Helium says its crypto mesh network is used by Lime and Salesforce — it isn’t
Who uses Helium? | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
On Friday, Mashable reported that Helium, a crypto project praised by The New York Times earlier this year and whose parent company is backed by investment firms like Andreessen Horowitz, had been misleading people about the companies it works with. Helium advertises on its homepage that Lime, the mobility company behind those electric scooters and bikes, uses its crypto-powered mesh wireless network. The company, however, told Mashable that it hasn’t had a relationship with the company since 2019, and that it had only ever initial testing with Helium’s tech.
Now, Salesforce, whose logo appeared on Helium’s website right next to Lime’s, says that it also doesn’t use the technology. “Helium is not a Salesforce partner,” Salesforce spokesperson Ashley Eliasoph told The Verge in an email. When I followed up to ask about the graphic below, which appeared on Helium’s website, Eliasoph said that “it is not accurate.”
Helium’s website still listed Lime and Salesforce as customers hours after Mashable’s report released.
Sometime between 4:35 PM ET and 5:30 PM ET, Lime and Salesforce’s logos were removed from Helium’s home page. The Verge sent an email to Helium asking about its relationship with Salesforce at 4:48PM ET, which the company hasn’t responded to at the time of this writing.
Helium’s website no longer mentions Lime or Salesforce.
Unlike many crypto projects, it’s actually relatively easy to understand Helium’s core pitch (though there are absolutely ways to complicate it if you want). The idea is that you put a Helium hotspot — which could cost anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars — in your house, and the network’s users connect to it when they’re close by and need some data. The more data that goes through your hotspot, the more HNT (Helium’s cryptocurrency) you’d earn.
In short, it’s a sort of decentralized mesh network, where the individuals running the nodes are able to profit from providing their data. (It is worth noting, though, that using your home internet like this violates the terms of service agreements for many internet service providers.) The economics supposedly works because companies or individuals pay to use Helium’s network instead of, say, cellular data.
Members of the r/helium subreddit have been increasingly vocal about seeing poor Helium returns.
On average, they spent $400-800 to buy a hotspot. They were expecting $100/month, enough to recoup their costs and enjoy passive income.
Now, though, we have to ask: who wants to pay for it? Not many people, it seems. As one Twitter thread points out, a report from The Generalist says that only around $6,500 worth of data credits (or DCs) were spent to access Helium’s network last month. That’s a sharp contrast to the millions of dollars people have spent on equipment to set up hotspots for the network in hopes of profiting, and it’d be shockingly low if Lime were actually connecting its scooters to the network, or if Salesforce customers were using it to monitor warehouses, like Helium pitched in 2017.
The New York Times article, which called Helium an example of “how crypto can be quite useful in solving certain types of problems,” listed Lime as well as Victor, a rodent and reptile trap company, as Helium users. Lime’s obviously now denied that’s the case (and says it’s sending a cease and desist to Helium), and Victor didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s questions about whether it uses the network. However, the site that Helium touted as the place to buy Helium-enabled Victor mousetraps in its announcement of the partnership no longer seems to sell them. There also don’t appear to be any mentions of Helium in Victor’s documentation.
Helium’s documentation, however, does hint at Victor’s products, saying, “a Helium Network user requires 50,000 DCs per month to send data for their fleet of Helium-connected mouse traps. (Yes, these actually exist, and they are glorious.)”
We also reached out to Dish, which announced last year that it would use Helium’s 5G network. That announcement is also posted on Helium’s homepage, right near the top under “latest news.”
I’d like to wrap this up with a parting thought. The author of the Times story says Helium couldn’t really work without crypto technology attached, citing the fact that the company launched without any sort of crypto integration, and only came up with the idea when it was on the brink of collapse. But for years, underserved communities have had to build their own local networks after being ignored by the government and communications companies. That runs contrary to what this chipper Helium ad implies; that people would only be willing to do something for their community if they’re getting paid for it. Then again, it’s not necessarily surprising that Helium misrepresented a vital piece of the puzzle.
‘Don’t know if they are alive’: anguish of Tigrayan families cut off by telecom shutdown
The ‘partial blockade’ of the war-torn Ethiopian region has added to Tigrayans’ fears and distress
When the Ethiopian long-distance runner Gotytom Gebreslase won the women’s marathon gold at the World Athletics Championships in Oregon this month, her jubilation was tinged with sadness: she had broken the championship record, but could not celebrate with her family.
“My mother and father would have been delighted,” she said in a brief interview with the BBC, before bursting into tears.
YouTube’s making it easier for creators to turn longer content into Shorts
The company’s really pushing Shorts right now. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
YouTube is trying to make it even easier for creators to turn their longer videos into Shorts formatted for the platform's TikTok competitor, by adding a new “Edit into a Short” tool to its iOS and Android app. It’ll let creators select up to 60 seconds from one of their videos and bring the clip into the Shorts editor, right from the YouTube app on iOS or Android. From there, they can add things like text, filters, as well as additional videos shot with the Shorts camera or pulled from their photo library.
In an announcement post for the feature, YouTube says that the finished Short will link to the full video it was clipped from, which could help make Shorts an ideal promotional tool for the creator’s longer content — a key incentive for them to dive in while YouTube continues testing monetization options for the feature. If a viewer enjoys a Short created with this tool, they wouldn’t have to go to the creator’s channel and search around for the full video.
Image: Google
Using the tool should be relatively simple.
Unlike other tools like Cut, which lets you use five seconds from a longer video in a Short, or Clips, which can be converted into Shorts, the Edit into a Short tool can’t be used on other users’ uploads. It’ll only show up in the Create menu if you’re viewing a video you uploaded.
YouTube has put a lot of focus on Shorts since it started rolling out the feature in 2020. It’s tried to incentivize creators to use the format by setting up a fund that paid creators if they uploaded Shorts. As TechCrunch notes, the company has also been padding out its library by converting existing videos to Shorts, as long as they were filmed vertically and under 60 seconds long. Last month, YouTube said that over 1.5 billion people watched Shorts each month.
