PayPal announces a new CEO as its crypto push accelerates
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
PayPal’s new CEO will be Alex Chriss, starting September 27th, as first reported by CNBC. Chriss is currently the senior VP and CPO of small business for Intuit, and he will replace Dan Schulman. Schulman, who has been PayPal’s president and CEO since 2014, had previously announced plans to step down by the end of the year and will remain a director until next May.
The company recently announced its own US dollar-backed stablecoin called PayPal USD (PYUSD) earlier this month, allowing people to make person-to-person payments and transfer the currency between PayPal and other outside wallets. Cointelegraph reports that, on the same day, the PayPal terms of service also updated to mention a new Cryptocurrencies Hub where users can manage crypto assets including PYUSD.
Schulman mentioned at the time that digital currencies “requires a stable instrument” like the US dollar, and now, PayPal will move forward on it with a new CEO.
Chriss’ tenure at Intuit included leading the $12 billion acquisition of Mailchimp in 2021, and he handled small businesses and self-employed groups. “The Board search committee worked diligently and thoroughly to find the right candidate to take PayPal into its next stage of growth and expansion, and we are confident Alex is that person,” PayPal board of directors chair John Donahoe states in a press release.
Microsoft’s new Office default theme and font arrives in September
Image: Microsoft
Microsoft is currently testing a new Office default theme that will roll out to all subscribers of Microsoft 365 next month. Microsoft says it’s refreshing the default Office theme with the new Aptos font, a new color palette, styles, and updated default line weights.
Aptos, the new default font for apps like Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Excel, will replace Calibri next month after more than 15 years. The font change will also be combined with changes to the default style and color palette used in documents.
Image: Microsoft
Office theme changes.
The biggest change to the color palette is that yellow has been removed and replaced with a dark green, and one of the lighter blues has been replaced with a dark teal color. This should result in better contrasts between the shapes and lines that are available in Office documents.
The default style in Word and Outlook is also being refreshed to “make them easy to read, look more professional, and easy to navigate,” according to Jess Kwok, a product manager for Microsoft 365 apps.
Microsoft started testing these changes with Microsoft 365 Insiders in July, and the company now says they will be rolling out to all users at some point in September.
Firefox’s Android app is getting proper support for extensions once again
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Firefox’s Android app will soon support an “open ecosystem of extensions,” developer Mozilla has announced, allowing users to customize the browser with a wide range of third-party addons. An exact release date for the feature is yet to be announced, but in a blog post Mozilla’s Scott DeVaney said it should come before the end of the year. More details will be announced next month.
With the release, Firefox claims it will be the “only major Android browser to support an open extension ecosystem.” Extensions are currently not supported on Chrome for Android, the OS’s default browser, though Android Authority reports that it’s possible to get them working on smaller browsers like Yandex and Kiwi Browser. Over on iOS, Apple recently added support for extensions to its Safari browser.
Extension support on Firefox for Android technically goes back years, but compatibility was massively reduced when the app was rebuilt in 2020. Since then it’s only officially supported a limited number of less than two dozen extensions, Android Police recently reported. While it’s still technically possible to run any desktop Firefox extension with the Android app, you need to enable a debug menu to do so, and Mozilla warns that this option is designed for “developers and advanced users” and may “lead to unexpected outcomes.”
“There is so much creative potential to unlock within the mobile browser space,” Firefox’s director of engineering Giorgio Natili said in a statement. “Mozilla wants to provide developers with the best support we can so they’re equipped and empowered to build modern mobile WebExtensions.” The company’s blog post includes a list of instructions for developers to ensure their extensions work as expected on Android, without falling prey to the operating system’s tendency to shut down resource-intensive processes.
Although Mozilla characterizes Firefox as a major Android browser, its market share pales in comparison to market leader Chrome, which Statcounter reports commanded nearly 65 percent of all mobile browsing (including iOS) as of July 2023. Firefox’s market share, meanwhile, sat at just half a percent.
Werner Herzog Is the Voice of A.I. Poetry When asked to narrate an audiobook of machine-generated verse, Mr. Herzog readily agreed. “I wasn’t the best choice,” he said. “I was the only choice.”
Mark Zuckerberg says it’s ‘time to move on’ from the Elon Musk fight
Image: The Verge
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Threads post today that “it’s time to move on” from Elon Musk’s cage fight antics. “We can all agree Elon isn’t serious,” he wrote, adding that the refusal of the X (formerly Twitter) owner to confirm a date and his offer to “do a practice round in my backyard instead” shows how unserious he is.
This followed a pair of screenshots of text messages between the billionaires that were posted to X today by user DogeDesigner and, later, Musk himself. The thread showed Musk offering a “practice bout” next week at Zuckerberg’s house, to which Zuckerberg responded by telling Musk that if he wants a “real MMA fight” he should train on his own and let Zuck know when he’s “ready to compete.”
Zuckerberg previously posted that if the fight was going to happen, “you’ll hear it from me.” In other words, we don’t need to linger here any further. For now, at least. You just never know with these two.
Apple’s M3 Ultra Mac Studio could have a 32-core CPU and up to 80 GPU cores
The M3 Ultra Mac Studio. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Apple is reportedly testing an M3 Ultra chip with a significant CPU bump from 24 cores in the M2 Ultra to 32 cores in the next generation version of the chip, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in today’s Power On newsletter. Developer logs reportedly also show a base configuration with 64 GPU cores and a top-end version with 80 GPU cores for Apple’s big desktop chip.
You can get an M2 Ultra Mac with a 60-core or 76-core GPU right now, making the next version of the chip a more modest improvement, from a graphics-processing standpoint, versus last year’s leap. The M2 Ultra at its top configuration saw a 12-core jump from the 64-core GPU of a maxed-out M1 Ultra Mac Studio.
