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Showing posts from June, 2022

North Korea’s weapons program is also among crypto losers

Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge One thing I have come to appreciate is that cryptocurrency isn’t really very good at its killer use case: crime . Today’s example comes from North Korea , where the regime’s war chest of stolen cryptocurrency is suddenly worth a lot less than it used to be. Here’s an exceptionally funny sentence from Reuters : Old, unlaundered North Korean crypto holdings monitored by the New York-based blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, which include funds stolen in 49 hacks from 2017 to 2021, have decreased in value from $170 million to $65 million since the beginning of the year, the company told Reuters. That’s a 61 percent loss, overall, for those of you keeping track at home. The crypto from one 2021 heist has lost at least 80 percent of its value, an analyst with TRM Labs told Reuters . North Korea, reached for comment at its London embassy, has called this “totally fake news,” which: lol, lmao. “No sanctions yay.” North Korea is kind of

Pokémon Go developer Niantic cancels four projects and lays off more than 80 people

Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge Niantic, which has been trying to replicate the massive success of Pokémon Go with other mobile AR games, is laying off 8 percent of its workforce and canceling four projects, as reported by Bloomberg . “We recently decided to stop production on some projects and reduce our workforce by about eight percent to focus on our key priorities,” Niantic VP of communications Jonny Thaw said in a statement to The Verge . “We are grateful for the contributions of those leaving Niantic and we are supporting them through this difficult transition. “This means we can focus on our most important priorities, including Pokémon Go and a select set of new experiences, as well as the Lightship platform. This increased focus, as well our strong core business, puts us in a position to weather the broader economic uncertainty many companies are facing and continue investing in the future of AR.” Niantic is canceling its Transformers game According to Bloomberg , th

Netflix is bringing Cameron Diaz out of retirement for a new movie with Jamie Foxx

Image: Netflix Cameron Diaz is set to star alongside Jamie Foxx in a new Netflix original film, officially ending Diaz’s retirement (which some of us at The Verge apparently never got the memo on). Foxx teased the new film, titled Back in Action , in a tweet containing an audio call between him, Diaz, and Tom Brady, whose retirement from football notably lasted a whole 40 days. In a press release , Netflix doesn’t reveal much about the upcoming film other than that it’s an action-comedy directed, produced, and written by Seth Gordon, the director behind Horrible Bosses . Beau Bauman of Central Intelligence will serve as a producer, and Neighbors’ Brendan O’Brien is helping out with the script. Netflix says the premise of the film will remain “under wraps” and that production will begin later this year. Diaz last appeared in the 2014 remake of Annie , in which Foxx also starred. The pair previously had roles in the 1999 sports drama Any Given Sunday . Cameron Diaz is official

How to use Instagram to share with other social networks

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’re an Instagram user, there’s a good chance it isn’t the only social network that you post to. The app makes it very easy to send your post to a few other social networks — including Facebook (which owns Instagram). Here’s how you do it through the iPhone app (the Android app is very similar): Connect your social networks To share Instagram photos to other social networks, you’ll need to link those accounts. From the Instagram home screen, tap your profile icon, followed by the menu icon in the top right. Select Settings > Account > Sharing to other apps. Select the account you want to link and enter your login information. You can link a number of networks, including Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. (If you’re linking to Facebook, the app may already have the information to your account since, as mentioned before, both Facebook and Instagram are part of the same company.) The social networks you can share with can vary

Montblanc Summit 3 will be the first Wear OS 3 smartwatch for iOS

The Montblanc Summit 3 will be the first Wear OS 3 watch to run on iOS. | Image: Montblanc The forthcoming Montblanc Summit 3 will not only run Wear OS 3, but it’ll be the first smartwatch on the new unified platform to support iOS — sort of. The news — initially reported by Wareable — was confirmed to The Verge by Qualcomm spokesperson Lauren Miller. The Summit 3 isn’t the first smartwatch to be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 4100 Plus platform, but it is the first to launch with Wear OS 3 already installed. The fact that it also supports iOS is a significant departure from other confirmed Wear OS 3 watches. The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 lineup and the forthcoming Google Pixel Watch , for example, are exclusive to Android users. Older Wear OS 2 and Samsung Tizen-powered smartwatches, while never incredibly popular with iPhone owners, do work with iOS. Wear OS 2 watches running on the 4100 Plus chipset can be upgraded to Wear OS 3 later this year — though it’s still unc

Spotify's new Supergrouper tool lets you create your dream team

Spotify is rolling out Supergrouper, a new feature for creating playlists and living out your supergroup fantasy. The idea behind Supergrouper is for users to imagine what it would be like if their favorite musical artists came together to form one giant band. But Songs aren’t going to be melded together to form a new song as you might think -- Stairway to Heaven merged with Adele? No thanks. Instead, the feature is essentially just an easier way to create playlists without having to pull together songs one by one. To create a playlist, you first have to go to the Supergrouper website on your mobile device. (Visit on a desktop or some other device and Spotify will just tell you to use your phone.) You can choose between three to five musical artists to make up the group. From there, name your newly christened supergroup and share it on social media. And if you’re stuck on what to include in the playlist, Spotify has a randomizer button near the top that’ll throw in an artist bas

