NASA cancels its VIPER rover that would’ve searched for water on the Moon
Image: NASA/Daniel Rutter
NASA isn’t moving forward with its VIPER program — short for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover — which aimed to put a rover on the far side of the Moon to search for water. On Wednesday, NASA cited cost increases and several delays as its reasons for canceling the project.
VIPER was originally expected to launch at the end of 2023. However, NASA pushed the date to September 2025 due to supply chain and scheduling delays.
Astrobotic, the same company behind the ill-fated Peregrine Moon lander, was supposed to launch the VIPER aboard its Griffin spacecraft. Despite VIPER’s cancellation, Astrobotic will continue its contract with NASA to land the Griffin lander on the Moon without the rover “no earlier than” fall 2025.
After a comprehensive review, we are discontinuing development of our VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) project. We are committed to studying and exploring the Moon, and will pursue other methods to accomplish many of VIPER's goals: https://t.co/oMyngdoUKcpic.twitter.com/UJXmf0gnRv
NASA says continued development of VIPER would “result in an increased cost that threatens cancellation or disruption” to other missions under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The agency has spent $450 million to develop the rover so far, according to Bloomberg. Instead of dedicating more resources to the craft, it has chosen to disassemble and reuse the rover’s instruments for future missions to the Moon.
“The agency has an array of missions planned to look for ice and other resources on the Moon over the next five years,” Nicola Fox, NASA’s associate administrator of the science mission directorate, said in a statement. “Our path forward will make maximum use of the technology and work that went into VIPER, while preserving critical funds to support our robust lunar portfolio.”
Tinder can now pick your dating profile picture for you
It’s not immediately clear what Tinder’s Photo Selector feature looks for in a “good” selfi. | Image: Tinder
Tinder is releasing an AI-powered feature that supposedly makes it easier for users to select better photos for their dating profiles. The dating app says its new Photo Selector tool aims to “take out the guesswork” when picking your most flattering photos by curating a diverse selection that’s “optimized to help users find a match.”
To use Photo Selector, users will need to take a selfie within Tinder and allow the app to access their device’s camera roll. Tinder’s new AI feature will then use facial recognition to collate a selection of images for the user to review and add to their profiles. The curation is processed on-device and doesn’t upload the user’s camera roll to Tinder’s systems. We have asked Tinder to clarify the criteria the feature uses to select images and will update if we hear back.
According to Tinder, Photo Selector’s purpose is to help its users focus on “making meaningful connections” by saving them time when putting dating profiles together. In a study of 7000 18-25-year-olds conducted by the app, Tinder says it found that young singles spend 33 minutes on average selecting the right profile photo to use. The new Photo Selector feature might help to reduce that, but It’s unlikely to address the larger issues that are driving dating app fatigue.
Photo Selector is available for devices running iOS and Android with the rollout scheduled to begin in the US sometime in July. Support for international markets will arrive “this summer,” according to Tinder.
How Trump’s Running Mate J.D. Vance is Connected to Silicon Valley Mr. Vance spent less than five years in Silicon Valley’s tech industry, but the connections he made with Peter Thiel and others became crucial to his political ascent.
The best Prime Day deals on charging devices
We’re rounding up all the best deals on charging tech for your home, car, and travels. | Photo: Anker
If you’re still charging your phone with whatever random wall wart came in the box three phones ago or your laptop with the bulky brick it came with, now is a great time to upgrade. Advances like GaN chargers have led to smaller, faster USB-C chargers for phones and laptops alike, and Qi2 gives iPhones (and maybe soon some Android phones?) MagSafe-speed charging at lower prices. And with Prime Day deals available now, you can save quite a bit and charge in less time, too.
There is a sizable selection of charging devices on sale, whether you’re looking to outfit a home office or your coffee office. Nearly all of the brands we trust have something on offer, including Anker, Belkin, Ugreen, and Satechi.
You can get Belkin’s 15W MagSafe wireless charger for $19.99 ($10 off) at Amazon. The puck-shaped charger snaps to the back of your MagSafe iPhone. It has a 6.6-foot cable and a built-in kickstand that lets you prop the phone up horizontally.
Belkin’s 40W Dual-Port USB-C charger is down to $19.94 ($10 off) $22.98 (about $7 off) at Amazon. Its smaller size and foldable plug make it easy to slip in any bag or pocket.
The 100W Anker 647 charging station is down to $69.99 ($30 off) at Amazon. You’ll get six AC ports, one USB-A port, and one USB-C port on Anker’s 647 charging station. There are also two retractable three-foot USB-C cables drawing from its 100W capacity, and the five-foot power cord gives you some room to pull it away from the wall.
Amazon is selling the 30W Anker 511 charging adapter for $12.99 ($10 off) for Prime Day. It has just a single USB-C port and won’t charge bigger devices like laptops at sufficient speeds, but its petite size and collapsible plug make it handy for travel.