That’s not to say computers with the new chip will be creaky by any means. The M2 Ultra Mac Studio already rips, and heck, even M2 Max-equipped MacBook Pro laptops are so capable that the pricey 2023 Mac Pro is struggling to find its place in the world.
The Bloomberg report says again that Apple is releasing M3 Macs in October — including a new iMac — but also reiterates that we won’t see computers with the M3 Pro or M3 Max until next year. Gurman predicts an M3 Ultra chip will be a late-2024 release “at the earliest,” based on Apple’s past release schedule.
The ‘Apple Watch X’ is reportedly a major redesign, but it’s not coming this year
Illustration: The Verge
Apple is preparing for its first major redesign in several generations of the mainline Apple Watch, but we won’t be seeing it this year, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in his Power On newsletter this morning. Instead, Apple is working on a thinner “Apple Watch X” with magnetic watch band attachment points, a blood pressure sensor, and a microLED screen either in late 2024 or even 2025, Gurman says.
The old mechanical attachments of all Apple Watches so far have been great for allowing customers to reuse their old bands for years, but Gurman says they eat up space the company could use to shrink the wearable and beef up the battery and internal components. See the Apple Watch Ultra, which Apple gave a bigger battery at the expense of compactness.
Rumors have swirled around a brighter, more colorful microLED screen for the Apple Watch for months, but the screen technology is new and incredibly expensive. Apple has had its work cut out for it when it comes to getting a shrunken-down, affordable version of the tech into its smallest-screen device. Apple has also reportedly been planning a blood pressure sensor for the Apple Watch for years, and that may come just in time for the 10-year anniversary of the wearable as well.
As for this year, Gurman reiterates past claims that the Apple Watch Series 9 will get a faster processor for the first time since the Series 6 debut but will keep the same screen sizes it used last year, including for the 49mm Apple Watch Ultra. If that’s true, it could be an even more minor update for the “Series” watches than last year’s.
The new app every movie lover needs
Image: William Joel / The Verge
Hi friends! Welcome to the first-ever edition of Installer. My hope here every week is to be your guide to all the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. My original pitch for this was just “what if we just found all the cool apps/videos/creators/whatevers every week and put it all in one place,” and that’s what Installer is here to be.
Normally, these won’t start with a long preamble about How It All Works, but seeing as we’ve never done this before, I’ll try and explain things as we go. First and most important: Installer absolutely positively does not work without you. I’m going to do my best to find great new stuff every week, but I’m also hoping you’ll tag me in funny posts, DM me hilarious memes, and email me (installer@theverge.com) links to all the best stuff you encounter all over the web. We’re going to make this thing great together every single week.
There are two ways to get Installer: on theverge.com every Sunday morning or in newsletter form every Saturday. Subscribers get a full day’s head start. But David, you’re saying, I hate email. Who needs more email? I’m with you — I don’t like reading newsletters in my inbox either. But I have solutions!
Many RSS readers, like Feedbin (link), Inoreader (link), and Feedly (link), give you an email address you can use to send newsletters like this one straight to the app. Personally, I do all my newsletter reading through Feedbin in Reeder (link) on iOS and Feeder (link) on Android, and it works great.
You can also use a read-later app, some of which also offer email addresses. Matter(link) is a good one for Apple users, and Omnivore (link) and the (still-in-beta) Readwise Reader (link) work across lots of platforms.
A lot of folks I know have an email address they only use for newsletters, which is probably the simplest and cheapest workaround. Or you can always break that AOL email out of retirement for just this purpose.
Oh, one other formatting thing. Wherever you see bold text and a “(link),” that’s something you can try, read, download, whatever — I’ll try and link directly to as many things as possible. I’ll also link related stories and information throughout, but click on a “(link)” and you’ll always go right to the good stuff.
Alright, enough of that. Let’s get to the good stuff. This week, I’ve been testing the Kagi search engine (link), reading about how to hack a card shuffler (link), getting back into Supernatural boxing (link) on the Meta Quest, watching and trying to figure out Full Circle(link), and binge-listening to the Spy Valleypodcast (link). I also have a new note-taking app to tell you about, an animated show I think you’re going to like, and some tips on how to use my favorite new browser. Let’s go.
(Again, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What do you want to know more about? What awesome tricks do you know that everyone else should? What app should everyone be using? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)
The Drop
This is where, every week, I’ll tell you about some of the best new stuff. Always new, always good, always worth checking out.
Callsheet (link): I hate the IMDb app and the website with the huge banner telling you about the app. Callsheet is way better: a super-fast iPhone and iPad app for looking up cast and crew in whatever you’re watching, and JustWatch integration in case you wind up finding something more interesting to watch. (This was also by far the thing I heard most about this week — thanks to everyone who sent this in!)
Strange Planeton Apple TV Plus (link):Nathan Pyle’s comic has been one of the best things on Instagram for years, and I’ve been really enjoying the new animated show as well. It has some Rick and Morty and Bojack Horseman DNA, plus a little bit of Ted Lasso vibes? Oh, and even if you don’t have Apple TV Plus, you can still watch the first episode at the link.
Goodnotes 6.0 (link): Goodnotes is my favorite cross-platform tool for handwritten notes, and it just got some really clever updates — including an AI tool that can learn your handwriting, correct your spelling, and even write longhand for you. Wild.
Nerf Pro Stryfe X (link): My colleague Sean Hollister called this “the best official blaster ever made,” and trust me, Sean knows his stuff. It’s the first-ever official Nerf blaster to use half-length darts, and it’s modded for outrageous firepower. It’s $120 and up for preorder now, and I suspect you’re gonna want to get on the list quickly.