YouTube’s post says the Edit into a Short tool will “allow you to bring fresh life to your classic content” and that access to it is currently rolling out. While it probably won’t completely replace more traditional video editing software when it comes to creating Shorts (like in an instance where a creator wants to splice together multiple clips from the same video), it could encourage creators to take a look at their back catalog and see if there’s anything that would work well as a Short.
The Twitter Blue subscription is getting more expensive
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
People frequently express their amazement that Twitter is free, but for some people, it isn’t — Twitter Blue launched last year in several countries, tacking on a few extra features for anyone willing to pay $2.99 per month. Today the service told subscribers it’s increasing the price (via Matt Navara), and in the US, it’s jumping up to $4.99 per month. That probably won’t break the pockets of information addicts who are choosing to pay for a service that still includes advertisements in their feed, but it might be enough to make people ask themselves if it’s worthwhile.
The add-ons in the Twitter Blue package range from extremely useful (an undo tweet window to fix typos, a customizable navigation bar, a list of Top Articles shared by people you follow, and ad-free access to articles on sites including The Verge) to trivial (the ability to choose from different app icons) to questionable (NFT hexagon profile pics).
In an email to users, the Twitter Blue team insists the higher rate “helps us continue to build some of the features you’ve been asking for, improve upon the current ones you already love and sustain our mission of supporting journalism.”
Image: Twitter
Twitter Blue’s new subscription rates.
The higher price is already taking effect for new subscribers, but for the early adopters, Twitter says they will stay locked in at the original price until October and can expect to receive an opportunity to cancel at least 30 days before the new rate takes effect.
To keep paying customers on the hook, the Twitter Blue email teases a “more frictionless reading experience” in the works, among other features set to launch in Twitter Blue Labs. One reason I might stick around until at least October, if not beyond, is also not listed in the email: editable tweets. Twitter seems to have picked up the pace of feature development under Parag Agrawal’s administration, and with the feature already announced and in testing, I can wait to see if it’s included as a Twitter Blue benefit at launch.
How to fix the Steam Deck’s noisy fan
Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
160-plus hours into Elden Ring, I’m sure of one thing: the single most annoying thing about my Steam Deck is its whiny fan. And now, I’m so happy to report there’s a way to fix it. It takes roughly 15 minutes and $30 — depending on where you live — to install a replacement fan from iFixit.
(If my three-minute video isn’t your thing, you could alsoread iFixit’s step-by-step guide. TL;DR you’re looking at 13 Philips-head screws and a teensy bit of tweezing and prying; it’s all very straightforward.)
Is the fan still loud? Yes, yes it is, but it’s a whoosh instead of a whine. I like to think of it as the sound of air escaping the Deck’s vents, but mostly, I don’t think about it at all. I can easily tune out the new whoosh, whereas the whine always managed to get my attention even after Valve tweaked its software to bring the fan noise down.
In fact, the new fan has less whine than the electrical tape trick I showed you in April, and — YMMV — seems to be oh-so-slightly quieter overall. I did an admittedly unscientific test with the new fan against both my original whiny fan and one fixed up with the electrical tape, and the new fan measured 2 to 2.5 decibels lower than either in the quietest room in my house.
Each time, I let the Deck’s chip heat up to over 90 degrees Celsius and nearly maxed out its power draw at 28 watts to ensure the fan was blowing as much as possible — which, honestly, is pretty similar to how it runs when I’m playing Elden Ring normally.
Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
iFixit sells the “good” fan, made by Huaying.
How can a replacement fan make such a difference? It’s a long story, but the Steam Deck community figured out many months ago that Valve shipped its gaming handheld with one of twodifferent fans. One is made by Delta, the other by Huaying, and it’s long been suspected that the Delta fan is an inferior part that Valve didn’t initially design for. But while Valve has attempted to alleviate the issue with software, it’s definitely a hardware problem as well.
Last month, GamersNexus all but settled the question, putting both fans to the test and providing excellent audio samples of what the “whine” actually sounds like in practice (skip to 8:51 for that):
So when iFixit announced it had found a supply of the Huaying fans, there was reason for excitement. Would fixing it be as simple as buying the “better” fan, popping the Deck open, swapping the fans and re-fastening 13 screws? I think I’ve now seen enough to say the answer is yes.
Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
The $30 iFixit kit comes with picks to open the Deck, a screwdriver and ESD-safe tweezers, and the fan.
I won’t attempt to re-write iFixit’s fan replacement guide, which you can find right here, but I will say that it was quick and easy with those instructions and the kit — which includes a simple screwdriver with the right Philips bits, a pair of tweezers, and a handful of blue picks to pop open the Steam Deck’s plastic shell clips. It did take a couple tries to figure out how to use those blue picks to pop open the case, and I found it easier to pull out the fan’s electrical connector with my fingernails than tweezers, but every piece got used and I didn’t need anything that wasn’t in the box.
I spend a lot of time playing the Deck in quiet rooms where family members are trying to doze off. So for me, it’s $30 well spent. I just wonder why Valve isn’t doing something about the fan itself — it’s pretty clear now that the whiny fan isn’t the intended experience.
In case you’d like to hear some of my own audio samples (you’ll need to turn the sound up and/or wear headphones!), I took recordings of the bare Delta fan, a taped-up Delta fan, and the Huaying fan all at the same distance from the microphone.
Delta fan
Delta fan ramping up (whine more obvious)
Delta fan with electrical tape (very slight whine in background)
As Congress Debated Landmark China Bill, Beijing Surged Ahead Experts are still assessing how China apparently leapfrogged ahead in its effort to manufacture a semiconductor that rivals those made in Taiwan, which supplies both China and the West.
According to the report, Meta spent about $105 million in three-year content deals for news (plus another $90 million for news videos), including $10 million for the Wall Street Journal, $20 million for the New York Times, and $3 million for CNN in arrangements that sometimes included unlocked access to paywalled content. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that the rise of regulation forcing Facebook and other internet giants to pay for news caused the company’s waning enthusiasm and cited a source today saying the paid news push was an “experiment that ultimately didn’t pay off.”
A statement from an unspecified Facebook spokesperson given to Axios said, “a lot has changed since we signed deals three years ago to test bringing additional news links to Facebook News in the U.S. Most people do not come to Facebook for news, and as a business it doesn’t make sense to over-invest in areas that don’t align with user preference.”