Pinterest has a new CEO, who has one job: to build the internet’s shopping mall

Pinterest has a new CEO — and likely a new sense of urgency. | Image: Pinterest Ben Silbermann is stepping down as Pinterest’s CEO, the company announced on Tuesday . He’ll be replaced by Bill Ready, who has spent the last couple of years as head of Commerce, Payments & Next Billion Users at Google. Silbermann isn’t leaving the company, though: he’ll be Pinterest’s executive chairman, following in the path of a number of tech CEOs who have recently gone from the daily trenches of running their company to a relatively more relaxed seat in the boardroom. “Bill’s actually going to be a better CEO than I am for this next chapter,” Silbermann told The Wall Street Journal as part of his announcement. There’s only one way to read that: the time for the product dreamer founder is out. Pinterest’s next job is to make money. A lot of money. Quickly. Pinterest has long seemed like a missed opportunity to investors. It’s a platform with hundreds of millions of users that isn’t growing t

Insta360's tiny new camera can shoot 6K resolution videos

Big things really do come in eensy little packages: Insta360 has just revealed its new tiny 360-degree camera that can shoot videos in enormous 6K resolution. It’s called the ONE RS 1-inch 360 Edition , which is quite the mouthful. It's essentially a direct upgrade to Insta360’s ONE RS camera from March 2022. The new camera is split across five main parts: the 360-degree lens itself, a lens cap, a mounting bracket, a battery, and a ONE RS Core. The Core is what houses the major features, including a small screen to help set up a shot or configure the device. Compared to the older ONE RS model, the 360 Edition improves on three areas while migrating over notable features. Brand new features The biggest change comes in the form of two 1-inch CMOS sensors in the lens, which ensure that images come out as high quality as possible. These sensors let the camera record 360-degree videos in stunning 6K resolution and take photographs at 21MP. The 1-inch 360 Edition is also capable o

Apple Watch 8 Rugged Edition: what we want to see

According to the rumors, the Apple Watch 8 is getting a 'Rugged Edition' or 'Extreme Edition', designed for extreme sports or intensive outdoor use. This kind of smartwatch would be like those designed by Garmin, Amazfit or Casio, with a hardy design, long-lasting battery, and a focus on features that would be useful for extreme sports. Think long-distance hiking, trail running, climbing, skiing or similar kinds of activities, with extra helpful functions like GPS tracking and altitude and weather monitoring making the watch a handy tool.  Even the best Apple Watches don't offer this kind of feature versatility right now. We've heard enough rumors to think that this new Apple Watch 8 for endurance sports is coming, but since Apple hasn't made one before, we don't totally know what it'll look like. But to give us a first glimpse, we've created this guide - it'll run you through what we've heard so far as well as what we want to see.

PS Plus Premium includes one of the best PS2 games in its line-up

The all new PS Plus is here and it has an absolute gem of horror game waiting for you. PS Plus now offers three membership tiers: Essential, Extra, and Premium.  The latter comes with all the perks you could ask for, and is the priciest of the bunch. One of these benefits is cloud streaming access to a whole horde of OG PlayStation, PS2, PS3, PS4, and PSP games.  Nestled amongst the PS2 titles is Siren. Or Forbidden Siren, depending on which region you're in. Released in 2003, some of you will definitely have slept on this one. Because you were either napping in a crib somewhere, or lining up at the spermatozoa starting line. But now's your chance to catch up with the rest of us, for less than $20 a month. What's Siren about? You know things are going to get freaky when Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama is involved. Toyama was at Siren's helm as director, as well as co-writing the game alongside fellow Silent Hill alum Naoko Sato. Exploring themes of isolat

Is Apple about to make a laptop with a battery so good it can truly last all day?

Since its announcements at WWDC 2022 , users have been wondering how much of an improvement the battery life is on laptops running the new M2 chip - well, it's already impressing testers. Both the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro were refreshed to have the M2 chip, the successor to Apple's Silicon efforts that it announced almost two years ago. The M1 chip and its subsequent spinoffs impressed with its speed, power and battery life, trouncing previous Macs with the Intel chips. However, in our early testing of the M2 MacBook Pro , it came out with battery life that could easily last the working day, coming out with results of over 15 hours of battery life.  While this is obviously impressive, I'm not tempted to start saving for an M2 MacBook Pro. Rather, it's the not-even-released M3 Pro chip in a future MacBook Pro that I'll be interested to look into more when the time comes. A 24-hour MacBook Pro doesn't seem far off (Image credit: TechRadar) Appl