The YouTube Effect(link): A new doc from Alex Winter about the whole story of YouTube. There’s good, there’s bad, Section 230 appears, and it doesn’t cover a huge amount of new ground, but it’s a really good dive into the nuances of the platform. (I also just got off a podcast recording with Winter, so look out for that on The Vergecast on Wednesday.)
Shortwave for Android (link): Shortwave is one of the few email apps I think is onto something really right. It’s a bit like Google Inbox in that it’s constantly sorting and categorizing your inbox to make it work. The Android app is a little buggy in this first iteration, but it’s still one to try.
Netflix Game Controller (link): Netflix has been pushing into gaming for a while now, but this is the most interesting development yet — it’s building a controller app that you use to play games on your TV. It seems super early and maybe wasn’t released intentionally at all, but keep an eye on this one.
The Lego Concorde (link): I have two competing thoughts on all these incredibly cool new Lego sets. One is they are absurdly, preposterously expensive — this one is $200 and isn’t even the worst you’ll find. But the second is that I want them all so, so, so bad.
Pro Tips
The internet is full of tips and tricks. Some of them are great! Most of them are useless. In this space, every week, we’re going to learn how to use our stuff better from the people who know best: the ones who actually make the products.
First up: Josh Miller, the CEO of The Browser Company, which makes a browser called Arc(link) that continues to be one of the most interesting new apps on the market. Arc is finally available for all Apple users to download (and he swears Windows is coming soon!), so I asked him for a few tips for new and newish users. Here’s what he came back with:
“Create two Spaces — one for work and one for personal — and add a Profile to each to keep your email logins and data separate (church & state)!”
“As you start pinning tabs, make sure you right-click to Rename each one to something short and sweet — you’ll be amazed how much cleaner and personal your internet feels.”
“Drag-and-drop a tab on top of your open webpage to create a Split Screen setup instantly. Multi-tasking without multiple windows FTW!”
“Next up, this one is for David — create a third space and call it ‘Media’ or something, and then use it with Arc Mobile as a read- and watch-later list. Keeps focus during the day, and a fun pile to go through on nights and weekends.”
“Finally, and you’ll have to trust me on this since it sounds silly: please pick a fun Theme color for each Space, and use Boosts to change the fonts and colors of your most-used apps. Your internet is better when it reflects your vibe, not some corporation.”
Screen Share
Every week, I’m going to ask an interesting person to share their homescreen, plus a few things they’re into now. (Whose screen do you want to see, by the way? Let me know?) Our first guest: Nilay Patel, The Verge’s editor-in-chief and the person I know most likely to be paying for eight different music services for no particular reason. I was not disappointed.
Here’s Nilay’s homescreen, plus the apps he uses and why:
The phone: iPhone 14 Pro Max
The apps: Halide, Google Maps, Google Calendar, YouTube, Google Photos, The Verge (web app baby), Lightroom, Amazon, The New York Times, Slack, Kindle, Sonos, Instagram, Spotify (I never use this, why is this here), Lumen, Feedly, Apple News (I use News+!), Redfin (SIGH), Owl Strobe (this is a strobe light app for a record by the band Owls that I used for the limited edition Bluey record store day zoetrope dance mode record, and I have no regrets at all).
The wallpaper: the one true Max (my daughter)
I also asked Nilay for three things he’s into right now. Here’s what he said:
I watched Twisted Metal(link) on Hulu by accident and then finished it because it’s purely ridiculous from start to finish.
This TikTok (link) of someone building a bomber in Tears of the Kingdom with “Fortunate Son” playing and hashtag oil is a PhD thesis waiting to happen.
I have a galley of Liar in a Crowded Theaterby Jeff Kosseff (link), which comes out in October, and I think it’s one of the best books about free speech ever written. It’s like a series of increasingly complicated puzzles with no right answer.
Crowdsourced
I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. Thanks to everyone who already reached out — here’s a few of the ones I got this week:
“I have yet to find a song recognition app for Apple Watch that works better than SoundHound (link). The thing I love the most about SoundHound is a feature I didn’t even know I wanted: live lyrics for the detected song on my watch. It’s really cool and useful, and I don’t think there’s a single app other than Soundhound that does it (including Shazam, owned by Apple!).” — Xyan
“My current obsession gadget is the System76 Launch keyboard (link). Thing is amazing, metal build, made in Colorado, works on every OS... and of course RGB.” — Lee
“For travel, I will recommend: Flighty (link) for live status of planes. This app saved us hours of pain in our recent trip to Europe where the budget airlines were changing terminals at the last second without informing us. Tripsy (link), a travel itinerary app I don’t know how I traveled without before. Just open the app and it will show you what you are supposed to be doing now, along with any documents that are required for it.” — Dev
“An app called Beeper (link) is a fully realized all-in-one messaging app based on Matrix that preserves the open-source nature of the protocol and its surrounding apps. It’s a startup by Eric Migicovsky, founder of Pebble. I just got early access last week, and it’s amazing, with even more potential.” — Luke
“A recent iOS app I’ve been loving is Sink It for Reddit (link), which greatly improves the Reddit mobile experience through Safari. After the loss of our beloved Apollo, I tried the official Reddit app. It was such a terrible experience, battery life took a massive hit, and everything felt so clunky. Sink It now feels by far the best way to experience Reddit. Anything to avoid their own horrendous app.” — Richard
Signing off
Most of the stuff in Installer I hope will be cool and useful and make your life better. But just once, right here at the end, I need to tell you about the silliest, most unnecessary, most delightful things on the internet.
