Netflix’s ad-supported tier could cost between $7 and $9 per month
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Netflix’s forthcoming ad-supported tier may cost between $7 and $9 per month, according to a report from Bloomberg. Depending on which plan you currently pay for, that could be a significant savings; the company currently offers plans at $9.99, $15.49, and $19.99 per month.
After the company reported that it lost subscribers for the first time in more than a decade, co-CEO Reed Hastings indicated in April the company was ready to consider a cheaper offering supported by advertising, despite years of spurning the idea of ads. Co-CEO Ted Sarandos confirmed the ad tier was in the works in June, and Netflix announced Microsoft as the technological partner helping to deliver ads in July.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ad-supported tier will have some downgrades from the no ads plans; executives have said that some content will be missing from the ad tier at launch, while code spotted in its mobile app indicates Netflix may not let users on the ad-supported tier download shows for offline viewing.
Bloomberg’s Friday report sheds light on a few more details of the ad tier. The company aims to sell approximately four minutes of ads per hour and wants to show ads ahead of and in the middle of content. Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that Netflix doesn’t plan to include ads with its kids content or original movies. Netflix is targeting to launch the ad-supported plan in “half a dozen markets” in the final quarter of this year, Bloomberg says. The company plans to launch the tier more broadly in early 2023. Netflix didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The new ad plan arrives at a turbulent time. After April’s shocking drop in subscribers, Netflix reported another subscriber drop three months later. Netflix also raised its prices across all of its plans in the US in January — its third price hike in recent years —and is testing ways to turn password-sharing viewers into customers who pay for extra streams. And the company is facing competition from other streaming services like Disney Plus, whose own ad-supported plan is set to launch in December, and HBO Max, which launched a $10 ad-supported plan in June 2021 that comes without downloads or 4K streaming.
A Journey Into Misinformation on Social Media Disinformation and misinformation on social media have only grown worse since the 2016 election, our reporters say. And the threat is changing faster than the social media companies can keep up.
Elon Musk says Tesla cars will connect to Starlink’s new cellular-broadcasting satellites
Soon with satellite connectivity. | Photo by Loren Grush / The Verge
Elon Musk just announced that the upcoming second-generation Starlink internet satellites include cellular antennas for connections with phones from T-Mobile in the US, and potentially other operators as well.
Following the event, he responded to tweets asking whether the connections will work with Tesla’s electric cars, which currently connect to AT&T’s LTE network. According to Musk, the answer is yes.
He didn’t go into detail about how it will all work or how much data owners could expect to access from the connections when they’re somewhere out of reach by terrestrial cellphone towers. Musk said during the event that the satellite-to-cellular coverage from Starlink will be capable of providing a 2 - 4 Mbps link, which is shared by everyone in the satellite’s coverage area. That likely won’t be enough for some premium connectivity features, like live-streaming video from your car’s cameras. Still, a connection that works at all, “anywhere you have a view of the sky,” is better than no connection, potentially.
In a comment to The Verge, LightShed Partners analyst Walter Piecyk pointed out that enabling access could work similarly to an MVNO like Google Fi, which uses multiple carriers as its backbone, or that Musk could change the carrier deal away from AT&T in the future.
Over the years, Tesla has scaled back the connectivity packages that come standard with its electric vehicles. As explained here, cars purchased before the end of June 2018 include Premium Connectivity at no extra charge, while cars purchased before July 20th, 2022, all include at least the standard connectivity package with in-car maps and navigation. Those connections are available for the lifetime of the vehicle, “excluding retrofits or upgrades required for any features or services externally supplied to the vehicle.” Adding the Premium Connectivity subscription to a Tesla that doesn’t have it currently costs $9.99 per month, or $99 annually.
The recent shutdown of AT&T’s 3G network showed how that can come into play, as older vehicles built prior to mid-2015 without an LTE-capable modem may have required a $200 upgrade to stay connected.
For new or used electric cars purchased today from Tesla, they “will have Standard Connectivity for the remainder of the eight years from the first day your vehicle was delivered as new by Tesla, or the first day it is put into service (for example used as a demonstrator or service vehicle), whichever comes first.”
Update August 25th, 11PM ET:Added additional information about Tesla’s connectivity packages.
T-Mobile and SpaceX Starlink say your 5G phone will connect to satellites next year
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
T-Mobile says it's getting rid of mobile dead zones thanks to a new partnership with SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet, at an event hosted by T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert and Elon Musk. With their "Coverage Above and Beyond" setup, mobile phones could connect to satellites and use a slice of a connection providing around 2 to 4 Megabits per second connection (total) across a given coverage area.
According to Musk, second-generation Starlink satellites launching next year will be able to broadcast service using part of T-Mobile's mid-band PCS spectrum, which was bolstered when it was allowed to buy Sprint a few years ago. Musk said the new satellites have "big, big antennas" that are 5 to 6 meters across to enable the new connections and that the plan is to launch the equipment using its upcoming Starship rocket.
Note, connectivity will be 2 to 4 Mbits per cell zone, so will work great for texting & voice calls, but not high bandwidth
The company says it'll let you text, send MMS messages, and even use "select messaging apps" whenever you have a clear view of the sky, even if there's no traditional service available. According to a press release from T-Mobile, the "satellite-to-cellular service" will be available "everywhere in the continental US, Hawaii, parts of Alaska, Puerto Rico and territorial waters."
"If there aren't too many people in the cell zone, you may potentially even have a little bit of video," said Musk. As Sievert described it, operators of messaging apps like WhatsApp or iMessage will need to work with T-Mobile and Starlink for their services to recognize the satellite connection and work with it once it launches.
Musk provided a bit more detail by saying that, unlike usual internet service, it could work without access to Starlink's full satellite constellation. By limiting it to certain messages and services, as well as only in places that don't currently have cellular connectivity, it could use a more intermittent connection for "basic" coverage, although you might have to wait 30 minutes for a message to go through.