When Facebook introduced the News tab in 2019, it talked up the potential of a section with daily top stories “chosen by a team of journalists” that could avoid the pitfalls of other News Feed adventures that sometimes boosted fake news, the Instant Articles that publishers didn’t appreciate, or its infamous “pivot to video.” For me, it was just another section of Facebook that I visited once and never went back to.
Valve won’t allow awards and reviews on Steam store images starting in September
Valve’s new rules will prohibit text like this on an image. | Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
Valve is making a big change to the way developers can market their games on Steam. Beginning September 1st, graphical assets developers use in their store listings will only be able to include game artwork, the game’s name, and any official subtitle. Images won’t be able to include review scores, award names or logos, text that markets discounts, or text promoting a different product.
The new rules could prove to be a drastic shift for some developers, as they may rely on reviews or awards on their images in an effort to stand out from the humongous number of games available on Steam. Even some developers of well-known games will have to make changes — while writing this article, I saw promotional images of Hades and It Takes Two on Steam that featured awards.
It’s our goal to make it as clear and straightforward as possible for customers to find games to buy and play on Steam. Recently, we’ve noticed more text, award logos, and even review scores being included by game developers in their graphical asset images. This made us realize our guidelines haven’t been as clear as they should be. As a result of not having clearly-defined rules, we’ve seen additions to graphical assets that are creating a confusing and sometimes even inaccurate experience for customers.
For example, some game logos themselves have become so small that it’s hard for players to tell what the name of the game is. In other cases, graphical asset images are so cluttered with award logos and ratings that it is distracting and hard to read. Some capsules include review scores that are no longer accurate. We also see that in most cases this additional text on assets is presented in English language only, isolating much of the Steam audience that doesn’t speak English.
And Valve argues that review quotes, scores, and awards have dedicated spots on Steam store pages where developers can still include that information. But you might not see those if you’re just browsing through Steam in search of something new to play.
Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
These awards will need to be removed from the It Takes Two image.
Valve isn’t entirely banning text on assets; you can still include a game’s title or subtitle, and in one example in the blog post, the company encourages using text in artwork to promote a new update or content for your game. But any text you include will have to be localized into the languages that your game supports. You can read Valve’s full documentation here.
This isn’t the first time Valve has laid down a mandate with big ramifications for developers. In 2018, after some controversy about what games should and shouldn’t be allowed on Steam, Valve said that it would allow “everything” on the store except for “things that we decide are illegal or straight up trolling.” Valve has also since banned blockchain games and NFTs. But the company has worked to improve its recommendations to help you see smaller titles you might like, which could help you see something new while you’re looking for your next game.
Overwatch Contenders teams ‘go on strike’ mid-broadcast
Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard is facing another walkout of sorts; this time, it’s players in the regional Overwatch Contenders tournament. After a competitive ruling ended a match prematurely, players in the European Overwatch Contenders Summer Series tournament refused to play.
In the off-week of the Overwatch League as teams rest up from the beautiful chaos of the Midseason Madness tournament last week, Blizzard ran an Overwatch Contenders tournament to fill the time. Just like Midseason Madness, the Overwatch Contenders Summer Series is a double-elimination tournament with a winner’s bracket and a loser’s bracket. Today’s European winner’s bracket final — the game that would determine which team would go on to the grand final and which team would fall to the loser’s bracket final — was between 01 Esports and Munich Esports and was, according to several players involved and the tournament’s rules website, listed as a best of seven.
In Overwatch League proper, it’s not typical for matches other than the grand finals to be a best of seven. Knowing that, a player from Munich Esports reached out to a Blizzard tournament administrator to confirm if the match was indeed best of seven and received confirmation and reassurance that the winner’s finals match was best of seven.
And with that, the two teams played.
Munich Esports went up 3-0, however 01 Esports hit the gas and started to turn it around winning the next two maps bringing the score 3-2. It’s here when all hell breaks loose.
Blizzard tournament admins abruptly called the match, citing that the game was intended to be a best of five, not a best of seven. Since Munich Esports was the first team to three maps, they were awarded the win. This caused a major and furious backlash against Blizzard on social media as players from Munich Esports and 01 Esports started sharing screenshots of conversations with tournament admins confirming that they had been told the match would be best of seven.
Since 01 Esports was immediately scheduled to play in the loser’s bracket against another team, they coordinated with their new opponents, Ex Oblivione, to essentially strike.
Aron “ANJ” de Jong, a main tank player on 01 Esports, spoke to The Verge about what happened.
“Because of our loss, we had to play against Ex Oblivione in the losers bracket,” he said. “We made an agreement with them that this was unacceptable, and that Blizzard can’t treat the players like this. We agreed with Ex Oblivione to not play the game, but we wanted to make a statement so we decided to play the game but not actually compete.”
In the broadcast below, you can see that neither team is playing earnestly; players stand around and refuse to play the objective. It’s a fantastic bit of collective action that’s also pretty funny, especially as the casters start to realize that nobody’s taking this seriously.
After this demonstration, the broadcast was paused and subsequently ended. Shortly after that, a tweet from Ex Oblivione player Helv text of an in-game chat in which a tournament admin threatened to disqualify both teams if they refused to play.
Players and fans starting using the hashtag #ContendersStrike to bring attention to the issue, and it gained enough traction to become a trending topic on Twitter:
Twitter / The Verge
Overwatch Contenders did put out a statement on Twitter explaining what happened and the next steps.
— Overwatch Path to Pro (@owpathtopro) July 28, 2022
Ex Oblivione and 01 Esports will not be disqualified for their demonstration, and Munich Esports and 01 Esports will be able to continue the match as a best of seven. Though this is players’ desired outcome, others feel that the miscommunication and subsequent fallout is indicative of a larger problem of Blizzard and its treatment of semi-pro Overwatch esports.
“[Blizzard] needs to own up to their lack of communication between Blizzard staff and the teams,” @kevhx_, general manager of Ex Oblivione, tells The Verge over Discord. “It happens way too often that we lack semi-critical information or receive it very late.”