This week: My80sTV (link), a website that actually lets you watch TV from the ’80s on an ’80s-style TV. In your web browser. Sure. There’s a dedicated site for every decade since the ’50s! It’s great. But in reading about this on Reddit, I found my actual favorite source for classic TV: a two-hour video of the TV Guide Channel (if you know, you know) from 2003. There’s a whole genre of videos like this on YouTube! Why! Anyway, if you ever think you miss the way TV used to be, just flip this on for a while. Because you don’t.
Thanks again for being part of Installer’s first-ever issue. I’d love to hear what you think, what you want to see more of, and all the best stuff you see on the internet before next week’s issue. See you next week!
iPhone 14, 14 Pro owners complain about battery capacity that’s already falling off
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Some iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro owners have complaints reminiscent of the bad old days of “batterygate,” reporting that with less than a year of service on the clock, their phones are already reporting more battery degradation than expected. Sam Kohl of AppleTracktweeted in July that his iPhone 14 Pro had already dropped to a maximum capacity of 90 percent, a much faster dropoff than previous iPhones he’d owned, and the thread shows many other people with the same experience.
Kohl followed up with a video posted yesterday about the issue, saying it makes it hard for him to recommend the phone, especially considering how much it costs with a price of $999.
Officially, Apple says iPhone batteries should “retain up to 80 percent of its original capacity at 500 complete charge cycles.” The iPhone 15 series is expected to launch soon, and recent rumors have claimed those devices will see a battery size increase of 10 - 18 percent compared to current devices.
He’s not the only one seeing these kinds of numbers. Verge alum and Wall Street Journal senior tech columnist Joanna Stern wrote in her newsletter just this week that her iPhone 14 Pro is showing 88 percent battery capacity. Around The Verge, reports are mixed, with two 14 Pros down to 93 and 91 percent and another at 97 percent. In previous years, most haven’t seen a drop in reported capacity until two years of use, at least.
And that’s even before we account for the fact that it’s more expensive to replace the battery on an iPhone 14 or iPhone 14 Pro once it’s out of its one-year warranty (assuming you don’t have AppleCare or some other extended service plan). Last year the price went up by $30, from $69 on earlier devices to $99, although at least these days, you can always go the DIY route if you just don’t want to visit an Apple Store or third-party repair shop.
My iPhone 14 Pro is down to 88% battery capacity after less than a year.
Is it because I use my phone too much and have already hit 450 charge cycles?! (That's what Apple Store says.) Is it from heat from fast charging? Is there something up with the battery?
iRobot’s Roomba j7 Plus, our favorite robot vacuum, has hit an all-time low
The Roomba j7 Plus offers everything you could want in a robovac, including an auto-empty dock. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
There’s a reason people still often refer to robot vacuums as “Roombas.” The company behind the well-known robovac series, iRobot, has spent decades iterating in the space, resulting in some of the best robot vacuums you can buy. The Roomba j7 Plus is a great example, one that’s on sale at Wellbots for Verge readers for $549 ($250 off) — its lowest price to date — with coupon code VERGE200.
While still pricey, the j7 Plus brings together a host of terrific features for under $550. Its dual rubber roller brush system is great at picking up dirt off your floor, while its intuitive AI obstacle avoidance ensures it will steer clear of cables, stray pairs of shoes, and even pet waste. It’s also known to receive new features — a recent update added Siri support, for instance, while another added the ability to use it as a security camera — which has only made it a better robovac since we first tested it last year.
Unlike the standard j7, the discounted “Plus” model on offer here comes with a slick auto-empty dock, which typically retailers for about $250 on its own and cuts down on unwanted maintenance. Wellbots is also heavily discounting the Roomba Combo j7 Plus using the same promo code, which drops the mop-equipped model down to $799 ($250 off).
While nothing has been confirmed (yet), Apple is widely expected to unveil its next set of smartwatches alongside the iPhone 15 next month — which is perhaps why we’re currently seeing some steep discounts on some last-gen models. Right now, for instance, you can pick up a 41mm Apple Watch Series 7 with LTEat Walmart for $299 ($100 off), one the best prices to date on the 41mm model with cellular connectivity.
As my colleague Victoria Song noted in her review of the Apple Watch Series 8, the latest model isn’t all that different from the last-gen Series 7. It touts Apple’s newer Crash Detection feature and temperature sensors for menstrual tracking, but, otherwise, the two are nearly identical. The Series 7 features roughly the same processing power, the same always-on display, and all of the same health-tracking features — not to mention forward compatibility with watchOS 10 when it launches in the fall.
In the end, you’re saving $130 by opting for the last-gen smartwatch over its newer counterpart, even with all the discounts the Series 8 is currently receiving at Amazon, Walmart, and other retailers.
Razer’s Stream Controller X, a customizable controller with 15 LCD buttons, is matching its all-time low of $125.90 (about $24 off) at Amazon. There’s no denying that it looks and functions a lot like Elgato’s Stream Deck MK.2 — a favorite amongst Verge staffers — but it runs on Loupedeck’s software as opposed to Elgato’s. Still, if you’re someone who wants an easy way to program various macros for controlling your smart lighting, operating your Twitch stream, or performing other tasks, it poses a nice alternative.
Let’s face it, the time for scoffing at entry-level wireless earbuds has long since passed. There are now plenty of budget-friendly options to choose from — including Sony’s WF-C700N, which are on sale at Best Buy right now for $89.99 ($30 off). The comfortable earbuds make for a solid value, with reliable performance, terrific software features, and decent sound for the price. Best of all, they now offer multipoint support thanks to a recent firmware update, so you can connect them to two devices at once. Read our review.
The original Theragun Mini, a portable massage gun we often spotlight in our gift guides, is down to $139.99 ($60 off) at Best Buy. The last-gen model is not quite as light or as quiet as the second-gen version, but it’s still a surprisingly powerful tool with three speeds for addressing knots and muscle aches on the go.
