Tech Talk

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge VK, the Russian technology conglomerate behind a social network with hundreds of millions of downloads called VKontakte, says that its apps have been removed from Apple’s App Store . The translated statement says “some VK applications are blocked by Apple” but that it will “continue to develop and support iOS applications.” The Russian Ministry of Digital Affairs told state-controlled media outlet RT that it was investigating “the reasons for deleting VK applications and developer accounts, underlining the social significance and scale of use of the services provided by the Russian company.” The apps are still available on Google’s Play Store. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, its government has blocked several American social media sites, including Instagram , Facebook , and Twitter . The US and other governments have sanctioned many Russian-government-affiliated individuals and businesses, including VK Group CEO and Putin ally Vladimir Kiriye

Everything about the Apple Watch Ultra is bigger. It has a bigger and brighter display than the Apple Watch 8, a bigger battery, bigger (and more) buttons, and it has a bigger capacity to handle the rough and tumble world of outdoor activities. It can also take a punch, or at least a series of whacks, from a small sledgehammer. In a recent video spotted by MacRumors, YouTuber TechRax joyfully smashes the new $799 / £849 / AU$1229 Apple Watch Ultra to bits. It's a rather unrealistic durability test of the beefy 49mm wearable, but if you watch from beginning to end, you will glean some hard (in a good way) Ultra truths. It would be unfair to call the Apple Watch Ultra a ruggedized version of the Apple Watch 8 (or really any generation). It's not simply a toughened exterior. It's a completely redesigned Apple Watch. At 49mm, it's 5mm larger than the biggest Apple Watch 8. Naturally, it's also heavier. The titanium case helps it put on an additional 23 grams ov

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing crypto company Nexo, alleging that the company misled customers by saying it was registered to sell securities and commodities and that it wasn’t approved to offer services like its “Earn Interest Product” that promised returns on deposited crypto. It’s the latest legal move in a fight between regulators and crypto companies looking to offer interest-earning accounts, often insisting that they shouldn’t be classified as securities. Seven other states — California, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Washington, and Vermont — are also filing “administrative actions” against the company, according to a press release from the New York AG. The release also quotes James as saying: “Nexo violated the law and investors’ trust by falsely claiming that it is a licensed and registered platform. Nexo must stop its unlawful operations and take necessary action to protect its investors.” I'

We've now been given multiple looks at the upcoming Google Pixel Watch , but it's likely that there are still going to be one or two new announcements when the device is finally, fully unveiled – which should be on October 6 . One of those announcements might be around a Google Photos watch face for the Pixel Watch. As spotted by 9to5Google , there's now code hidden in the Google Photos app for Android that hints at support for adding pictures to the screen of a wearable. Multiple images can be selected it seems, though there will be an as-yet-unspecified limit. Presumably, if more than one photo is picked then the watch face will cycle through them, though the details of how this will work aren't yet fully clear. Photos for all There's no indication that this Google Photos watch face will be exclusive to the Pixel Watch: though Google may introduce the feature alongside the Pixel Watch, it's probably going to make its way out to other Wear OS 3 smartwatc

Before a smartphone can make it out into the world, it has to be approved by various regulators – and the Samsung Galaxy S23 just showed up at 3C, the Chinese regulatory agency, revealing another key spec along the way. This comes from SamMobile and Ice Universe , which are both trustworthy sources when it comes to upcoming Samsung products. The fact that the phone has now shown up at 3C suggests that it's still on track for a launch in the not-too-distant future, with February 2023 the month that the handset is most likely to be launched in. The only real tidbit of information we get from this filing is that the wired charging speed is going to stick at 25W, just like the Samsung Galaxy S22 . By today's standards, that's not speedy at all, with some handsets almost five times faster (120W) at recharging the battery. Slow and steady This caution when it comes to charging speeds is something that we've noticed on Samsung's other premium phones as well. The Sa

The benefits of AI without the drawbacks of the cloud. | Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images OpenAI, the company behind image-generation and meme-spawning program DALL-E and the powerful text autocomplete engine GPT-3, has launched a new, open-source neural network meant to transcribe audio into written text ( via TechCrunch ). It’s called Whisper, and the company says it “approaches human level robustness and accuracy on English speech recognition” and that it can also automatically recognize, transcribe, and translate other languages like Spanish, Italian, and Japanese. As someone who’s constantly recording and transcribing interviews, I was immediately hyped about this news — I thought I’d be able to write my own app to securely transcribe audio right from my computer. While cloud-based services like Otter.ai and Trint work for most things and are relatively secure, there are just some interviews where I, or my sources, would feel more comfortable if the audio file sta

The “NASTY!” message when you flub a note is inspired. | Image: Holy Wow Studios Trombone Champ has been the star of my timeline this week; I’m constantly running into absurd renditions of songs like “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” But in a conversation with Dan Vecchitto, the founder of Trombone Champ developer Holy Wow Studios, he brought up something I think is a major factor in the game’s success: we just don’t see a lot of comedy in gaming right now. Games have been pushing the boundaries of capital-S Serious Storytelling for some time with series like The Last of Us . Others remain popular because of their high-skill and high-stress competitive multiplayer. But we just don’t see many games that embrace their own comedy in the way that Trombone Champ does. While there are a growing number of games that are designed with intentionally lower stakes , Trombone Champ goes farther by celebrating failure. Missed notes, which are penalized in other rhythm titles like Guitar Her