Think of Overwatch Contenders as minor league baseball. It has its own structure, is run by third-party tournament organizers, and it’s the well from which future Overwatch League players are tapped. Unfortunately, players, coaches, and fans of Contenders feel like it’s not given the proper support from Blizzard, especially given that without a thriving amateur ecosystem, teams in the League would have a hard time finding talent to fill their ranks.
“It’s important to note that just this decision made by Blizzard isn’t the only reason for the out roar,” 01 Esports tank @kraandopOW tells The Verge in a DM. “Blizzard has done a polite put poor job at communicating with the [Contenders] participants and this felt like the last drop.”
You can finally see a live feed of your Google Nest cameras on your TV
Google’s latest Nest security cameras can stream a live feed to a Chromecast with Google TV. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge
Google is finally bringing an old feature to its new Nest cameras. Starting this week, you can stream the video feed from all your Nest cameras and video doorbells to your TV using a Chromecast with Google TV. Google announced the feature in a blog post on the Google Nest Community forum Wednesday morning.
“What?” You ask. “Couldn’t you already do this?” Well, yes and no. It was possible to view the video feed from older Nest cameras — such as the Google Nest Doorbell (wired), the now discontinued Nest Cams, and the camera inside the Nest Hub Max — on the biggest screen in your home.
Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge
Starting this week, you can view a live stream from your Nest Doorbell (battery) on your TV using a Chromecast with Google TV.
However, Google only singles out the newer Chromecast with Google TV as supported, so we don’t know yet if it will work on other Chromecast and Google TV devices.
The new integration is rolling out this week, according to Google. And there’s nothing to enable to activate it. Just make sure your Chromecast is on the same Wi-Fi network as your cameras. You can either use the Google TV voice remote by pressing the Assistant button and saying, “show me the front door camera.” Or ask your Nest speaker or smart display, by saying, “hey Google, show me the front door camera on my TV.”
Now, we just need Google to follow through with its promise to add a web portal option to its new Nest cameras, so they can finally gain feature parity with its old Nest cameras.
Facebook and Instagram are going to show even more posts from accounts you don’t follow
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
If you already have strong feelings about your Instagram feed increasingly showing Reels from accounts you don’t follow, just wait until next year.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company will more than double the amount of content from recommended accounts people see while using Instagram and Facebook by the end of 2023. He said that such recommendations currently account for roughly 15 percent of the content on Facebook, and that the percentage is already higher on Instagram.
The push, which Zuckerberg calls building the “Discovery Engine,” is a radical departure from Facebook and Instagram’s historical focus on showing posts from a user’s social graph, or list of friends. The shift is intended to compete with TikTok’s heavy use of AI to serve up videos regardless of where they come from. That approach has quickly made TikTok one of the most used apps in the world and spawned a whole new creator economy.
During Meta’s second quarter earnings call on Wednesday, Zuckerberg explained that as “Al finds additional content that people find interesting, that increases engagement and the quality of our feeds.” He said Meta will use AI to recommend all the content people publicly share on its service, such as links or photos.
“In that sense, I think what we’re doing is going to be pretty unique,” he said, alluding to TikTok’s singular focus on short videos. “I don’t think people are going to want to be constrained to one format.”
Facebook’s last big shift in how it recommends content was in 2018, when Zuckerberg announced a strategy focused on encouraging “meaningful social interactions” (MSI) between friends in the News Feed. When it was introduced, Zuckerberg predicted that it would lead to a decrease in time spent on the social network but leave users feeling better.
“The research shows that when we use social media to connect with people we care about, it can be good for our well-being,” he said at the time. “On the other hand, passively reading articles or watching videos — even if they’re entertaining or informative — may not be as good.”
Now that Meta’s business is slowing and Facebook’s user base is aging, Zuckerberg appears to be throwing out the past four years of how the feed was architected. On Wednesday, he said that people were shifting away from sharing in feeds altogether and instead communicating over private messages.
“One social trend that we’re seeing is that instead of people just interacting in comments in feeds, most people find interesting content in their feeds and then message that content to friends and interact there.”
Doug Mastriano Faces Criticism Over His Backing From Antisemitic Ally The founder of Gab, a far-right social media network, recently made bigoted remarks defending his ties with Mr. Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania.
Given that most people don’t usually associate gaming with going outdoors, some of the items in the lineup actually seem decent. Xbox’s camp chair looks like a clone of the design popularized by the Helinox Chair Zero (to be fair, so does prettymucheveryothercampchair), but electric green and twice as heavy. Given that it’s significantly cheaper than the Helinox, though, it’s hard to complain about weight.
The hammock also seems fine — again, people who count every ounce probably wouldn’t want it, but it seems perfectly suitable for slinging up between two trees at a campsite. And while I love that Microsoft is trying to get people to drink more water with this Nalgene water bottle, I just wish it wasn’t charging doublenormal retail price for it now that its admittedly very cool topographical branding has been slapped on.
As an outdoorsy person myself, though, I’m not sure Microsoft’s “camper” marketing lines up with how some of these products are actually made. It says that its T-shirts, hats, and sweaters are for “exploring the great outdoors,” but they’re made of 80 to 90 percent cotton, according to their spec sheets. If you’ve ever even been within spitting distance of an REI or other outdoor shop, you might recognize that’s a bit of a problem — the phrase “cotton kills” is probably one of the most-cited pieces of advice in the hiking and camping community.
It is, to be clear, an overdramatic slogan. Cotton clothing has been implicated in a few deaths from exposure over the years, but it’s not like you’ll immediately die if you step foot on a trail wearing this ABXY heather tee. However, if you get caught out in bad weather, you could have a real problem on your hands — cotton doesn’t keep you warm when it gets wet. Making matters worse, it dries out very slowly, so even if the rain stops, your sopping cotton shirt may keep sapping warmth from your body. And while that probably won’t kill you unless you’re in a pretty remote area, in the words of Sans Undertale, “you’re gonna have a bad time.” Also: moisture won’t necessarily come from precipitation. I’ve had plenty of hikes where a cotton tee soaked up all my sweat and then proceeded to chill me to the bone once I got to a shady section of trail.