Admittedly, I’ve always been an advocate of using less technology outdoors, not more. That said, I can’t help but recommend Anker’s Powerhouse 521, which is matching its all-time low of $186.99 ($33 off) at Amazon right now. The portable, 200W power station is great for charging your gadgets when you’re away from a power source, with a built-in floodlight, an LED readout, and plenty of ports (including two AC outlets and a lone USB-C port). Hell, it can even power small appliances in a pinch, should you need it.
The launch lineup for the PSVR 2 was, to put it mildly, meh. That said, Horizon Call of the Mountain remains a fantastic glimpse into what Sony’s PC-grade virtual reality headset is capable of. And right now, Monoprice is selling the PSVR 2 withCall of the Mountain for $549.99 ($50 off), which is one of the first discounts we’ve seen on Sony’s new VR headset for the PS5. Read our review.
How to set up parental controls on your PS5
Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge
Today’s kids are tech-savvy at a very young age, but you might not want your children sitting down in front of a PS5 without some guardrails in place. Sony has built parental controls right into the software for its console, and they can be used in combination with the user profiles feature to put limits on what your kids are able to do.
These limits cover everything from the number of hours your kid can spend gaming to how much they can spend on in-game purchases, and it all ties into the accounts you’ve got configured on your console. The bulk of these parental controls can be managed on the web as well as on the PS5, though new child accounts must be created on the web.
Family management on the web
First of all, you need to tell Sony who’s in your family before you can start restricting what they’re able to do on the household PS5. Assuming you already have a PlayStation Network (PSN) account:
Click Family Management > Set Up Now > Add a Child.
You’ll need to provide a date of birth for the child, an email address, and a password so they can sign into the PS5.
You’ll then be shown a series of parental control settings that will be applied to the account, covering which games, VR features, and websites can be accessed on the PS5.
You’ve got a choice of parental controls for child accounts.
Click Age Level for PS5 games to set a new age level — by default, this will be calculated based on the date of birth you provided.
Click Use of PS VR2 and PS VR if you have a virtual reality headset. Choose Restrict, and your child won’t be able to use these devices without your permission.
Click Web Browsing and then Restrict to stop games and chats from opening web links without your permission while your child is signed into the PS5.
Select Confirm.
Now, you get another group of settings to work through.
Choose Communication and User-Generated Content and Restrict to block features such as voice chat, the sending and receiving of messages, and the sharing of screenshots.
Choose Monthly Spending Limit to put restrictions on how much your child can spend through the PS5 — amounts range from zero to unlimited, with several amounts in between.
You can set how much playtime there should be, when it can begin, and when it should end.
Click Confirm, then set your time zone. After this, you’ll immediately be asked to configure screen time restrictions based on how long your kid can be on the console per day and between what times. Select Confirm again and Agree and Add to Family, and you’re done.
For any setting where you’ve chosen Restrict rather than Don’t Restrict, if your child tries to use the feature in question, you’ll be sent a permission request via email or to the PlayStation mobile app if you’ve got it installed. You can then make a one-time exception if you want to.
You can return to the Account Management page on the web at any time to change these settings or to see your child’s activity on the PS5 (how many hours per day they’ve been gaming, for example). You can also access the same parental controls on the console.
Add child accounts on the PS5
Now that Sony knows who’s in your family, you can add them to the user accounts on your PS5. Your kid will be able to sign in to their own account, with their own games, high scores, and preferences, and with your parental control settings applied.
Log out of your account by selecting your avatar (top right on the homescreen) and then choosing Log Out. Then, pick Add User to let your youngster sign in — they’ll be able to set their own username and profile picture along the way.
How the child account works
A child account doesn’t have the same privileges as an adult account. If your kid opens Settings (via the cog icon, top right), then Family and Parental Controls, they won’t be able to edit those controls — but they will be able to see how much playtime they’ve got left for today.
If you want to make changes or tweak the controls, you just have to head back to your own account on the PS5 and open up the console settings via the cog icon in the top right corner of the homescreen. From there, you can access all of the parental controls that we’ve previously covered on the web interface.
Pick Family and Parental Controls > Family Management and then choose the child account to make changes.
Your PS5 will tell you how long your kid has been gaming today.
Select Change Playtime for Today to give your kid more time on the PS5 or to see how much time they’ve already spent gaming.
Select Allowed Games to see pending requests from your child for games that have been blocked or communication options (like voice chat) that aren’t allowed.
Select Parental Controls to tweak all of the settings you already configured on the web, from the monthly spending limit to age range restrictions on games.
You can edit all the parental controls on the PS5, including which games are allowed.
It’s a good idea to protect your PSN account on the PS5 with a PIN code — otherwise, your child could simply log in as you on the console and turn off parental controls. To do this from the PS5 Settings screen, pick Users and Accounts > Login Settings > Require a PS5 Login Passcode.
It doesn’t really make a difference whether you manage parental controls on the web or on the PS5. It’s exactly the same selection of options, so use whichever you find the most convenient — though you do get more information on your kid’s activity if you log in on the web. For example, if your child is allowed to tweak the privacy settings, you can see what the settings are and when they’ve changed.
The video call revolution is dead
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Three years ago, video chat appeared set to revolutionize the way we work. All we actually got was slightly better video chat.
Video-first communication obviously became much more important to many with the covid pandemic. With people suddenly forced to use video chat for work, school, and even to visit with their families, there was a rush of interest in apps and platforms that promised to make the concept of sitting in front of a webcam a bit more exciting.
Zoom, meanwhile, became a verb and a household name practically overnight. It launched an app store, an events platform for everything from yoga classes to doctor visits to worldwide conferences, and a whole suite of other productivitytools with video chat at the center. The company suddenly looked like the future of life, business, school, and everything. It even partnered with Meta to bring Zoom to Meta’s Horizon Workrooms VR productivity space.