The two execs said they're seeking partnerships with mobile carriers worldwide who would be interested in reciprocal spectrum sharing agreements so that their customers can link up with SpaceX. T-Mobile customers could also use those connections when they come to other countries.
Musk also said on Twitter that one of his other companies, Tesla, will use the technology for the premium connectivity feature in its electric vehicles. Currently, Tesla uses AT&T's network for things like live traffic visualization, satellite-view maps, and music streaming.
Image: SpaceX
Musk said that the service may even work while your phone is in your pocket, or in a car.
The service will launch in beta by the end of next year in "select areas," and Sievert says he hopes it will someday include data. He says that when it launches, T-Mobile's "vision" is for it to be included for free in the carrier's "most popular plans," though he did say that today's event isn't an official announcement. He said T-Mobile wants to make it available to people with "low cost" plans for a "monthly service fee" lower than current satellite connectivity services. (That does potentially encompass a wide range of prices, though — Garmin's InReach satellite messenger subscription plans, for example, start at $14.95 per month but go up to $64.95 a month.)
T-Mobile says that subscribers' current phones will be able to utilize the network — no special equipment required. As Elon Musk said in the announcement: "the phone you currently have will work."
Image: SpaceX
T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert and SpaceX chief engineer Elon Musk
The fact that it's using traditional cell spectrum is a bit of a double-edged sword. Not requiring special equipment is an obvious advantage, but T-Mobile doesn't own the rights to that spectrum worldwide. So while SpaceX's satellites could technically communicate with phones internationally, T-Mobile may not have rights to the same bands its system uses when you take your phone to another country or into international waters.
That's not the case for traditional satellite communications networks, like the Iridium system Garmin uses. If phone manufacturers wanted to introduce their own version of this feature, something Apple has been rumored to be working on, partnering with other satellite providers could net them more coverage than T-Mobile's planning to offer.
As Walter Piecyk, an analyst at Lightshed Partners, tells The Verge: "Apple and Samsung might have an easier time integrating existing satellite connectivity into their upcoming phones than Starlink will face in trying to cobble together spectrum rights with wireless operators around the globe."
Fights over spectrum rights could get messy and indeed already have. T-Mobile and Verizon have lobbied the Federal Communications Commission to stop a company called AST & Science from launching satellites that could provide mobile phone service from space, claiming that its system could interfere with its land-based networks. SpaceX is embroiled in a battle with Dish Networks over the 12Ghz spectrum, which the latter wants to use for terrestrial 5G. Musk's company has warned its home internet users that Dish using 12Ghz could totally destroy its satellite internet service. Analysts have even questioned whether the service announced today will require additional approvals from the FCC.
Sievert also said that T-Mobile was "open" to the possibility of using SpaceX for its network backhaul in the future, especially in rural areas. While that's a few steps ahead from what the two companies are pitching now (again, Musk says each cell will support around 2-4 megabits), it could help make it less expensive for the carrier to expand its network. Such a plan would be similar to what Verizon announced in collaboration with Amazon's Kuiper satellite internet project, though that plan seems much further away from fruition, as Amazon doesn't seem to have launched any of its satellites yet.
Earlier this year, SpaceX lost a bid for rural internet subsidies because of the cost of its equipment. But if it can piggyback off T-Mobile's existing equipment, which people in rural areas may already own, that could help its case with the Federal Communications Commission. The Thursday presentation certainly hit on rural coverage, with videos of people in remote parks, the mountains, or herding animals.
Update 10:15PM ET:added information about where the service will be able to cover, as well as Tesla using it for premium connectivity in its cars.
‘This you?’: the seven letters exposing rightwing hypocrisy
As Biden eases student loan debt for millions, a simple phrase is puncturing criticism from conservatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene
Conservatives are frothing at the mouth over Joe Biden’s decision to forgive $10,000 in student debt for millions, railing against what they call “student loan socialism”. But their carefully crafted tweets have been undermined over and over again with two words: “This you?”
Were there ever seven letters more powerful? On Twitter, the phrase is an instant marker of hypocrisy, cutting down the mighty from politicians to celebrities to brands. It typically comes as a reply to an opinionated tweet, accompanied by a screenshot of an earlier remark from the same person endorsing the opposite point of view.
The new Steam Deck ebook lays out Valve’s long-term vision
This is the first Steam Deck, but based on Valve’s book, it sounds like there will be others. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
The 52-page ebook is free, and if you’re at all interested in Valve or the Steam Deck, I’d recommend flipping through it. Not only are there a few pages littered with Steam Deck prototypes, but you’ll also be able to read about Valve’s ambitions for the Steam Deck in its own words.
Hello! We wrote a small book about Steam Deck, Steam, and Valve. We're pretty happy with how it turned out, and we're now making it available digitally.
Learn more and download the booklet here: https://t.co/KG4YdGS2Lxpic.twitter.com/fbeXevzY5r
Perhaps the most notable part is that Valve is committing to the Steam Deck and SteamOS as a “multi-generational product line.” Valve has called the Steam Deck a “multi-generational category” in the past, but the company goes even farther with what it prints in the book (and because it’s printed in a book, it’s definitely that much more official):
Anyway, this is a multi-generational product line. Valve will support Steam Deck and SteamOS well into the foreseeable future. We will learn from the Steam community about new uses for our hardware that we haven’t thought of yet, and we will build new versions to be even more open and capable than the first version of Steam Deck has been.
Valve also shared some interesting numbers about Steam, like that there are more than 130 million active players on Steam every month and more than 30,000 titles on the platform. And as of the publishing of the book, Valve says that more than 4,500 titles have the “Verified” or “Playable” designation for Steam Deck, meaning that approximately 15 percent of all games on Steam are already at the very least deemed to be “Playable.”
Since those first order emails went out in February, Valve has been ramping up its shipping volume, and on Wednesday, the company even said that some Q4 reservations were being bumped up to Q3. If you place a reservation today, Valve’s website says you won’t be able to order your device until sometime in Q4. But at the rate things have been improving, hopefully it won’t be too long until your order email hits your inbox — and while you wait, Valve has a book you can read.
