly $4,000. But almost immediately, the infosec community began to raise objections — including some from the portrait subjects themselves. The portrait images misspelled several names — including EFF speech activist Jillian York and OpenPGP creator Jon Callas — and based at least one drawing on a copyright-protected photograph. More controversially, the list included some figures who have been... Continue reading…

Image by Warner Bros. Pictures A new trailer for The Batman gives us a glimpse at Catwoman’s “thing” for stray cats and the Riddler’s affinity for FaceTime. What’s promised as an even grittier take on Batman stars Robert Pattinson as Batman, Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, and Paul Dano as the Riddler. The two-and-a-half-minute teaser, appropriately titled “The Bat and the Cat,” highlights the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle, who don’t always appear to get along. In one scene, Batman is commenting on the — apparently concerning — number of cats Catwoman has in her home, and in the next, the duo is sparring in a low-lit office. The pair comes together by the end of the trailer, with both battling the same bad guys. Image by Warner Bros.... Continue reading…

Not pictured: a beloved phone. | Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge Motorola is working on a new version of its Razr foldable smartphones, according to a Weibo post spotted by Android Police . The post is from Chen Jin, the general manager of the Lenovo Mobile Business Group in China (Lenovo is currently in charge of Motorola’s smartphone business), and describes how the company has been quietly working on a new addition to its lineup of foldable phones. It doesn’t have big shoes to fill — Motorola’s first two modern foldables were mediocre phones with hefty price tags. We ran Jin’s post through a few translation sites, and while some parts didn’t make the jump to English, there are consistent details that show up in all the translations. The post mentions that the phone will have a better processor,... Continue reading…

Walmart store Last week, the California attorney general and 12 state officials filed a lawsuit against Walmart, saying it allegedly illegally disposed of electronic and hazardous waste, compromising local landfills. California Attorney General Rob Bonta alleges in a statement the company violated state environmental laws with their practices, and the waste included materials like lithium and alkaline batteries, insect killer sprays, aerosol cans, LED lightbulbs, and more. State investigators conducted 58 inspections across 13 counties from 2015 to 2021 and said they found classified hazardous and medical waste in each store’s trash compactors, as well as customer information that should have been rendered indecipherable. The California DOJ... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Zoom has acquired the Zoom-based broadcast tools created by the startup Liminal, along with two of the company's co-founders, the videoconferencing platform announced in a post on its blog . Liminal’s add-ons, ZoomOSC and ZoomISO , are built for creating professional virtual events, which Zoom will likely natively integrate into its software as part of the acquisition. The acquisition will help “bridge” the gap between “emerging” and “traditional” forms of event control tools As noted on Liminal’s site, ZoomOSC is designed to enhance professional meetings and events using the Open Sound Control (OSC) protocol, enabling you to integrate Zoom with third-party software, hardware controllers, and media servers. Meanwhile, ZoomISO allows you to... Continue reading…

Final Fantasy XVI is the latest game to be hit by COVID-related development delays, with the game’s producer Naoki Yoshida announcing in a letter posted to Twitter that work on the upcoming PlayStation 5 RPG has been set back by about six months. Furthermore, Yoshida announced that the next major reveal for the upcoming title — originally promised for sometime in 2021 — is now being pushed out to sometime in spring 2022. A message from Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida. #FF16 #FFXVI pic.twitter.com/qtfJUUp6LA — FINAL FANTASY XVI (@finalfantasyxvi) December 27, 2021 It’s not too surprising that Final Fantasy XVI has been hit by delays. As the first flagship Final Fantasy game for a next-generation console, the development... Continue reading…

“The Vault” is an appropriate name. | Image: XPG XPG has announced the XPG Vault, a “concept” mouse that has a built-in SSD to let you carry around your mouse and storage in one package ( via Engadget ). While lots of gaming mice have some built-in storage to let you easily carry macros and preferences from computer to computer, and the concept of a mouse doubling as a flash drive has been around for over a decade , XPG is aiming a little higher. It’s promising “to make your gaming libraries conveniently portable,” right from your mouse. There aren’t many details for the Vault in XPG’s press release, but XPG says the “current prototype can integrate up to 1TB of Solid State memory running at 985MB/s” and connects with USB-C. Given that it’s a wired mouse, that performance seems possible —... Continue reading…