Even after all that, the actual experience of video chat is maybe in its most boring state ever. Now that many people are gathering as they did before the pandemic started (even Zoom is demanding that some employees come back to the office), the market is largely run by tech giants and the pace of new and interesting features has slowed to practically nothing. This is the case with many tech changes brought on by the pandemic, but video was supposed to be the one that stuck around.
Zoom is still a force. I attend briefings and meetings using the platform all the time, even though Vox Media itself is a Google Meet house. But Zoom calls themselves still feel remarkably similar to how they did early on in the pandemic, even with added features like facial effects, avatars, and AI summaries. Zoom is increasingly trying to find a business beyond video chat, though I don’t know anyone who uses its Slack-like Team Chat or its email and calendar services, and I think I’ve attended one event on Zoom’s virtual events platform.
Google Meet has come the farthest. Google wisely rebranded the app from “Hangouts Meet” to “Google Meet” in April 2020, which separated it from the confusing and now-dead Hangouts brand. Over time, Google addressed some obviousmissingfeatures and improved the app’s overall stability. I generally don’t think about how to use it when I’m actually using it, which Google should count as a win, but I still wouldn’t say using Google Meet is a joy.
Microsoft continues to invest in video conferencing features for its Teams collaboration app, and I’ll give the company some credit for integrating Snapchat’s Lenses to add some fun to video calls. But there’s something ironic about Microsoft investing so much in another straightforward way to video chat when it already has Skype.
The future of video chat apps isn’t all bleak. Apple has a few interesting ideas that are coming with macOS Sonoma, some of which are borrowed from others: You’ll be able to make your face appear in a little movable bubble, make yourself much larger so that the focus is more on you, and make gestures to set off animated reactions. It’s great that these will probably be everywhere once Sonoma rolls out — especially since they’re all supposed to work with apps like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Cisco’s Webex — but are animated fireworks really the best thing we can add to video chat?
For hanging out on video calls with your friends, Discord’s Activities let you do things like play games with your pals or watch YouTube videos together. If your workplace uses Slack, I actually recommend its video huddles for short, impromptu conversations that feel like the deskside conversations I used to have when I worked in an office.
But it really does feel like the time to get hyped about video chat apps is over. Sure, Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams are all very good at what they do. It’s great that things like custom backgrounds and emoji reactions are commonplace no matter which app you use. But when I hop on a video call, I’m still largely just staring at boxes of people, and the apps have mostly become utilities that I’m just not that excited to use.
Video was supposed to be the future. Instead, it’s just another way to pick up the phone.
Mill’s ambitious smart trash can isn’t going to solve the food waste problem
This $400 kitchen bin eats your leftovers and promises to turn them into chicken food rather than landfill. A nicer-smelling kitchen and less waste are great, but not at this price.
At around 1AM on Sunday morning, my partner sat bolt upright in bed and whispered urgently, “There’s someone in the kitchen!” After listening sleepily for a few seconds to the muffled clunking noise, I replied, “No, there’s not; that’s just the smart bin eating an avocado pit.”
For most couples, this would have necessitated a further middle-of-the-night conversation, but for my long-suffering spouse, the word “smart” was all he needed to hear to roll his eyes and huffily go back to sleep.
The noise-making contraption was the Mill Kitchen Bin — a full-sized, sleek-looking Wi-Fi-connected trash can packed with sensors and an industrial-grade food grinder. It had hit a snag (a large pit) during its otherwise quiet nightly business of munching through its load of melon rinds, egg shells, coffee grinds, half-eaten peanut butter sandwiches, and chicken bones. Over nine hours or so, it worked on shredding, shrinking, drying, and dehydrating the food remnants we’d thrown in the 27-inch-tall, 16-inch-wide bin during the day, turning them into “food grounds” by morning.
The concept here is similar to the electric countertop “composters” you may have heard of — electronic gadgets that grind, dry, and dehydrate uneaten food. But instead of attempting to turn it into compost intended for your garden or houseplants, as those composters do, Mill wants you to ship the food grounds it regurgitates back to the company every month or so, where it turns it into food for chickens.
At least, that’s the plan. Mill CEO and co-founder Matt Rogers tells me they’re still working through some “R&D and regulatory processes” for the feed part. But the idea is that “Food is much more valuable than compost,” he says. “We should keep food as food.”
He’s not wrong. As with Roger’s prior efforts (which include the category-defining Nest Learning Thermostat), the Mill is designed to tackle a huge climate issue. This time, it’s household food waste instead of household energy use. “It’s a massive problem. We throw away about 40 percent of the food we grow, half of which comes from us at home,” he says.
Consequently, food is the most common item in landfills, where it gives off the greenhouse gas methane as it decomposes. It’s a big, little-discussed, global problem, which is a wildly massive issue to tackle with a pricey smart kitchen bin. “It’s this perfect blend of technology meets design meets climate,” says Rogers of the new invention. Mill provides an alternative if you don’t have the time, space, or expertise to manage a compost bin, or if you have all of the above but have nowhere useful to use the compost.
A food mill
I’ve spent a few months with the Mill in my kitchen, and while there is good tech and design here, the bin in its current form is not the solution to food waste. What it is is a very expensive smart rubbish bin that will make you feel better if you can’t / won’t compost or are unable to make any other effort to reduce what you throw out.