Instagram tightens default content settings for teens
New teenage users will be defaulted to a newsfeed that shows less sensitive content | Image: Instagram
Instagram announced the platform is rolling out a feature that defaults accounts for new users under 16 years old to “Less,” the most restrictive setting for Sensitive Content Control. Teenagers already on Instagram will get push notifications “encouraging” them to opt-in to the heavier filtering on what the algorithm shows them across Search, Explore, Hashtag Pages, Reels, Feed Recommendations, and Suggested Accounts.
The “Standard” setting in Instagram only lets users see some content deemed sensitive, while the “Less” option tightens the restrictions even further, and the “More” option allows users to see more sensitive content or accounts than the default settings. While users over 18 years old typically have access to “Standard,” “Less,” and “More,” teenagers currently only have access to “Standard” and “Less.”
In June, Instagram first introduced its “Less” option. A week later, it began rolling out a feature in the US and other countries to suggest that teenage users look at other content if they spend too much time on one particular topic and excludes topics tied to appearance comparison.
Instagram is also testing prompts for teens that suggest limiting who can interact with their content. The test will ask them to review privacy and security settings related to who can re-share their content, who can message them, the type of content they can see, and time management.
Image: Instagram
Teenage users will be encouraged to review who can interact with their content
The “Sensitive Content Control” feature launched on Instagram in July 2021. The filter was supposed to keep users from seeing potentially harmful and “inappropriate” material suggested to them on the Explore page. As Meta / Instagram ramps up suggested content in response to the rise of TikTok, the tuning applied to the algorithm has become more impactful.
The feature was met with backlash from many people in the art world, sex workers, tattoo artists, and the cannabis industry since they could be excluded from the feed of suggestions if their accounts or content were flagged. In the Help Center, Instagram describes what it sees as sensitive content, including posts with depictions of violence or sexually explicit or suggestive, promoting regulated products and substances, etc.
Instagram has recently introduced other features on Instagram that cater to providing a secure experience. In March, parental controls arrived on the platform that allows parents and guardians to monitor what their child does on Instagram, including how much time they spend on the app.
California E.V. Mandate Finds a Receptive Auto Industry The move to phase out gasoline-powered cars, with other states expected to follow, matches automakers’ plans. The challenge will be making it happen.
Elon Musk subpoenas former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in takeover dispute
Tesla CEO’s attempt to back out of acquisition of social media company heads for trial in Delaware on 17 October
Elon Musk has subpoenaed his friend and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey as part of an effort to back out of his $44bn agreement to acquire the social media platform.
The subpoena was revealed in a court document on Monday.
Starlink lowers monthly subscription prices for many
Starlink is getting a little cheaper for some. | Image: Starlink
Starlink, Elon Musk’s internet-from-space service provided by SpaceX, is notifying customers with some good news: their monthly subscriptions have been reduced in response to “local market conditions.”
I received one of these notifications for my Starlink RV service that normally costs me €124 each month in the Netherlands. It says, “Effective 8/24/2022, Starlink is reducing your monthly service fee to €105.” Well, ok.
The price cut is welcome at a time when everything else is getting more expensive due to inflation. “The price reduction factors in your local market conditions and is meant to reflect parity in purchasing power across our customers,” reads the announcement.
Others are reporting similar discounts in locations around the world. For example, on Reddit a person in the UK reports a reduction in their monthly fee to £75 (down from £89), Mexico to $1,100 MXN (down from $2,299 MXN), and Germany €80 (down from €100). Users in Chile and Brazil are reporting price cuts of around 50 percent. A spot check on Starlink’s respective service pages in each country supports the above claims.
The situation in the US, where the dollar has been surging against foreign currencies, is less clear. A person in Nevada reports getting a reduction to $85 (was $110) but Starlink’s own pages still show a monthly subscription price of $110 after a one-time $599 purchase of the hardware kit. A few other people claiming to be from the US note that they haven’t received any price reduction.
So far there’s no mention of a reduction in speed or the addition of strict data caps following the discounted subscriptions.
SpaceX and T-Mobile will host a joint event later today where Elon Musk will be on hand to announce plans to “increase connectivity.” It’s unclear if the event has any relation to the new pricing.
My iPhone is calling to me with a different voice
Sing me the new song of your people. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Apple’s upcoming iOS 16 update brings with it a lot of new features — things like the ability to customize your Lock Screen, edit iMessages, or copy written text from a video. But Apple’s also made an under-the-radar change to some of the iPhone’s sounds, which some of us hear at The Verge noticed while using the betas.
When you go to the Find My app and choose the “play sound” option for an iOS / iPadOS 16 device, you’ll now be greeted with what sounds like an electronic xylophone, instead of the pinging sound that played on iOS 15 and before. The change also applies to when you ask your Apple Watch to ping your phone for you, except the sound plays once instead of over and over. One of my co-workers described the new sound as higher pitched and easier to hear, but I’ll let you judge how it sounds for yourself.
Let me just say: I think this sound is way better than the old one. While iOS 15’s radar-like pings are a thematically appropriate soundtrack while I’m searching for a lost phone, the new sound seems fun and playful, like my phone is doing a little “here I am, come find me” dance.
What I don’t love as much is the new Siri activation sound. While Siri’s classic two-note activation beep has been missing for a while (when I say “hey Siri” or hold down the power button on your phone, Siri just waits a moment before uttering a slightly creepy “uh-huh?” or “hmm?”), there is still one place I hear it: when activating the voice assistant while using CarPlay. Now, that tone has been replaced with a softer bong, which I find way less attention-grabbing. While I like the sound, I’m not a huge fan of the fact that it makes me second-guess whether Siri’s actually listening while I’m trying to keep my eyes on the road.
If you’ve made it this far in the story, I think it’s safe to assume you’re interested in the sounds phones make to notify use humans that something’s happening. If that’s the case, you may want to check out our incredible article detailing the history of Nokia’s famous ringtones.