Image: Microsoft
Does this person look like they’re enjoying their time outdoors?
I don’t want to overstate the danger here. You don’t need a shirt made of wool or fancy athletic fabrics to go hiking; you’ll just have a more enjoyable experience if you do. (And for the prices Microsoft is charging for these shirts, you could definitely get a nice hiking shirt if you’re going to be spending a lot of time outdoors.) What’s weird, though, is that other pieces of clothing in Microsoft’s collection, like this nylon windbreaker or these nylon shorts are made out of a material that is actually suited to hiking.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t buy any of this gear — I’ll even admit that the Xbox-y outdoors-y patterns look pretty cool. But if you do pick them up to add them to your Microsoftclothing collection, perhaps leave the shirts at home on your next camping trip, unless your definition of “camping” is sitting near a spawn point in Call of Duty. You monster.
London paid a record price for electricity during its heatwave
Photo by Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images
Last week, the UK reached its highest temperature on record — 40 degrees Celsius, or more than 104 degrees Fahrenheit. On July 20th, as the record-breaking “Red Extreme” heatwave continued to linger, a Bloomberg op-ed reports officials made the decision to pay a record price of £9,724.54 (about $11,685) per megawatt to ensure electricity for South London residents — about 5,000 percent higher than its usual average price of £178 per megawatt hour.
To avoid an energy short squeeze in 2021, the UK paid about £1,600 (more than $1,900) per megawatt to import energy.
Yesterday #gas produced 43.0% of British electricity, more than wind 23.5%, nuclear 15.1%, biomass 7.2%, solar 6.0%, imports 3.8%, coal 0.8%, hydro 0.7%, other 0.0% *excl. non-renewable distributed generation pic.twitter.com/cRzVsCUKfP
— National Grid ESO (@NationalGridESO) July 21, 2022
But this time, BBC reported, the combination of the heatwave, a storm in Belgium affecting solar power output, and maintenance on overhead all played a part, forcing the National Grid’s Electricity System Operator (ESO) to make the higher-than-usual purchase to avoid blackouts. A spokesperson from the National Grid ESO said a specific circuit was needed to get the energy to the right place.
The power purchased at that rate was only enough to supply about eight households for a year, Bloomberg says, keeping the system stable over the course of an hour, and additional power was purchased at lower rates.
The Bloomberg op-ed argues that power from elsewhere in the country or even turning to offshore wind farms in Scotland should have been a solution. But failures to invest in grid upgrades and resistance to installing more above-ground equipment may have left the system vulnerable. The worry is that next time, even high prices may not be enough, and as an inevitable side effect of a warming planet, residents could face blackouts in the future.
“While we are disappointed that we had to terminate our proposed merger with Frontier, we are proud of the dedicated work of our Team Members on the transaction over the past many months,” Ted Christie, president and CEO of Spirit Airlines, said in a statement. “Moving forward, the Spirit Board of Directors will continue our ongoing discussions with JetBlue as we pursue the best path forward for Spirit and our stockholders.”
It’s not clear where things will go from here, as Spirit shareholders still need to approve the deal with JetBlue, and even then, Spirit executives aren’t convinced regulators would allow it. Spirit has raised concerns about JetBlue’s involvement with the North American Alliance (NEA), a partnership that combines JetBlue’s and American Airlines’ services in New York City and Boston.
The NEA is supposed to make it easier for passengers to board connecting flights from either service, as well as introduce more routes to both cities, but the Department of Justice (DOJ) believes it could harm the airline industry. Last September, the DOJ filed an antitrust complaint against the NEA last September, arguing it decreases competition and harms passengers by consolidating the airline industry.
Steam now supports Nintendo’s classic controllers for Switch Online
The Nintendo Switch Online NES Controller | Image: Nintendo
Steam’s latest update adds support for Nintendo’s classic controllers that it makes for Nintendo Switch. Valve doesn’t specify exactly which controllers are compatible — the language in the patch notes is that Valve has “Added support for Nintendo Online classic controllers” — but the change presumably means you can now use the Switch-specific NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, and Sega Genesis controllers with your PC games.
If you want to pick up one of those controllers to use with Steam, you should know that you can only purchase them if you’re a Nintendo Switch Online subscriber. You can grab the NES and SNES controllers right now, but the N64 and Genesis controllers are currently out of stock. Nintendo’s website doesn’t indicate when they might be available again, but when they are, you’re going to want to jump on them quickly.
Fighting game fans might be happy to hear that Qanba’s Obsidian and Dragon Arcade joysticks and Hori’s Fighting Stick Mini 4 are now supported in Steam as well. And Valve has made some improvements in how Steam supports Sony’s DualSense controller: on Windows, you’ll be able to see a firmware update dialog (which follows the release of Sony’s official DualSense firmware updater app for PC), and controllers with updated firmware will have “improved rumble emulation” enabled.
The Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake is reportedly on pause
A screenshot from the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake trailer. | Image: Aspyr Media
Development of the upcoming Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake for the PS5 and PC is on pause, according to Bloomberg. The game’s art director and design director were also fired earlier this month after the development team showed a demo of the game to Lucasfilm and Sony.
The Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) remake was first announced at Sony’s big fall showcase last September, but developer Aspyr Media, which is owned by Embracer Group, hasn’t yet shared a release timeframe for the title. The remake has been in development for three years, and while the original plan was to release the game by the end of 2022, a more “realistic target” is now 2025, Bloomberg reports.
Saber Interactive, another Embracer Group studio, is also helping with development, and Bloomberg says that “some at Aspyr believe” that Saber could take over. Aspyr, Embracer Group, and Sony didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
While the original KOTOR was released in 2003 and was developed by BioWare, Aspyr is quite familiar with the game and its sequel, as it worked on ports of both. Some of the original KOTOR team is also on board for the remake, Aspyr’s Ryan Treadwell wrote in a PlayStation blog post. The game will be a console exclusive for PS5 when it launches.
Adam Mosseri confirms it: Instagram is over
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
You know, I didn’t want to join Instagram, but I had adopted a kitten with an internet following, and the following wanted to know how the kitten was doing. For a while, I dutifully updated once a week. But then Instagram started to change.