Polish opposition leader Krzysztof Brejza | Photo by Mateusz Wlodarczyk/NurPhoto via Getty Images Several members of political opposition groups in Poland have produced evidence that they were hacked by Pegasus spyware, raising alarming questions about the Polish government’s use of the software. The most alarming case involved the leader of Poland’s Civic Platform party, Senator Krzysztof Brejza, whose phone was compromised a total of 33 times in the six months leading up to the 2019 election, as reported by the Associated Press . During the campaign, Polish state media published damaging text messages obtained from Brejza’s phone, leading to concerns that spyware had been used. a threat to “the rules-based international order” The compromises were discovered by Citizen Lab, a spyware research group based at the University of... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge During the Christmas holiday, it was easy to pick up on the theme on Twitter that many of you either bought or received an Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality headset . Well, in perfect timing, Oculus has discounted many of its official accessories for the Quest 2, which can help to protect your headset, as well as make it more comfortable to wear. We’ve seen promotions that discount these add-ons when you purchase a headset, but never by themselves, so that’s why they’re prominently featured today. Best Buy has the best deal on the Elite Strap that replaces the fabric strap that comes with your Quest 2. It distributes the weight of the headset more evenly on your head, with adjusters on the top and rear of the Elite Strap. Normally $49, it’s... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Armies, aliens, automobiles, the legendary mascot of the Xbox, and more Continue reading…

The Movano Ring is a smart ring with medical ambitions | Image: Movano The Oura Ring isn’t the only smart ring on the block anymore. For CES 2022, health tech company Movano is announcing the Movano Ring, a wearable that aims to help people affordably monitor chronic illnesses and better understand their data. The Movano Ring will measure all the basic metrics, including heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), sleep, respiration, temperature, blood oxygen levels, steps, and calories burned. However, instead of a raw data dump, Movano says it’ll distill how your metrics relate to each other “take a more proactive approach to mitigating the risks of chronic disease.” For example, the Movano app might tell you how your exercise habits impact your sleeping patterns or HRV over time. This isn’t surprising —... Continue reading…

The OLED Shelf displaying a piece of art. | Photo by LG Display LG Display has come up with more uses for transparent screens with its innovative new concepts that will be on display at CES 2022: the OLED Shelf, Shopping Managing Showcase, Show Window, and Smart Window. The company is not to be confused with LG Electronics, as LG Display simply creates concepts that other companies can adopt and introduce to the market. Its OLED Shelf consists of two transparent OLED displays mounted on top of one another, and as its name implies, it can be placed atop a shelf. LG Display says it’s ideal for the living room, where it can display art or a TV show. Always on Display Mode ensures that the screen stays on all the time, so if there was a piece of art on display, that image will stay put just like an... Continue reading…

The Epic Games Store is offering Control for free as part of its 15 days of free games promotion — the game is only available for free until December 27th at 11AM. To get the game, simply log in to the Epic Games Store (or create an account), navigate to Control ’s game page , and then hit “Get” to add the game to your library for free. The Federal Bureau of Control has granted us authorization to disperse free copies of @ControlRemedy for one day only. Claim yours while you can, Director. https://t.co/1bzgT8zKH0 pic.twitter.com/ZkJp5yh9VX — Epic Games Store (@EpicGames) December 26, 2021 Control was a freebie on the Epic Games Store this past June, so if you missed picking it up then, now you have another chance to grab it for free.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has reportedly hired Andrea Schubert, Meta’s communications and public relations lead for its augmented reality (AR) products, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman in his Power On newsletter. Schubert’s LinkedIn page indicates that she’s been working for Meta for nearly six years. “Meta, with Oculus, has been the market leader in headsets, so such a hire makes sense as Apple nears its launch” “Meta, with Oculus, has been the market leader in headsets, so such a hire makes sense as Apple nears its launch,” Gurman explains. On both Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year, Meta’s Oculus Quest 2 was one of the top-selling products. Not to mention that Meta’s Oculus app topped the App Store in the US on Christmas Day, and became... Continue reading…

Alexander Skarsgård is out for revenge in The Northman | Focus Features Hello and welcome to the final trailers roundup for 2021, I hope you have enjoyed reading (and watching) these roundups as much as I have enjoyed writing them. There were a lot of really good streaming shows and movies this year despite the persistence of the coronavirus that disrupted so much of our lives. Among my personal favorites were Loki, Succession, Ted Lasso, The Beatles: Get Back, King Richard, and Y: The Last Man (pls someone pick up this show it was just getting started!). This week’s list has Vikings, Hercule Poirot, and a look at the upcoming Showtime series about the early days of Uber. The Northman Director Robert Eggers ( The Witch , The Lighthouse ), said in an interview with EW that The Northman was “by far the hardest... Continue reading…