Masahiro Sakurai might already be my favorite YouTuber
Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of games like Kirby and Super Smash Bros., has revealed his next big project: a YouTube channel. The gaming folk hero teased that he was working on something new earlier this week, and now you can super smash that like button and subscribe to his new channel, Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games.
Sakurai, of course, is no stranger to appearing on video; he’s been Nintendo’s primary Super Smash Bros. presenter for years, and consistently finds ways to make even the smallest details about new fighters extremely interesting. Now that he’s done with the mammoth project that was Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, it’s perhaps no surprise that he’s transitioning to a new video series on YouTube.
Sakurai says we shouldn’t expect him to start streaming (sadly) — instead, the videos will be focused on “topics like game development and what makes games fun,” he says in his “About This Channel” video. He’s aiming to keep the videos short, between two and five minutes long.
He’s already teasing that he’ll be able to show some Smash Bros. development builds and design documents that he’s written, so it seems as if we’ll get some rare behind-the-scenes peeks at big Nintendo games. Although Sakurai is running his videos by Nintendo, says the company “isn’t involved in this channel” and that the series is a personal project of his. He isn’t planning to include ads in his videos.
Unfortunately, even Sakurai has to prepare for potential problems that other YouTubers are on alert for. He says that if rights-holders aren’t happy with the footage he includes in his videos, “I’ll do what I can to set things right.” He also expressed some worry that because he’s uploading separate versions of each video in Japanese and English, that could run afoul of YouTube’s duplicate content policies and cause videos to be taken down.
But as you’d expect with any YouTuber trying to get a new series off the ground, Sakurai concludes his about video by asking viewers to hit the subscribe button. While he concedes that’s “a very YouTube thing of me to ask,” he says he won’t be asking again in future videos.
Personally? I couldn’t hit the subscribe button fast enough. I even turned on the notification bell. The videos he’s released so far are fantastic; I had never consciously thought about hit stop before, but now, I’ll be looking for it in every game I play.
Wordle snags a place inside the New York Times Crossword app
Photo by Mike Kemp / In Pictures via Getty Images
Wordle is now available in The New York Times Crossword app for both iOS and Android users. The addictive guessing game joins both The New York Times Crossword variants, Spelling Bee, and more. Users can also continue to play the game on their desktop and through the mobile website.
The word-guessing game became an immediate phenomenon after it was released in October 2021. TheTimes then acquired Wordle from its creator Josh Wardle in January. That decision was not without complaints, as users began speculating that the game had become harder and some of their streaks were ruined. Despite complaints after its acquisition, TheTimes said that the game allowed TheTimes to see a jump in new subscribers at its earnings meeting in May and now says that as of July, about 10 percent of “active” players have played more than 145 games of Wordle.
Other than tackling the complaints, TheTimes has been tweaking the game during the year. It introduced the WordleBot in April for web Wordle players to help analyze each puzzle to best come up with the best starting word for the game. The company eventually tweaked the WordleBot to begin recommending a new start word, changing its identity to WordleBot 2.0. As cool as it is, WordleBot was only available to specific subscribers. Recently, The New York Times announced that it’s partnering with Hasbro to release Wordle as a physical board game in October.
Integrating the game into the Crossword app seems like an easy way to keep the game in front of interested players, although some are still wary that eventually Wordle or some of its features could end up paywalled, requiring a subscription with The Times. The game continues to be available for free on both the mobile app and desktop website.
The open beta isn’t currently available to users in other markets, even though Windows 11 users have had access to Android apps from the Amazon app store for some time. Google originally announced that it would be bringing its catalog of Android games to Windows PCs back in December of last year.
Image: Google
You’ll be able to sync your saves across multiple devices with Google Play Games.
The beta is set to include around 50 games at launch, including titles like Summoners War, Cookie Run: Kingdom, Last Fortress: Underground, and Top War, which represent a player base ranging in the hundreds of millions.
Of course, clever PC users have been able to run Android apps through emulators like Nox or BlueStacks, but running these in parallel with your OS can be incredibly taxing on your system’s resources, even though the minimum specs for running Google Play Games is remarkably low. Google has stated that the minimum specs for running Google Play Games on a PC will allow for just about any machine made in the past five years will be able to run its catalog with ease.
In addition to being able to play on a bigger screen, allowing for better performance, and not to mention additional control options, Google Play Games allows you to sync your progress across devices, letting you carry a singular save game from your PC to your mobile device and back again.
There are plans to expand the beta to include other markets sometime later this year, but no firm dates have been announced as of yet.
Steam’s new mobile app looks way, way better
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
I’ve been using the Steam iOS app quite a bit since getting a Steam Deck, but every time I opened the app, I had to deal with an interface that just felt old — the overall design hadn’t been updated in a very long time. It seems Valve felt that way, too, because it’s now beta testing a new version of the app that looks dramatically different and, if you ask me, dramatically better.
In a blog post, Valve mentioned the new design as one of the key new features of the app, and the improvements, at least in my brief testing on iOS, are immediately obvious. For example, the app now has a navigation bar on the bottom of the screen where you can navigate to things like the store, your news feed, and the Steam Guard section.
Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
The library view in the new app.
Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
Look at those modern menus!
But the app doesn’t just have a refreshed coat of paint; it’s built on a “new framework” and has some additional features. My personal favorite? You can now scan a QR code from the Steam Guard section to sign into your Steam account, like what you might be familiar with from Discord’s mobile app. Valve also says the new Steam app has “ smarter notifications, an improved Library, and multi account support,” and you’ll still be able to do things like browse the store and confirm any trades.
Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
Here’s the screen where you can scan a QR code.
Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
Here’s what my news feed looks like.
Valve is currently beta testing the app on iOS and Android, so it isn’t widely available just yet. If you want to try it the beta, follow the instructions on Valve’s website, though if you’re on iOS, note that there are number of slots available due to Apple’s TestFlight restrictions.
Twitter’s Former Security Chief Accuses Company of ‘Egregious’ Practices The whistle-blower also said Twitter had lied to Elon Musk, who is trying to back out of a $44 billion deal to buy the social media service.