Two big things happened in 2016. First, there were the changes to the feed. Algorithmic. Well, all right. Then, the Snapchat imitation: the Story. It was whatever. I didn’t mind it. After a while, I stopped posting photos in favor of posting Stories because more people looked at the Stories. There started to be more ads clogging the Stories, so I stopped watching as many. And I stopped posting photos or Stories as often.
Then came the ham-fisted video stuff: IGTV, which I avoided as much as I could, and the TikTok imitation Reels, which were much more difficult to avoid. This is where the algorithmic feed really bit people. I saw stuff passed around on social media about how to please the algorithm: a certain number of Stories, a certain number of Reels. If you didn’t do what the algorithm wanted, people simply wouldn’t see your posts. But unlike influencers, who have based their businesses on this platform, I could simply choose not to do that. I used Instagram less and spent more time on Reddit since I prefer text to video.
Now, there’s something to make the feed still worse: “discovery.” That’s when a bunch of videos from people you don’t follow get shoehorned into your feed. That’s where we are now with Instagram. The people who I have made an effort to follow — the people whose posts I most want to see — are getting de-ranked for strangers’ videos.
Come now the Kardashians, who have said that the new Instagram sucks. These women make money on Instagram; indeed, the platform wooed them deliberately and built itself around influencers such as the Kardashians. Unlike me, they are actually important constituents of Instagram, and so the platform’s head, Adam Mosseri, responded.
According to Mosseri, Instagram’s users are shifting to video. That may even be true! Certainly, I did not want to switch to video and consequently stopped using the platform as much. Meanwhile, people who use Instagram as a way of making money were forced to post more videos to remain in people’s feeds. Doesn’t seem very organic, if you ask me.
It’s funny to see Instagram Facebookify because no one wants to use Facebook either. (I quit in 2006, rejoined briefly to post Verge stories before we automated our social process, and then quit again.) People talk about Facebook like it’s a drag, and it’s increasingly how they talk about Instagram, too.
The platform changes are upending people’s businesses for two reasons: one, because they have to rejigger everything yet again to try to please the algorithm, but two, because Instagram is driving parts of the audience away. I mean, if I want to watch a TikTok, I will, you know? I literally came to Insta for the cat photos.
But Facebook is in a tough position. It’s renamed itself “Meta” after something that doesn’t yet exist and has to figure out how to keep the lights on while it “builds the metaverse” or whatever. (What is the metaverse’s killer app, pray tell?) And Apple’s privacy push — “Ask app not to track” — has cost $10 billion in lost Facebook revenue.
So the changes suck, and Mosseri is letting us all know that Facebook doesn’t care that the changes suck. It’s just trying to squeeze as much growth-hacky engagement out of its legacy platforms as it can. High-quality photos — the original value proposition of Instagram — matter less than scammy ads for weight loss, speed (oh, sorry, “ADHD treatment”), and ketamine. Quite a way to fall from that first Michael Kors ad! Seems like Instagram is, in some important sense, over.
Look, I’ve quit various social media sites before. I know this feeling well. Instagram is desperate, and no one likes you when you’re desperate. The question is, mostly, where I will go. BeReal is more fun, but it loads slowly, and I hate notifications. Twitter isn’t really meant for cat photos. Can someone just build a simple photo app that isn’t sleazy and let me know where it is so that my friends can join it? I have a lot of cat photos I’d like people to look at.
Nest co-founder Matt Rogers invests in EV conversion company Everrati
Everrati and Irvine, California-based Aria Group take apart a Porsche 911 to begin its EV rebirth. | Image: Everrati
When we last spoke with Everrati CEO Justin Lunny, his UK-based restomod company that converts iconic cars to electric vehicles was expanding into the US market. Since then, the company set up headquarters in Calabasas, California, and in April, it partnered with Irvine-based manufacturer Aria Group to work on state-side electric conversions of Porsches and other prestige vehicles. Now Aria Group is helping build the first Everrati Porsche in California, and the owner of that car is a major investor: former Nest CEO Matt Rogers.
Rogers’ car is a Porsche 911 (type 964) wide body, similar to his father’s that he has fond memories of riding in as a kid. Since then, he promised himself that he’d get one, too, but only if it were electric. The once Apple engineer left Nest in 2018 and has since been focused on technologies to help fight climate change. Rogers heard about Everrati through a UK-based publication and contacted the company to inquire about its business and future — and, of course, about getting his Porsche converted.
That’s where Aria Group comes in: the low-volume manufacturer has worked on bespoke vehicles from Singer Vehicle Design, which makes custom Porsche 911s, and Radford Motors, which outfits luxury vehicles, and now it’s working on the first US-built Porsche 911 (964) wide body Everrati Signature Edition with the performance pack. It uses Everrati’s 700-volt EV powertrain that can go 0-62 mph in under four seconds and can travel up to 200 miles on one charge. Lunny says that demand for their electrified icons is surging globally, and California, with its abundance of sustainability-conscious young professionals, has more interested customers than anywhere. In just the past month, Everrati picked up four more orders of the Porsche 964, Lunny tells us.
This transcript is from an interview on June 23rd and has been lightly edited for clarity.
So, “Restomods.” I guess it’s a term because most shops are still modifying cars; therefore, it’s a modification.
Matt: That’s right.
And they’re restoring, so it’s a restoration. Do you think that’s not giving it enough justice?
Matt: Restoration implies, like, you’re going backwards in time and bringing out the best of what it was. And this [Everrati] is like, you’re bringing out the best of what it was and bringing it forward in the future. And I think that like the original Tesla Roadster, they didn’t really call it a restomod. But in today’s lingo, it totally would be.
Justin, I was interested in hearing what’s changed since we talked last? You’re expanding into the US market, you picked up a partner from gettacar…
Justin: Yeah, that’s right. Amit [Chandarana] joined. He’s very much looking at how we develop some of our commercial operations in North America. You’ll also have seen that we are partnering very closely with Aria. Aria [is] building Matt’s car as we speak, literally.
Matt: I got some fun photos the other day, actually.