You can’t buy the bin outright. Instead, it’s a subscription model, so you’re basically renting it. You either pay $396 a year ($33 a month) or $45 monthly plus a $75 bin delivery (for a total of $615 for the first year). If you reserve a Mill bin today, Mill tells me it should be shipped to you in about two months. There’s no minimum time commitment, and the monthly fee covers all parts, repairs, replacements, and costs / materials for shipping the grounds back. You don’t have to ship the grinds back, but you still pay monthly either way.
While the bin will reduce the amount of trash that leaves your house, there are cheaper solutions for managing your food waste responsibly, including proper meal planning, non-electric countertop compost bins (if you’ve nowhere to put your scraps, there are organizations that can use them), and municipal and private composting programs. But Mill’s selling point is ease of use, and it’s a lot easier and less smelly than any of the above.
The Mill bin is as easy to use as a regular kitchen bin.
Dropping food scraps into the pedal-operated Mill is as easy as throwing them in the trash, but unlike a regular trash can or countertop composting, the Mill isn’t messy, doesn’t smell bad (even with shrimp shells in there for three days), and never attracts flies.
For me, the main benefit was that I only had to empty it about once a month (an easy process), and because I was inputting less in my regular trash bin, that went out less often, too. Mill reports one customer who shipped a 25-pound box of food grounds back to them kept “8.5 standard trash bags out of the landfill.”
But, unless you can offset its cost by paying for a smaller garbage can from your municipality, Mill is a solution for rich people who care about the planet. Those of us who care about the planet but aren’t able to spend $33 a month for a more convenient way to do good and can’t recoup any costs from downsizing our garbage can are just going to have to keep sticking our food scraps in the freezer and lobbying the local council for better community composting.
Henrie was not entirely sure what to make of the Mill.
A solution for a problem we shouldn’t have
We shouldn’t waste food, yet we do. My family of four wastes an unconscionable amount due to busy schedules, picky eaters, and a too-big refrigerator that hides leftovers until they walk out on their own.
We have chickens and a bunny rabbit, so fresh scraps from chopping veggies and fruits mostly find a happy home. But there is a very long list of things chickens can’t eat, including avocados, potatoes, onions, coffee grinds, and anything in butter, oil, or salt (so, most of what I cook).
However, the Mill can eat all these things, which made me skeptical about how Mill Industries will turn these food grounds into healthy chicken food for local farms. According to Mill, the grounds go through several processing steps to make them safe for chickens. “We’re able to test it and blend it to get the right nutritious ingredients,” says Rogers.
But it turns out this is a thing they haven’t actually done yet, at least outside of the research stages. I wanted to try out their chicken food on my chickens, and while Rogers told me I could feed them the grounds directly, the company is still “working to make them into a safe chicken feed ingredient.”
To create food for any creature, you need approval from the Food and Drug Administration and the version for animals, the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO). As no one has ever made commercial chicken food from household leftovers before (it has been done with restaurant and grocery store scraps), Mill needs approval for its process.
While it’s not there yet, the company is getting close. This week, AAFCO approved a new definition for animal feed ingredients made from Dried, Recovered Household Food. There are still more regulatory hoops to jump through, but Mill spokesperson Molly Spaeth tells me, “We expect the two additional procedural votes to be completed by January 2024 at the latest. We have started [chicken feed] production now and are distributing in an R&D capacity until we have that full clearance in January.”
I’m not intimately familiar with regulatory processes for animal food, but right now, Mill’s product doesn’t deliver on its core promise of turning your food waste into commercial chicken food. Until that’s a proven solution — i.e., the hens are happy — it’s basically a glorified trash compactor that you pay monthly for the privilege of using.
The industrial-grade grinding bucket is the guts of the Mill. It fits in the top of the bin.
A smarter kitchen bin
Hungry chickens aside, as a smart trash can, the Mill works well. It made disposing of my food waste easier than my nascent attempts at composting (which is not as simple as it sounds), and I felt less guilt dumping leftovers from my plate or chopping board in there than throwing them in the bin destined for the landfill.
The list of foods the bin can’t take is significantly smaller than things my chickens can’t eat — you shouldn’t put in large bones, hard shells, corn husks, rotten food, or copious amounts of sugar like a whole cake (who throws away a whole cake?!). There’s a handy list of dos and don’ts that attaches magnetically to the bin.
Unlike most of the tech in my smart home, the Mill required minimal attention. Open it with the foot pedal, discarded food goes in, the lid locks at 10PM each night, and the lengthy grinding begins (you can adjust the start time in the accompanying app). Setup was as easy as unboxing, popping in the bucket and large charcoal filter, and plugging it in — although I needed help as the whole contraption weighs a whopping 50 pounds.
Using the bin with its companion smartphone app required setting up an account with my email address. I then paired it via Bluetooth and connected it to my Wi-Fi. The app can send push notifications when the bin is full and if there are problems, and it is also where I could set what time the grinding would begin. It recommends 10PM, and I got a fright when I watched TV in the living room one night, and the bin made a very loud clunking sound as it locked the lid. The grinding process itself, however, is surprisingly quiet (avocado pits notwithstanding).
The bin doesn’t have to be online all the time, and connectivity isn’t required to use it. Its onboard sensors that detect weight, humidity, and moisture run using on-device algorithms to determine how long to grind and dry the food scraps and don’t rely on a cloud connection. However, connectivity helps keep track of the time it needs to automate the dehydration cycles and allows for firmware updates and tweaks to the algorithms.
While I was testing the bin, it received an update that shortened the drying time by an hour or so, ending around 6AM instead of 7AM. Mill also monitors things like the status of the charcoal filter to send a new one automatically and offers up troubleshooting tips in the app if a jam happens.
Subtle LED lights on the bin’s faux-wood lid tell you what it’s doing — grinding, mixing, locked and hot, or ready to be emptied. You can press and hold its single physical button to unlock it while it’s working to add extra scraps, although this process took a beat longer than was useful when you’re in the middle of making breakfast.