How Twitter’s whistleblower could boost Elon Musk’s legal battle
Peiter Zatko, former security chief, brought allegations of widespread security threats and spam concerns against the company
New whistleblower allegations of widespread security threats and spam concerns at Twitter may give Elon Musk ammunition in his fight to back out of a deal to buy the company.
On Tuesday, an 84-page complaint written by Twitter’s former security chief turned whistleblower, Peiter Zatko, alleged that Twitter prioritizes user growth over reducing spam, did not have a plan in place for major security issues, and that half the company’s servers were running out-of-date and vulnerable software.
Acer’s Vero 514 brings its ‘eco-conscious’ concept to a Chromebook
So green. | Image: Acer
Acer is adding a Chromebook to its Vero lineup, which it says is meant to offer laptop buyers an “eco-conscious” option. Like the (rather disappointing) Windows laptop that came before it, the Chromebook Vero 514 is made using recycled plastics, has a chassis that’s 99 percent recyclable, and comes in packaging that’s 90 percent recycled paper, according to the company. Acer’s press release even suggests that part of the Chromebook’s packaging can be “transformed into a multi-purpose triangular laptop stand,” if you’re loathe to throw anything away.
Before we go over the recyclability, though, let’s quickly go through the specs — it weighs in at just a hair over 3 pounds, which is reasonable for a laptop with a 14-inch screen, and is powered by a 12th-gen Intel processor with Xe graphics. You can spec it out with a variety of processors, including the five-core Pentium Gold 8505 (don’t let the core count fool you, only one is for performance while the rest are efficiency cores), the Core i3-1215U, the Core i5-1235U, and a Core i7-1255U. Those are all relatively low-power chips, appropriate for an eco-minded computer, but if I were looking for a laptop I’d probably go with either the i3 or i5 and avoid the Pentium entirely.
Image: Acer
I will admit that I dig the recycled plastic look — and appreciate the inclusion of a 1080p webcam.
The 1080p screen is covered in Gorilla Glass, which should make it feel reasonably nice if you opt for the touchscreen model. Its 300 nits of brightness won’t be enough if you’re constantly working in bright sunlight, but it’s still a step up from the 227-nit panel found on its Windows counterpart. The 514 should also improve on the original Vero’s color rendering; while the Windows model can only display 66 percent of the sRGB gamut, Acer’s promising 100 percent coverage for its Chromebook.
When it comes to ports, the 514 has a healthy selection — two USB-C ports, which can be used to fast charge the battery up to 50 percent in 30 minutes, one USB-A port, an HDMI port, and a headphone jack. The computer also comes with a “flare-reducing” 1080p webcam.
As for the laptop’s ecological footprint, Acer says that the trackpad’s surface is made up of 100 percent “ocean-bound plastics,” while the keycaps are made of 50 percent post-consumer recycled plastic. 30 percent of the chassis’ plastic is recycled. While that’s not necessarily as impressive as, say, a $1,200 MacBook Air which has a 100 percent recycled chassis, it’s nice to see Acer providing relatively granular details like Apple. I wasn’t able to find any numbers backing up Asus’ claims that its Chromebook Flip CX5 has an “eco-friendly design” because of its “recycled materials built-in.”
Acer also claims that the Chromebook is easy to repair and upgrade, with standard screws letting you access the memory and storage (which you may need to do, given that the biggest SSD you can get with the 514 is 256GB). While that’s not on the level of what Framework’s doing with its almost completely repairable and upgradeable laptop, that computer is almost double the price; the base model 514, comes with the Core i3, 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD, starts at $499.99.
That’s another improvement versus the Windows version, which starts at $700, and doesn’t provide a particularly great value at that price point, according to my co-worker Monica Chin’s review from last year. The 514 is also running ChromeOS, which is widely considered to be less demanding than Windows — that could help the 514 stay out of the landfill for longer, which is nothing but good news from an environmental perspective.
Overall it seems like Acer’s addressed quite a few of the problems we had with the original Vero laptop. However, I’d like to echo a note that Monica hit on in her review of that computer: it’s hard to consume your way to ecological responsibility, and if you do have to buy something it should last a long time. One option for those looking to get a computer that’s a bit eco-friendlier is to install ChromeOS Flex on an old Windows laptop purchased from a local used computer store or dug out of a closet (implementing the “reuse” step of reduce, reuse, recycle). But if you want something with a bit more modern hardware, including creature comforts like a fingerprint reader, Acer says the Vero 514 will be available at Best Buy starting in “mid-October.”
Intel needs 7,000 workers to build its $20 billion chip plant in Ohio
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Intel is building what it claims is the “largest silicon manufacturing location on the planet” in Ohio, and it’s going to need 7,000 workers to construct it, according to a report from the Associated Press. However, a labor shortage affecting the construction industry could make it hard to recruit the workers it needs for the $20 billion job, and competition for workers could slow the pace of homebuilding in the area which is needed to support the growing workforce that Intel’s plant is supposed to attract.
Intel first announced the Ohio project in January of this year and is on track to begin construction in late 2022. Once finished, the 1,000-acre site will house two factories, or fabs, and employ at least 3,000 people. But it has future plans to invest $100 billion into the project, expand the site to 2,000 acres, and eventually build a total of eight fabs, not just two. Actual chip production isn’t expected until 2025.
As noted by the Associated Press, Intel’s project won’t require all 7,000 workers at once, and this number might be only a fraction of the workers required to build the complexes that surround Intel’s factories. This includes a 500-acre business park built by VanTrust Real Estate dedicated to Intel’s suppliers.
Construction on the chip factories is expected to pick up speed now that President Joe Biden has signed off on the CHIPS and Science Act, which provides semiconductor companies like Intel with $52 billion in funding. In June, Intel delayed its groundbreaking ceremony for the new chip plant in a bid to coax Congress into passing the legislation. At the time, Intel said the “scope and pace” of its project depend on the money it receives from the CHIPS Act.