If you’re looking to download the video conferencing platform Zoom, make sure you double-check the internet address you’re downloading from, because there are plenty of fake websites out there spreading all kinds of nasty viruses and malware. Researchers from Cyble have been investigating reports of a widespread campaign targeting potential Zoom users, and have so uncovered six fake install sites that host various infostealers and other malware variants.  One of the infostealers uncovered was Vidar Stealer, capable of stealing banking information, stored passwords , browser history, IP addresses, details about cryptocurrency wallets and, in some cases, MFA information, as well. Multiple campaigns "Based on our recent observations, [criminals] actively run multiple campaigns to spread information stealers," the researchers said . "Stealer Logs can provide access to compromised endpoints, which are sold on cybercrime marketplaces. We have seen multiple breaches whe

I love the cute characters in the game. | Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge Google’s Arts & Culture division has released a charming new educational game all about ancient Mesoamerica. The game, The Descent of the Serpent , is available to play right now in your browser or via the Google Arts & Culture iOS and Android apps. There’s a light plot to Descent of the Serpent , shown in a short video that plays at the beginning of the game . While exploring a museum, a large artifact is stolen by Tezcatlipoca, the Lord of the Smoking Mirror, and a living statue asks for your help to recover 20 icons included on the artifact to prevent floods from taking over the world. You, naturally, agree, and the statue says they’ll send you back in time to ancient Mesoamerica. You’ll be able to pick from one of four adorable animal “disguises” for your characters that all have roots in Mesoamerican culture. I picked Huitzilopochtli, represented by the wolf, but you can also play as

Amazon’s Logo. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon plans to limit automatic ebook returns to cases where people have read no more than 10 percent of the book, according to the Authors Guild . The change, which follows complaints that Kindle buyers were returning titles they’d fully read to get a refund, is expected to take place by the end of the year. The Authors Guild says it reached the deal after negotiating with Amazon executives. Individual authors raised concerns about an uptick in returns earlier this year, noting that Amazon would bill them for any royalties they earned from the books. Some pinned the practice’s rise on the book community of video platform TikTok, and in a press release, the guild blamed “BookTok influencers” for encouraging people to get “free” books by buying and then returning them. Previously, Amazon said it had “policies and mechanisms in place to prevent our ebooks returns policy from being abused.” The company didn’t immediately respon

When you’re in the Xbox Cloud Gaming app, the yellow Logitech button pulls up the Xbox shade as if you were playing on a console. | Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge Yesterday, Logitech announced its $349.99 G Cloud Gaming Handheld , which is coming out in the US on October 17th (until then, it’s $50 off to preorder). Today, I got to briefly test it out. It was just a 10-minute demo, but it was long enough for me to snap a few photos, launch some apps, and see how it felt in my hands. We’ll have a full review in the coming weeks. As I arrived at the testing station, Deathloop ( freshly available on Xbox Game Pass) was streaming via Wi-Fi to the handheld’s Xbox Cloud Gaming app. Sadly, it was the action-less intro sequence, but I still got to sprint and jump around. Though it wasn’t a fun killer, like all of my experiences with cloud game streaming, there was just a whiff of input lag that, at least for me, is difficult to ignore. On the plus side, the G Cloud’s buttons, trig

Valve’s stats page for its Steam storefront now has real-time charts showing both the top-selling and most played games at any given moment. You can look at the new stats page right here . As I write this, the top-selling title is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II — which perhaps isn’t too shocking given that preordering the game gets you early access to the open beta — but the next best-selling game is, to my surprise, Slime Rancher 2 . According to a blog post from Valve , the top-selling lists are ranked based on total revenue, including DLC and in-game purchases, which is intended to provide a “more complete picture of which games players are excited about getting into and continuing to play.” And Valve has added metrics like number of weeks on the chart and weekly change in rank to give you a more granular idea of how games might be trending. these updated Steam charts are so much neater, especially on mobile https://t.co/ootcSrpl1z pic.twitter.com/IUToFk4DUy — Tom Warren

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge We found the best cameras for your budget and needs Even with the ability to take excellent photos with our phones and instantly share them across the world, there’s something magical about the old-school instant camera. With just a click of a button, you can capture a moment in a photo that you can see and touch almost immediately. Images captured by an instant camera aren’t as pristine or perfect as modern digital cameras, but their soft images and imperfections are often a big part of the allure. Yet not all instant cameras are the same, and some of them are better suited for different needs and budgets. That’s why we tested some of the most popular instant cameras on the market from brands like Fujifilm, Polaroid, and Kodak. All of the models featured in our best instant camera guide here are enjoyable to use, but each offers a different set of features at a different price point. As a result, some are more appropriate for a

You can currently buy the AirPods Max for around $449 instead of $549. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge With more people working from home than they used to, owning a good pair of noise-canceling headphones has become more appealing than ever. However, they can be expensive and difficult to shop for due to the range of available models, many of which cater to different lifestyles and priorities. Some are better suited for long-haul flights, for instance, while others are ideal for multitasking and marathon listening sessions. That’s why we’ve curated this list of the best deals on noise-canceling headphones. Here, you’ll find sales on all kinds of on-ear and over-ear headphones, all of which are designed to eliminate outside noise but come with their own strengths and weaknesses. And if you want to do even more research before making a buying decision, we’ve put together a guide to the best noise-canceling headphones , which can help you determine which is right for you.