The food grounds generally resemble dirt, but when the bin got jammed, Mill told me to soak them to try and clear it out. The resulting sludge was so immovable I had to send the bucket back to Mill to deal with.
When the Mill got jammed, I learned about the other LED icon — two flashing red dots. This was my worst experience with the bin, and the troubleshooting steps the app took me through to try and clear it were sticky, gross, and unsuccessful. In the end, Mill overnighted a new bucket (the removable part, not the whole bin) and had me send my one back for “an examination,” a process included in the product’s warranty.
According to Spaeth, Mill determined the jam was likely caused by adding a bunch of old chard on top of an almost full bucket of overly dehydrated scraps, causing the grounds at the bottom to turn into cement. That firmware update that came a few weeks later and adjusted the drying time was designed to correct this problem so as not to turn the food scraps into powder. But the jam experience was so icky that had I been paying for the service, I would have canceled it on the spot.
Thankfully, once the dark jam days were over, emptying the bin and sending the grounds off to Mill was simple. Everything you need for this is included in the monthly subscription price. I just scheduled my mail delivery person to collect the prelabeled box on his next visit using Mill’s app. This means no extra truck rolling to collect my box and my two months’ worth of food waste — which, based on how many fewer trips to the garbage cart I took, would’ve taken up around four trash bags of space on a diesel garbage truck — fit into a box smaller than my last Amazon delivery package and weighed just over 8lbs.
Emptying the Mill bin when it wasn’t jammed was really simple and definitely less stinky than taking out the regular trash.
According to the report Mill sent me after processing my waste (not a sentence a tech reviewer ever expects to write), I potentially saved -27kgs on CO2 equivalent emissions by using the bin. This included offsetting the energy use of the bin and the shipping footprint. This impact report is similar to the home report a Nest thermostat sends estimating energy saved. This type of positive reinforcement has been shown to help people change their habits. For Rogers, that’s where he sees Mill’s potential success, fundamentally altering people’s daily behaviors.
The Mill impact report said my 8.2 lbs of food waste had saved the equivalent of not burning 31 lbs of coal. The company uses aLifecycle Assessmentto calculate the overall impact of each part of its process.
As it stands, though, this product feels more like a proof of concept. Ultimately, food waste is a problem too big for a Silicon Valley startup to solve singlehandedly. Solutions need to come from municipalities. Approximately 5 percent of US cities currently have a green bin program for food — something that is more common but still not prevalent in Europe. Even when Mill’s $400-a-year bins do effectively close the nutrient food cycle by producing commercial chicken food, we need better local solutions. If Mill is still shipping garbage across the country, then greenwashing accusations start to hold water.
Rogers recognizes this and makes it clear that how Mill is starting is not how it plans to scale. Mill has already partnered with several cities and has plans for more. Mill’s current solution is imperfect, but it does offer a potential alternative to existing systems that do too little. If Mill can scale to provide a viable infrastructure locally — where my food grounds are delivered to a local processing center, and the resulting chicken food goes to nearby farms, that seems like a win-win.
But that is a very big If. As it stands, my kitchen scraps are flying 3,000 miles or so from South Carolina to Mill’s only feed facility in Mukilteo, Washington, and so far, no local chickens have consumed a grain.
The Mill (which should only be used indoors) is a well-designed piece of tech that significantly reduced the volume of trash leaving my house. But it’s not going to singlehandedly solve the food waste problem.
The “Mill”ion-dollar question
I enjoyed using the Mill — I like how it looks, and the convenience promise paid off — but I won’t pay $33 a month for it, and I doubt there are many people who will. Is it better than throwing your discarded food into the regular bin or down the garbage disposal? Yes. At a minimum, and chicken feed aside, the Mill bin dramatically reduced the volume of waste leaving my house, resulting in less space taken up in the landfill and that big diesel garbage truck.
But that just isn’t a compelling enough payoff for most people to invest monthly in a smart kitchen bin. It’s no 15 percent off your energy bill, as the Nest promises, which is a hard enough sell for a device that costs half the amount this bin does.
The experience did make me more aware of how much food we waste. But rather than pay for a fancy device to fix that problem, I’m determined to do a better job of meal planning and eating my leftovers in a timely fashion.
If the promise of the food grounds becoming chicken food pans out and if Mill can scale to a point where municipalities offer these bins to their taxpayers for free or reduced costs, similar to how energy companies give rebates on smart thermostats, I can see more value. If they also eliminate the cross-country shipping issue, that would be even better. But today, it feels like an over-engineered solution to an enormous problem that a few thousand people who can pay for the privilege of feeling better about their waste management just isn’t going to impact.
Photos and video by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
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Google Slides is getting native support for annotations
Circling! Underlining! And more! | Image: Google
Google is adding a new annotation feature to its Slides presentation software that’ll let users doodle on their work while presenting it. The search giant hopes that having the ability to “circle, underline, draw connections or make quick notes” will make for presentations that are “more engaging, interactive and impactful.”
While Microsoft PowerPoint users have long had the ability to doodle on their decks, Google Slides users haven’t been so lucky. In response people have developed workarounds like using Chrome extensions like Annotate and Web Paint to draw over their browser while presenting. Needless to say, having the feature natively built into Slides should be much simpler.
According to Google’s blog post, the annotation feature is accessible via the three dot menu that’s available on the bottom left of the screen while presenting. There’s a pen tool with a few different color options, as well as an eraser.
The feature will be rolling out to most Google Slides users in the two weeks following August 23rd, but anyone on a rapid release domain will get it in the next couple of weeks. Annotations will be available to all Google Slides users, regardless of whether they have a paid Google Workspace account, or a free Google account.
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