A 65W UGreen travel charger has dropped to $25.19 (about $15 off) at Amazon. It manages to fit two USB-C ports and a USB-A port into its petite frame, and a foldable plug also helps keep it compact.
You can pick upApple’s 35W Dual USB-C chargerfor $44.99 ($15 off) atAmazon, which is only one dollar more than the record Black Friday price. You can charge not just your iPad but also iPhones, AirPods, and anything else you can find an appropriate USB-C cable for.
ESR’s Qi2 MagSafe car mount charger is down to $22.39 ($13 off) $21.49 (about $13 off) at Amazon when clipping a coupon. You can just clip it onto your car’s air vent, then mount your MagSafe-compatible iPhone for a quick charge.
Mophie’s 3-in-1 MagSafe charger folds up conveniently for travel and is available for $89.99 from Amazon and Best Buy, marked down from $149.99.
The best Prime Day deals on power banks
You can get a 10,000mAh Anker Nano power bank for $31.99 ($8 off) at Amazon. It supports 30W charging across one USB-C and one USB-A port. The built-in USB-C cable lets you charge devices without extra wires to trip over, and there’s an integrated display to let you know your remaining capacity and time to charge.
The Anker 522 MagGo battery is down to $34.99 ($15 off) at Amazon. The magnetic power bank touts wireless Qi charging, a folding kickstand, and a convenient USB-C port for wired charging. Just be warned: you won’t get Qi2 speeds here, as it’s limited to 7.5W.
You can get a 10,000mAh Baseus MagSafe-compatible power bank for $25.49 (about $20 off) at Amazon. It’s limited to the slower 7.5W charging speed of the original Qi standard, but you can charge at up to 20W with a USB-C Power Delivery port, and it supports passthrough charging to top up the power bank and your iPhone at the same time.
Belkin’s 5,000mAh BoostCharge wireless power bank has dropped to $27.54 $28.99 ($32 off) at Amazon, nearly matching its all-time low. The MagSafe power bank has a handy kickstand but doesn’t offer Qi2 speeds. It could be a suitable alternative if you don’t want to pay double for the faster options that have recently come out.
Update, July 16th:Adjusted prices and a few new deals, like Anker’s 313 Magnetic Wireless Charger.
The Xreal Beam Pro has good ideas about AR — but not enough juice
Image: Xreal
There are two possible paths for augmented reality devices. One path is the all-in-one approach, which you might call the smartphone path or the Vision Pro Path: you buy a full-fledged single device with everything you need, and when you need an upgrade, you buy a new one. The other path is the unbundled one: your AR system might be lots of devices rather than just one, and you’ll upgrade and swap things in as you need them. That path is more like building a home theater system than buying a new iPhone.
The Xreal Beam Pro, which I’ve been testing for the last couple of weeks, is a big bet on unbundling. It’s a $199 Android device that looks and works like a smartphone but is intended to be used mostly as a companion to Xreal’s AR glasses. Xreal has found some success in the last few years building AR glasses that are essentially just big displays; you can plug in almost anything and see it projected in front of your face. With the Beam Pro, the company is trying to find a way to give you more and cooler AR stuff to do, without compromising the whole premise of its devices.
Image: Adi Robertson / The Verge
The Beam Pro is a normal-looking Android device — other than those cameras, anyway.
It’s like the glasses and the tablet are in an open relationship; they’re best together but still have plenty of value apart. But the Beam Pro itself just feels a bit underpowered and unfinished. There are too many bugs in its AR-specific features and too many times I really felt the sacrifices required to get this thing under $200. Xreal has the beginning of something really clever here, but I’ll probably wait for the next one.
The Beam Pro has two main jobs, as far as I can tell. The first is just to be a content machine for Xreal glasses, which it handles fairly well. Since it has access to the Play Store, you can download all the streaming apps, game streaming services, and whatever else you might want to see on the big virtual screen in your glasses. It has 128GB of storage and 6GB of RAM, which is less than I’d like for something so geared toward photos, videos, and games. For an extra $50, you can get 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and I recommend spending the money. But either way, unfortunately, the Beam Pro’s other specs keep it from working well enough to recommend.
As a pure app machine, the Beam Pro really only has two advantages over the phone already in your pocket. For one, it has a dual camera rig on the back that shoots 1080p 3D video and 50-megapixel 3D photos that you can play back in your glasses. The results are crisp and fun enough that I’ve used this camera much more than I expected. The Beam Pro also has a second USB-C port, so you can charge the device and plug it into your glasses simultaneously. I’m not sure how to weigh that convenience against the extra hassle of carrying and maintaining another device, but it is a nice touch.
Screenshot: David Pierce / The Verge
The Beam Pro adds an app launcher to your AR space, which is helpful.
Beyond that, it’s all software. The Beam Pro runs NebulaOS, which is Xreal’s twist on Android designed to work better on your face. When you plug the Beam Pro into a pair of glasses, you see apps mirrored like you’d expect, but Xreal has also added some extra UI: there’s an app launcher with a grid of icons that looks a lot like the Vision Pro and a control center that lets you quickly capture footage or change settings, and you can arrange apps in space in front of your face. It’s not as free-form as you’d get from Meta or Apple — you basically just stick a couple of apps next to each other — but it’s better than just mirroring your screen like most Android devices.