Riot Games will listen in on your voice chats. Here's why it doesn't matter

Maybe they're already on their best behavior? Developer Riot Games will soon be listening in on the voice chats of Valorant players, the company announced recently -- and most people are a-okay about that.  Starting July 13 , Riot will launch a “voice evaluation system” and record in -game voice chats whenever a disruptive behavior report is submitted by players. Riot says this will help to train its language model to identify disruptive behavior, and states the voice evaluation will not be used in the reports themselves. They know that “false positives [and negatives]” can happen, Riot admits. Cracking down on disruption Right now, the developer is focused on making its tech the best that it can be before it launches the official beta later this year. The new system will record only North American players, and only those speaking English. TechRadar has asked Riot if the beta has an exact launch date and if it plans on rolling out the evaluation system internationally, but we

Crypto exchange FTX is reportedly looking into buying Robinhood

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Cryptocurrency exchange FTX is reportedly considering an acquisition of the trading platform Robinhood, according to a report from Bloomberg . Sources close to the situation told Bloomberg that FTX is still weighing the possibility and hasn’t yet made an offer. When asked about the possible buyout, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried stated that the company currently isn’t in the process of trying to acquire Robinhood. “We are excited about Robinhood’s business prospects and potential ways we could partner with them,” Bankman-Fried said in a statement to Bloomberg . “That being said, there are no active M&A [mergers and acquisitions] conversations with Robinhood.” The Verge reached out to FTX with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back. Robinhood declined to comment on the story. In May, Bankman-Fried disclosed his 7.6 percent stake in Robinhood , which was worth about $648 million at the time, according to a 13D Securities and E

The Facebook Watch app may no longer support Apple TV

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Facebook’s app for smart TVs, which lets users tune into various videos, shows, and livestreams on the platform, may no longer be available on Apple TV, as first reported by 9to5Mac . Some users say they’re no longer able to access the app after its most recent update. In a thread on MacRumors , one user shares an image of the notice they received after attempting to open Facebook Watch on their Apple TV 4K: “The Facebook Watch TV app is no longer available, but you can still find lots of videos on Facebook at www.facebook.com/watch.” Several other users report having the same experience. Facebook rolled out its Watch app on Apple TV in 2017 after first launching it on Samsung smart TVs . The app is also available on various other smart TVs and consoles, as well as on Facebook’s mobile app and desktop site. Users who still want to use the Watch app on Apple TV should be able to cast Watch from their phone to their TV, but this obviously isn’t as

My journey to drain the M2 MacBook Pro’s battery

It took a while. My review of the M2 MacBook Pro went up last Wednesday. But as soon as I got my hands on the device on the prior Thursday, it was clear that running down the battery — one of the most important things a laptop reviewer needs to do — was going to be a Whole Thing. Reader, I tried. I would use the device all evening and leave it running all night, but it would still have plenty of charge left in the morning, and I’d have to plug it in for testing, abandon it to film, or give it to our video and photo teams for shooting before I could fully drain it down. I did not have a long enough interrupted span of time to continuously use the device. That’s how absurdly long this laptop lasts. But, with the written review and the video review both live, and a solid evening and subsequent morning with no plans or obligations, last Thursday gave me my first real uninterrupted free time since the review unit had arrived. I decided, when I got home and finished dinner around 7:30

Samsung Galaxy S23 rumor hints that it won't use an under-display selfie camera

The rumors around the Samsung Galaxy S23 are starting to pick up pace, and the latest to come to our attention concerns the selfie camera: it sounds as though Samsung isn't going to move to an under-display camera on the front of the phone just yet. This comes from supply chain sources in South Korea (via Wccftech ), and it means the Galaxy S23 phones will still have punch hole notches in the display like their predecessors. We may have to wait for the Galaxy S24 for this particular component to be changed. There's no reason given for Samsung holding off on introducing a selfie camera under the screen, but there are plenty of possibilities: maybe Samsung isn't happy with the photo quality, or maybe it would push the price of the phone up too much. All about the selfies What makes this rumor slightly surprising is that there's a 4MP under-display camera embedded in the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 . Samsung knows how to make the technology and to make it work, even if

GoPro Hero 11 Black: what we want to see

The GoPro Hero 11 Black will almost certainly be GoPro's next flagship action camera. There are currently almost no reliable rumors about the upcoming camera, but a little informed digging around tells us a lot about what it may be like. So we've rounded up all of our thoughts, and wishes, in this Hero 11 Black deep dive.  Despite its likely arrival, it's quite possible that GoPro’s biggest news of this year won't have anything to do with the Hero 11 Black. Earlier this year, GoPro CEO Nick Woodman said the company plans to expand its range in 2022 , beyond the Black and Max lines we have today.  One of those new cameras is most likely the drone-friendly GoPro Hero 10 Black Bones . But could we also see a return of the White or Silver series? A new large-sensor GoPro Hero 'Platinum' to take on the 1-inch sensor action cameras from Insta360? Who knows, but we’ll be back with more on those future products as the information lands.  In the meantime, we're h