Justin: It’s kind of exciting. Because, you know, I understand why things like restomod are used by definition because that is the word. But I suppose, as Matt rightly says, you know, hopefully, the vehicles are going to be better than new, clearly, because they are.
Image: Everrati
Matt Rogers’ Porsche 911 being painted at Everrati partner Aria Group. This image is from about two weeks ago, while the image Rogers had shown during this interview was only primed.
Oh wow, and Aria is building that right now?
Matt: They sent me [that] like a couple days ago.
Justin: So where we are, I suppose as a business, we have a lot of interest now, from people who, I’ll be honest, either have had Singers or are on a waiting list for Singer … two of them said they’re going to cancel that because they don’t believe it’s going to be socially acceptable to take delivery of a million dollar combustion engine vehicle at that point.
Matt: I mean, I wouldn’t do it. If you’re gonna invest the time to build something so special, why do a gasoline-powered engine? Just doesn’t make any sense.
Is this something that a lot of the high-end vehicle manufacturers are seeing? Their general customers are coming back to them saying: “Hey, we don’t really want this kind of stuff anymore?”
Justin: Really good question. I think certainly the way, let’s be honest, there’s so many new products out there right now, new EVs and, dare I say, our gateway drug is a [Porsche] Taycan. People that have a Taycan, they kind of think, “Wow, this is an amazing performance EV that drives like a proper car,” ... it’s no wonder Porsche is doing so well with them.
I remember that Everrati engineers and builds a plan for each model car. Is that still what you guys are doing? Is that how Aria Group is doing it right now — that they have a sort of blueprint of a vehicle, and they can repeat the process?
Justin: Completely. I think the big difference with what we do is that our engineers have experience building brand new EVs, right from the Lotus Evija powertrain; Mike, our head of engineering, designed the powertrain for that ... We go about it a very different way. So there are converters out there, and good luck to them. So you look at somebody like EV West or a variety of others where, generally speaking, they’re not necessarily doing a productionized thing. They’re doing one-offs... they’ve really started a really interesting industry. We’re coming from the other side, which is to truly re-engineer what a vehicle is, and the process we call it is “redefined.” It’s got to drive, hopefully, as closely as it could to the original. And that’s kind of our secret sauce, I suppose.
I got to drive in a Ford F-100 Eluminator, which is a converted 1978 vehicle, and they used their crate motor. Do you think that there’s a lot of room to grow in that side of the market, and are you a part of that?
Justin: We’re kind of part of it, but we’re different. So our ethos is very much around in the same way as you might treat a beautiful brownstone house in New York, you’re not going to tear it apart, you’re going to keep the bits that are classic and are important to the structure ... What you’re gonna do is treat it like the work of art it is and try and update it sympathetically — so that it still looks, feels, and drives like an original but is now not emitting any CO2. Let’s be honest, the tailpipe emissions for them things are pretty horrible, you know, they’re pre-catalytic converter, I dread — really horrible — you know, stuff that you do not want around you, let alone your kids, right? It’s just not nice.
Matt, you’re here, you have this extensive design background, and you found out about Everrati. Can you tell me about how that came to be and why you invested in them?
Matt: Yeah. So it’s probably a few years back at this point, like I saw a piece on them in the UK press. And it’s one of those things, as both an environmentalist and clean tech entrepreneur and a Porsche enthusiast — there’s not a lot of intersections of those things. So, I reached out — and at this point, there’s no partnership with Aria — I spoke to Justin and Neil like, ‘oh, maybe we’ll build it in the UK, and we’ll ship it over.’ And, wait, like, there’s a lot of demand in the US — maybe we actually [should] build out some US operations … and yeah, I’m super excited about this, as a car enthusiast — I just can’t see the tailpipe emissions happening anymore. This is the way.
Everybody’s buying EVs in California. You see them everywhere. Do you own an EV right now?
Matt: Yes, I have a Lucid Air — actually, I was one of the first customers for Lucid too. We have an Audi E-Tron, and I used to have a Tesla Model X, but we got rid of that one and used to have a Taycan, which was amazing, but I only had so much garage space. I still have a vintage 911, which I think I’ll probably sell as well once the Everrati is ready.
I started driving an EV in 2016, and despite the really low range on a Nissan Leaf at the time…
Matt: That’s what I had, too! I bought a Nissan Leaf, thinking it was like a 2013 or 2014.
I had the 2013 as well!
Matt: I got like 70 miles of range. It was horrendous. But not ever having to go to a gas station was awesome.
Things are a lot different today.
Matt: Indeed. Technology and scale drive cost down, and even like incremental change, battery technology has gotten better, like 5 to 10 percent per year. But over like a 15-year period, that’s a lot of accumulation, the fact that you can get a car now that has 500 miles of electric range is insane.
Which car do you have in the shop right now getting converted?
Matt: It’s a 964, so it’s like a 1991 911.
So you’ll have two of these vintage Porsches getting converted to EV!
Matt: I’m gonna get rid of the 993, my ’98. I don’t need to have two vintage 911s. I think electric only is the way to go. So my daughter — I have a four-year-old daughter — she sits in the back, and she asked me, “Why is it so loud?” It’s like an era of time.
Justin: Yeah, It’s so funny, my seven-year-old son, we rode in my Taycan on the way to school, and we were following a Panamera Turbo … it’s got fumes coming out of the rear — it’s probably only water, let’s be honest — but he was really upset that this car in front of us was potentially polluting our air. And it’s really interesting how the younger generation are just on board with all of this so quickly — without us trying …
With the rising cost of batteries, how has that affected your market?
Justin: It doesn’t affect us directly because we’re paying such high prices for batteries [already]. Performance is improving on a price per kilowatt hour, actually. And over time, it will definitely go down. So — it’s not really affecting us right now.
What type of cells are you using right now?
Justin: [via email: we use active cooled VDA batteries in the Porsche] In our Land Rover series, we use envision cells — from the Nissan group, effectively. There was some press around Porsche that they don’t want to over-weigh a car — now the Taycan is not light — but a sports car is a sports car, and it should feel alive, essentially.
Matt: 150-200 miles is kind of the sweet spot.