Intel’s project could face some setbacks due to the current state of the construction industry. Earlier this year, the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), a group that represents construction workers that aren’t in a union, said the industry will need to attract 650,000 workers in order to keep up with the demand for labor. In July, the National Roofing Contractors Association reported a 20.3 percent increase in construction material prices from May to June when compared to the same time last year, something a nationwide construction supply shortage isn’t helping.
TikTok Browser Can Track Users’ Keystrokes, According to New Research In the web browser used within the TikTok app, supplementary code lets the company track every character typed by users. The company said the capability was for troubleshooting.
Watch this laser-guided knife throwing machine nail 10 in a row
It looks like something out of a video game, but this gadget is real: a portable, mechanical, computerized, laser-guided knife gun that actually throws spinning knives end over end through the air (via Gizmodo).
This isn’t some slingshot or spiral Kunai shooter that flings those blades straight ahead, oh no — Quint Builds set out to build a gadget that can accurately throw knives just like a pro, nailing a target 10 times in a row at different distances. That meant painstakingly calculating how to spin a knife the right number of times to land tip-first, again and again and again — and employing a homemade lidar laser guidance system to measure that distance and adjust the knife’s trajectory accordingly.
Otherwise, a knife might harmlessly bounce off the target... just like mine did so many times at the last Renaissance Faire I attended.
The final contraption dispenses upwards of 10 knives from an integrated, spring-loaded magazine onto an electromagnet attached to a carriage, which zooms forward along its track at 10 meters per second thanks to a pair of motorized belts, which are in turn powered by a pair of 36V hoverboard batteries. Once the carriage reaches the midpoint of its track, the electromagnet is programmed to release the knife — letting it hit a target up to 15 feet away.
I guess you can add “knife throwing” to the list of tasks where humans are becoming obsolete!
Make your back-to-school routine better with these smart home tricks
Amazon Alexa’s Routines, which play from devices like this Echo dot speaker, help my family get out of bed and stay on track in the mornings. | Image: Amazon
This week, my kids headed back to school. For most parents, that means a weekend spent buying composition notebooks and Ticonderoga pencils and unearthing moldy lunchboxes from last year’s book bag (just me?). In my household, it also means reenabling all my back-to-school smart home routines.
I’ve been using my smart home as an extra pair of parental eyes and ears for years now, and I think all parents need some home automation in their lives. The little things the smart home does well — lights that turn on when you walk into a room, a TV you can shut down with just your voice, a doorbell that shows you who’s there — are so much more useful when you are also juggling little people and their various demands.
(A caveat to all this: I use these gadgets, routines, and automations to help our household run smoothly and give us back some time, not as an alternative to actually parenting.)
My children are now 11 and 14, going into middle school and high school, so instead of finding fun ways to encourage my children to stay in bed until it’s time to get up (the green light for go, which you can easily set up on the Echo Glow light, is a classic), I’ve had to devise systems that help me get them out of bed.
For me, the morning routine is the key one. Getting everyone up and out the door in a one-hour time window is a serious challenge. Having a couple of digital assistants helping us keep track of time cuts down on the potential for raised voices and helps them be a bit more autonomous with their morning ablutions. (You could do this with just one, but I like different aspects of Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant’s routines and alarms, so I have both going).
The morning routine
I have one lamp in each of our bedrooms with a Philips Hue light bulb inside. Starting around 5:30AM, they all turn on low and gradually brighten over 30 minutes. I set this up in the Hue App using its built-in Wake-Up automations feature, replicating the wake-with-light feature of a sunrise alarm clock. This is a nice, gentle way to start our bodies along in the laborious process of waking up.
Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge
An Echo Show 5 makes a good bedside clock. We use Echo devices mainly because we can play Audible books on them, and they make a good home intercom system.
Next, an Amazon Alexa Routine kicks off from the Echo Show 8 on my 11-year-old daughter’s nightstand. It starts by saying, “Good morning, sunshine!”, reporting the weather, then playing a radio station (we’re using BBC Radio 2 at the moment). I used to add a song to the Routine to wake her up, but after a year of Here Comes the Sun, she developed a visceral aversion to The Beatles. In the interest of furthering her musical education, we’re now going with the randomness of the radio.
Next door, in my 14-year-old son’s room, a similar routine from an Echo Show 5 opens his shades, turns lights on, and tells him the weather. But instead of a radio station — which he sleeps right through — an Alexa alarm featuring the trio from The Grand Tour obnoxiously shouting at him seems to get him out of bed the quickest. (He loves cars, and I’m British, so it seemed like a good choice!)
Image: Google
Google’s Family Bell feature helps get my kids to the bus stop on time.
Once everyone is downstairs eating breakfast, another Alexa Routine reads out our family calendar for the day, so we can discuss and make sure we have everything we need. When it’s time to leave, a Family Bell from the Nest Hub Max in our living room — yes, I have a lot of smart speakers; it’s part of the job — lets me and my daughter know when it’s time to drive to the bus stop.
Family Bell is a Google Assistant feature that rolled out during the pandemic. We found it helpful when we were forced to do school at home. It’s like an alarm, only it tells you what you need to do rather than just making a sound. It also starts with a nice jingle, and you can set it to space out different actions during your morning routine. For example, it can say “Good morning,” then, five minutes later, remind you to make your bed or brush your teeth. My kids don’t really need that much prompting now, but for younger ones, it’s a nice alternative to mum or dad shouting up the stairs.
The evening routine
Since I work from home, I’m not always able to get away when my son arrives on the school bus. But the Nest Doorbell Wired both announces and shows his arrival to me through a Nest Hub in my home office, so I know he’s home safely. He can also let himself in by typing a code or using his fingerprint to unlock the smart door lock (currently a Eufy Touch smart lock).
My daughter has to be collected from her bus stop, and I get a ping on my iPhone using Apple’s Find My Recurring Location notification feature that tells me her Apple Watch has left her school (no phone for her yet). She has to approve the notification the first time it’s set up, but then it pings me every time, so I know to start heading to her bus stop to collect her. It’s more reliable than her remembering to text me when they leave.