A Tesla Model S strapped with dynamite. | Screenshot from Pommijätkät via YouTube When faced with a repair bill that costs half of what you paid for your car, do you go through with the expensive repair, bring it to the junkyard, or sell it for parts? Finnish Tesla owner Tuomas Katainen decided to do something a little more extreme — but arguably a lot more satisfying — when faced with such a situation: he watched his car go up in flames, as noted in a report from Gizmodo . Katainen handed his 2013 Tesla Model S over to Pommijätkät , a group of explosion experts on YouTube who loves to make things go “boom,” after he was quoted $22,600 for a battery replacement. “Well when I bought that Tesla, the first 1,500km [932 miles] were nice,” Katainen recounted. “Then, error codes hit.” After Katainen brought his Tesla to a... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge New phone, new start Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge A privacy-minded roundup of apps, including a self-care penguin Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge As kids and adults alike flock to the Nintendo eShop, eager to spend the gift cards they found in their stockings, that excitement was quickly spoiled by an eShop error screen. The annual holiday surge has brought down the Nintendo Switch eShop for some yet again, according to a report from Kotaku . We are aware that players are experiencing errors accessing Nintendo eShop, and are working to address the issue as soon as possible. Thank you for your understanding, and please see our Network Status page for the latest updates. https://t.co/KnM0g7z7jn — Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) December 25, 2021 Nintendo sent out a tweet, noting that the company is “working to address the issue as soon as possible.” It also includes a link... Continue reading…

Death Star for scale. | Image: Park My Spaceship Park My Spaceship is the simple, extremely amusing app I didn’t know I needed. It allows you to superimpose to-scale images of notable spacecraft from sci-fi shows and movies over Google Maps. That’s it. It’s great. You can check to see if Serenity would fit in your backyard or if the Millennium Falcon could land in your neighborhood park. It’s been around since 2018, but I first encountered it this week when @CincinnatiPhil TILearned about it and shared his discoveries on Twitter. I set about placing ships around the greater Seattle area and found that the Millennium Falcon fits nicely in the fountain plaza in front of the Space Needle, which would look cool as hell. You can almost fit a Star Destroyer in Lake Union or park it on... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Many of these games play well on Series S, too Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge If you’re lucky enough to have one, that is Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Steam Global seems to have been banned in China, according to a report from TheGamer . Only the Chinese version of Steam remains accessible in the country, which currently offers a limited library of just 103 games — a very small fraction of the over 110,000 games that Steam Global has at this time of writing. Reliable Fortnite leaker and data miner Ricky Owens (aka iFireMonkey) first noticed the ban and tweeted out a screenshot of what appears to be Steam on a list of blocked websites in China. We tried to verify this for ourselves using Comparitech’s tool that checks whether a site is blocked in China. Upon entering “store.steampowered.com,” into the site, the tool indicates that Steam has been blocked in all parts of the country — as... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge The best games to play together or alone Continue reading…

Image: NASA/Bill Ingalls Early Christmas morning, NASA’s revolutionary new space observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, successfully launched into space after taking off on top of a European Ariane 5 rocket from South America. The launch marks the beginning of one of the most anticipated NASA missions in decades, a program that promises to transform how we study the deepest depths of the Universe. “From a tropical rainforest to the edge of time itself, James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the Universe,” Rob Navias, NASA’s announcer on the agency’s livestream, said at liftoff. Though the initial trip to space may have been successful, there’s still a risky journey ahead for the James Webb Space Telescope , also known as JWST. Over the next month,... Continue reading…

After nearly two and a half decades of planning and work, NASA is finally set to launch its next-generation space observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, this morning. The spacecraft will ride to space on top of a European Ariane 5 rocket, taking off out of Europe’s primary launch site in French Guiana, South America. The launch is expected to last just 26 minutes to get JWST to space. Once it’s free of the rocket, JWST will then spend the next month traveling to its final destination roughly 1 million miles from Earth and slowly unfurling to reach its final form for probing the cosmos. Here’s what you need to know to watch today’s launch. How do I watch the launch? NASA plans to livestream today’s launch on its dedicated channel,... Continue reading…

Microsoft is the latest company to drop a physical presence at CES, as the increased prevalence of COVID-19 spooks exhibitors. It joins a growing list of major companies ditching the world’s largest technology show. “After reviewing the latest data on the rapidly evolving COVID environment, Microsoft has decided not to participate in-person at CES 2022,” a company spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement. (The spokesperson declined to give their name because that’s how Microsoft prefers to announce event status changes.) Instead, the company will have a digital presence for both the Microsoft Partner Innovation Experience and Automotive Press Kit. Microsoft was a featured exhibitor at the technology conference, and is now the latest to... Continue reading…