Image: Everrati
Everrati’s GT40 can go more than 125 miles on a charge.
Image: Everrati
60kWh battery pack and 0-60 in less than four seconds.
Justin: We’ve just done some testing on our GT40, and — we’ve got it charging up to 150 kilowatts. If you think about that in a car that is done by a restomod company [comparatively], that’s a 700-volt architecture ... it’s not quite Taycan, in terms of its ability to do multiple performance runs, but it’s not far off. If you’ve got fast charging on the track, you could be charging and back out on the track in 20 minutes, which is actually pretty good, right?
Have the standardizations in the US been affecting you?
Justin: Yeah, we use CCS2 in Europe, and the intention is to use CCS1 in the United States. And in Europe anyway, [Tesla Superchargers], the ones that are opening up to non-Tesla, you can use your CCS port as well. Our hope is that continues to grow in popularity, but we can utilize any potential core.
Matt: Yeah, this is really just a Tesla problem. The rest of the industry is just about one standard. Like the Apple lock-in… I think the tides are turning on that — between what the non-profit environmental community is pushing on and that the industry groups are pushing on, those times are changing.
Justin: Yeah, you’ve seen in the mobile phone space, where in Europe they’re now effectively stopping anybody using different charge connectors, they have to use USB-C. I think that’s good. Unless there’s huge technology benefits for doing something else, then you’re just wasting resources.
Matt: Maybe 15 years ago there was, but today it’s just creating bifurcation in the market just to have it.
Justin: You look at Gen Z, look at millennials, [they] wouldn’t even dream probably of having a non-EV, you know, that’s getting really exciting for us. Just a little tiny story: My wife, I lent her my Taycan, and she did an all-female car tour ... raising money for female charities in South Africa for children. I really missed my Taycan for that week it was away, and I had to drive ... her G wagon. Also, it cost me nearly 500 pounds in three days for a few long trips. The argument has been lost — I think — in terms of sticking with the combustion engine, certainly.
What about one of your conversion Land Rovers?
Justin: I went to a UK government site who were looking at electrification, and they actually had our Land Rover on site, hence I couldn’t drive it. I turn up with my G wagon, and you can imagine what kind of excuses I had to make. So I showed them a picture of my wife in Barcelona with my EV, so it wasn’t all bad. It just isn’t for me, I genuinely was a true petrol head, but I’m just not there anymore.
Have you had any more US orders?
Matt: I think the backlog is pretty significant at this point
Justin: It’s six Porsche orders in the last five or six weeks. Which is fantastic. And we’re getting Land Rover orders as well, which is a bit different of a market. Our plan was to launch the business in March 2020, and as we all know, that wasn’t the best time for any business, quite frankly. But we persevered ... I think peoples’ view on sustainability, on clean air, during the pandemic really kind of accelerated.
Do you see Everrati evolving to convert pretty much any car?
Justin: What we’re more focused on is the powertrains themselves ... We are in conversation with a company right now that’s likely to want us to build tens, if not hundreds, of Landrovers over the next three years. But we will do the powertrain. We won’t do the whole car. So that’s kind of where the volumes come in for us. We have this concept of ‘Everrati inside’ kind of thing. It’s like the Intel inside … It’s great for us because we’re getting involved in more vehicles. Also, I guess from an economies of scale perspective, we’re buying more batteries, more inverters… we can start to hopefully reduce our own material costs over time as well.
Matt: It’s interesting to hear you say Justin because I think about the Tesla journey and the forks in the road along that journey, and they started kind of in a similar place. They did that Lotus Elise conversion, then they were licensing the powertrain, and then they did a deal with Toyota — and they had that RAV4 EV. Then they kind of went the full Apple way. I think there’s an important market segment for ‘the EV inside.’ It’s a whole new market today that doesn’t really exist.
We’re almost out of time here, but just a quick question for Matt — do you still have the Nest fire truck from 2014?
Matt: Funny you should say that, actually! I got a call from a friend at Google asking if I wanted it. It’s literally sitting in a parking lot in Mountain View on the Google campus. It’s just sitting there.
Can you guys do anything with it?
Matt: An electric fire truck... That actually would be a fun one!
Justin: That’d be a fun one!
Matt: It’s funny you should say that. It’s just sitting there.
As long as the horn still works, we’ll get Nilay in, and he’ll get to honk it as many times as he’d like.
Matt: Oh my gosh, yea, indeed!
Thanks so much for talking with us. I would love to talk to you guys again soon and see where this is all going.
Tiger King star Carole Baskin earns Biden’s support on big cat bill
Photo by Araya Doheny/Getty Images for NightFly Entertainment, Ltd.
On Tuesday, the White House officially threw its support behind a bill pushed by Tiger King star Carole Baskin to restrict exotic animal ownership.
In a statement, the Biden administration said that the Big Cat Public Safety Act “would build on existing laws that protect big cats like tigers, cheetahs, jaguars, and other wild animals living in captivity in the United States” and “limit ownership of these animals to zoos, sanctuaries, universities, and agencies.”
The measure — introduced by Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) — would formally ban the cub petting industry of lions, tigers, and other big cats featured in Netflix’s hit Tiger King documentary released in 2020. As highlighted in the show, private zoos regularly host events where park-goers are allowed to pet the cubs of small cats.
For years, animal rights activist groups have criticized the practice that they say harms animals and threatens public safety.
“Because cubs can only be ‘handled’ for a few months, this practice results in cubs being prematurely weaned and forcibly separated from their mothers, often resulting in long-term psychological repercussions,” the Animal Legal Defense Fund says in a message of support for the measure on its website.
Private zoos, like the one run by Joe Exotic and other owners featured on the show, benefit from the loosely regulated cub petting and private cat ownership business. The legislation could dramatically affect how businesses like these operate, stripping away a large portion of the revenue earned through petting attractions.
Early last month, the New York Post reported that Bhagavan “Doc” Antle, a private zoo owner featured in Tiger King, was booked by the FBI. No charges were listed, according to The Post, but Antle has faced numerous charges of felonies, including abuse of exotic animals, over the years.
The House is expected to vote on a handful of bills, including the big cats measure, as early as this week.
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