While I’m still working, the kids get started on their homework, helped along by a schedule that pauses Wi-Fi to their personal devices for an hour. We set this up through the Eero app, which is the mesh Wi-Fi system I currently have. Many Wi-Fi routers now have the option to control Wi-Fi access to specific devices right on your smartphone. I’ve also used the Smart Home Manager App for AT&T and the Xfinity app for Comcast internet to do the same.
Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
The Nest Hub can stream footage from a video doorbell, so I can see when my son comes home.
When dinner time rolls around, I trigger a routine by telling the smart speaker in my kitchen, “Alexa, it’s dinnertime.” This makes a “Dinner is ready” announcement on all the Echo devices in the house, then starts a relaxing playlist downstairs. As bedtime nears, the shades and lights in each room are set to lower and turn on respectively, an hour after sunset. Then, a Hue automation gradually fades the bedroom lights over 30 minutes.
A little before this, Apple Screen Time settings on my son’s iPhone and daughter’s iPad kick in, which shuts off access to most apps while still letting them listen to music or an Audible book while they wind down.
Finally, I collect their devices and put them in their dedicated charging spots downstairs. They can then listen to sleep sounds, music, or an Audible book on their Echo Show to help them drift off to sleepy town.
Google refuses to reinstate man’s account after he took medical images of son’s groin
Experts say case highlights well-known dangers of automated detection of child sexual abuse images
Google has refused to reinstate a man’s account after it wrongly flagged medical images he took of his son’s groin as child sexual abuse material (CSAM), the New York Times first reported. Experts say it’s an inevitable pitfall of trying to apply a technological solution to a societal problem.
Experts have long warned about the limitations of automated child sexual abuse image detection systems, particularly as companies face regulatory and public pressure to help address the existence of sexual abuse material.
How Dan Price’s Social Media Fame Fueled Abuse Allegations Dan Price was applauded for paying a minimum salary of $70,000 at his Seattle company and criticizing corporate greed. The adulation helped to hide and enable his behavior.
In the streaming era, Substack helps indie rockers pay the bills. Can it last?
The email subscription platform has been a source of inspiration and financial freedom for Pitchfork favourites struggling in the streaming economy
“I jumped from my chair and knelt over my father, cradling his head. As if in a movie, I held his head in one hand and snapped the other in front of his face, yelling for him to wake up,” writes singer-songwriter Kevin Morby in a recent post on his Substack newsletter, recounting a night his father had a medical scare. “Thankfully, moments later, his eyes, like cherries in a slot machine, quickly dinged forward and he looked around the room without moving his head.”
Morby loves his Substack. The Kansas City-based musician, who is adored by Pitchfork and recently released his seventh album, This Is a Photograph, joined the email newsletter platform in April at his manager’s suggestion. He now sends his several hundred subscribers a series of rambling, poetic vignettes every few weeks.
Best podcasts of the week: The hunt for an art dealer’s riches hidden in the mountains
In this week’s newsletter: Join host Peter Frick-Wright as he gets to the bottom of a mysterious quest to find Forrest Fenn’s millions. Plus: five of the best fashion podcasts
Listening
Widely available, episodes weekly This podcast is equivalent to stepping into the studio with a musician. A specially recorded track by artists such as Björk, Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee and Neko Case is followed by an interview in which they explain how they made it. From Björk elucidating how she used the noise of frozen lakes to create soaring, glockenspiel-strafed choral pop, to Crutchfield enthusing about her love of white noise, it is hugely illuminating. Alexi Duggins
A glut of intimate, sideways stories in hit podcast Love + Radio, whose whole archive is now available to binge.
A guided yoga practice (yes, really) with a little singer called Dua Lipa in the new series of At Your Service.
The true story of Putin’s “number one enemy”, shot and killed in 2015, in Another Russia.
This article was amended on 19 August 2022 to correct an external link to the Bande à part podcast.
More Than ‘Weird’: Roku Embraces Original Programming The streaming media device company wants to attract more viewers and advertisers to its channel. A coming biopic of “Weird Al” Yankovic is its most ambitious project to date.
Our first glimpse of HBO’s The Last of Us TV show is here
The Last of Us | Image: HBO
Along with the occasionally-glitchy premiere of House of the Dragon, HBO presented a teaser trailer of content its new owner hasn’t abruptlyshelved that provided the first in-motion look of Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey playing Joel and Ellie, respectively, in its upcoming The Last of Us TV show.
Neil Druckmann — the writer and creative director of both The Last of Us games — is an executive producer of the show, and tweeted, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Other content in the preview came from The Idol, Love and Death, Succession, The White Lotus, And Just Like That, Hacks, The White House Plumbers, Our Flag Means Death, but the Naughty Dog-made PlayStation franchise’s live-action TV debut is the one we’re interested in the most. In the twenty seconds or so that it actually shows, you can get a peek at Neal Offerman’s character, and a scene that seemed to recall the opening sequence of the first game with Joel’s daughter.
The preview confirms HBO chief content officer Casey Bloys’ February comments that we can expect to see the show in 2023, but didn’t offer any narrower of a window than that.
House of the Dragon premiere crashes HBO Max streaming, mostly on Fire Sticks
Besides unreleased and disappearing content, there have been plenty of complaints about the HBO Max streaming apps since they launched. Still, they’ve generally held up well under the stress of premieres for content like Tenet, Wonder Woman, The Matrix, or Westworld, but for HBO there may not be anything like a Game of Thrones premiere.
Tonight’s debut of the show’s spinoff, House of the Dragon, is the first taste of a new GOT experience inside HBO Max, and while many people trying to stream the premiere episode are watching without a problem, others said the app crashed on them, or froze up once it got past the pre-show teaser trailer.
Based on reports seen on Twitter, Reddit, and elsewhere, it appears that most of the people having problems are using an Amazon Fire TV platform, or a Fire Stick. It’s unclear why that app, in particular, would have problems, but if you’re using it and you can’t watch, you may want to try switching if you can’t wait to see all the Targarayens going at it. If it’s your main streaming device, one other piece of advice people have reported success with is to create a new profile.
In a statement emailed to The Verge, HBO’s Chris Willard said, “House of the Dragon is being successfully viewed by millions of HBO Max subscribers this evening. We’re aware of a small portion of users attempting to connect via Fire TV devices that are having issues and are in the process of resolving for those impacted users.”
Whatever the issue is, don’t expect to see this repeat in future seasons — by next year, they’ll have a new app anyway.
Update August 21st, 10:40PM ET:Updated with statement from HBO.
Google AI flagged parents’ accounts for potential abuse over nude photos of their sick kids
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
A concerned father says that after using his Android smartphone to take photos of an infection on his toddler’s groin, Google flagged the images as child sexual abuse material (CSAM), according to a report from The New York Times. The company closed his accounts and filed a report with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and spurred a police investigation, highlighting the complications of trying to tell the difference between potential abuse and an innocent photo once it becomes part of a user’s digital library, whether on their personal device or in cloud storage.
Concerns about the consequences of blurring the lines for what should be considered private were aired last year when Apple announced its Child Safety plan. As part of the plan, Apple would locally scan images on Apple devices before they’re uploaded to iCloud and then match the images with the NCMEC’s hashed database of known CSAM. If enough matches were found, a human moderator would then review the content and lock the user’s account if it contained CSAM.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit digital rights group, slammed Apple’s plan, saying it could “open a backdoor to your private life” and that it represented “a decrease in privacy for all iCloud Photos users, not an improvement.”
Apple eventually placed the stored image scanning part on hold, but with the launch of iOS 15.2, it proceeded with including an optional feature for child accounts included in a family sharing plan. If parents opt-in, then on a child’s account, the Messages app “analyzes image attachments and determines if a photo contains nudity, while maintaining the end-to-end encryption of the messages.” If it detects nudity, it blurs the image, displays a warning for the child, and presents them with resources intended to help with safety online.
The main incident highlighted by The New York Times took place in February 2021, when some doctor’s offices were still closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As noted by the Times, Mark (whose last name was not revealed) noticed swelling in his child’s genital region and, at the request of a nurse, sent images of the issue ahead of a video consultation. The doctor wound up prescribing antibiotics that cured the infection.
According to the NYT, Mark received a notification from Google just two days after taking the photos, stating that his accounts had been locked due to “harmful content” that was “a severe violation of Google’s policies and might be illegal.”
Like many internet companies, including Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, Google has used hash matching with Microsoft’s PhotoDNA for scanning uploaded images to detect matches with known CSAM. In 2012, it led to the arrest of a man who was a registered sex offender and used Gmail to send images of a young girl.
In 2018, Google announced the launch of its Content Safety API AI toolkit that can “proactively identify never-before-seen CSAM imagery so it can be reviewed and, if confirmed as CSAM, removed and reported as quickly as possible.” It uses the tool for its own services and, along with a video-targeting CSAI Match hash matching solution developed by YouTube engineers, offers it for use by others as well.
We identify and report CSAM with trained specialist teams and cutting-edge technology, including machine learning classifiers and hash-matching technology, which creates a “hash”, or unique digital fingerprint, for an image or a video so it can be compared with hashes of known CSAM. When we find CSAM, we report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which liaises with law enforcement agencies around the world.
A Google spokesperson told the Times that Google only scans users’ personal images when a user takes “affirmative action,” which can apparently include backing their pictures up to Google Photos. When Google flags exploitative images, the Times notes that Google’s required by federal law to report the potential offender to the CyberTipLine at the NCMEC. In 2021, Google reported 621,583 cases of CSAM to the NCMEC’s CyberTipLine, while the NCMEC alerted the authorities of 4,260 potential victims, a list that the NYT says includes Mark’s son.
Mark ended up losing access to his emails, contacts, photos, and even his phone number, as he used Google Fi’s mobile service, the Times reports. Mark immediately tried appealing Google's decision, but Google denied Mark’s request. The San Francisco Police Department, where Mark lives, opened an investigation into Mark in December 2021 and got ahold of all the information he stored with Google. The investigator on the case ultimately found that the incident “did not meet the elements of a crime and that no crime occurred,” the NYT notes.
“Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is abhorrent and we’re committed to preventing the spread of it on our platforms,” Google spokesperson Christa Muldoon said in an emailed statement to The Verge. “We follow US law in defining what constitutes CSAM and use a combination of hash matching technology and artificial intelligence to identify it and remove it from our platforms. Additionally, our team of child safety experts reviews flagged content for accuracy and consults with pediatricians to help ensure we’re able to identify instances where users may be seeking medical advice.”
While protecting children from abuse is undeniably important, critics argue that the practice of scanning a user’s photos unreasonably encroaches on their privacy. Jon Callas, a director of technology projects at the EFF called Google’s practices “intrusive” in a statement to the NYT. “This is precisely the nightmare that we are all concerned about,” Callas told the NYT. “They’re going to scan my family album, and then I’m going to get into trouble.”
A Dad Took Photos of His Naked Toddler for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal. Google has an automated tool to detect abusive images of children. But the system can get it wrong, and the consequences are serious.
‘I’m buying Manchester United’: Elon Musk ‘joke’ tweet charges debate over struggling club’s future
Billionaire’s claim was welcomed by fans unhappy about the team’s current American owners – but he quickly clarified he wasn’t serious
Tesla billionaire Elon Musk briefly electrified the debate about the future of Manchester United by claiming on Twitter that he is buying the struggling Premier League club – before saying that the post was part of a “long-running joke”.
He did not make clear his views on new coach Eric ten Hag’s controversial insistence on passing out from the back, or whether unhappy star striker Cristiano Ronaldo should be allowed to leave, but he did say that if he were to buy a sports team “it would be Man U. They were my fav team as a kid”.
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