When you’re wearing the glasses, NebulaOS has an app that turns the Beam Pro into a remote control. There’s a little round cursor that you move by moving the device in space, and you tap on the screen to select something. To scroll, you just swipe on the Beam Pro’s screen. It’s a good idea and a great use of the device, but it doesn’t always work very well. Sometimes the screen registers a swipe as a tap, sometimes it registers a tap as a double-tap, and sometimes it seems to not be able to match the location of the cursor with the tap on the screen. In the Netflix app, for instance, I eventually figured out how to go back and forward — by double-tapping on the screen while pointing the cursor way off to the side — but I still can’t make it pause.
Screenshot: David Pierce / The Verge
Nebula’s layout tools are handy — its penchant for misplacing things, less so.
There are little bugs like this all over NebulaOS. The Beam Pro’s in-glasses display can be set to follow your head as you move or stay anchored in one space, which you select by tapping the orange Mode button on the right side of the device. But in the following mode, the screen often flickers and judders and lags behind my head; when I set it to stay in one spot, it consistently drifts downward over time. The Beam Pro just constantly feels like it’s trying to do too much.
Even the hardware feels a bit like an identity crisis. With a 6.5-inch screen, it’s a little big to use in one hand, so the remote gestures are kind of awkward. The Qualcomm chip inside just isn’t powerful enough to make the AR stuff feel smooth and crisp. Xreal’s in a tough spot here: if the Beam Pro is $800, nobody’s going to buy it, but it’s somewhere between difficult and impossible to build a $200 Android device powerful enough to run real-time AR stuff.
Screenshot: David Pierce / The Verge
I do love watching 3D videos of my dog in my glasses.
It’s certainly possible that some of the software features can get better over time. I’ve already gotten a bunch of software updates on the Beam Pro, which have fixed or at least helped with some issues I’ve had. But Xreal’s track record here isn’t great: a lot of people who bought the original Beam, a much more minimalist remote control and content machine, are still complaining about the same serious bugs and missing features even months later. You should never buy a device based on promises of future improvements, but definitely don’t do it here.
Ultimately, I like the Beam Pro most as a fun and relatively inexpensive 3D camera. I don’t know whether spatial video is the future of anything, but I do enjoy watching my dog splash in the pool with some extra depth. (You can also play Beam Pro content back on the Vision Pro, which is neat.) When it comes to the AR features, though, I’m mostly opting out. I like Xreal’s idea about using your devices to power your glasses, but the Beam Pro just doesn’t have the power. I’ll stick with just mirroring my screen.
It’s never been easier for the cops to break into your phone
Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge
The FBI said it ‘gained access’ to the Trump rally shooter’s phone just two days after the attempted assassination.
Just two days after the attempted assassination at former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the FBI announced it “gained access” to the shooter’s phone. The bureau has not disclosed how it broke into the phone — or what has been found on it — but the speed with which it did so is significant, and security experts say it points to the increased efficacy of phone-hacking tools.
In a call with reporters on Sunday, the bureau said field agents in Pennsylvania had tried and failed to break into Thomas Matthew Crooks’ phone. The device was then sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia.
Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that law enforcement agencies have several tools at their disposal to extract data from phones. “Almost every police department in the nation has a device called the Cellebrite, which is a device built for extracting data from phones, and it also has some capability to unlock phones,” Quintin said. Cellebrite, which is based in Israel, is one of several companies that provides mobile device extraction tools (MDTFs) to law enforcement. Third-party MDTFs vary in efficacy and cost, and the likely FBI has its own in-house tools as well. Last year, TechCrunch reported that Cellebrite asked users to keep use of its technology “hush hush.”
“It seems reasonable to me that the field office there [in Pennsylvania] wouldn’t have some of the more advanced techniques for breaking into modern phones that they have at Quantico,” Quintin told The Verge hours before the FBI announced it had successfully gained access to Crooks’ phone. “I have little doubt that Quantico will be able to break into this phone, whether that’s in-house or whether that’s through using outside help — like from Cellebrite, for example.
A 2020 investigation by the Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization Upturn found that more than 2,000 law enforcement agencies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia had access to MDTFs. GrayKey — among the most expensive and advanced of these tools — costs between $15,000 and $30,000, according to Upturn’s report. Grayshift, the company behind GrayKey, announced in March that its Magnet GrayKey device has “full support” for Apple iOS 17, Samsung Galaxy S24 Devices, and Pixel 6 and 7 devices.”
For law enforcement, third-party MDTFs are an effective way to get around tech companies’ hesitance to help break into customers’ phones.
In previous instances of mass shootings or domestic terrorism, the FBI has spent weeks or months trying to break into suspects’ phones. The bureau famously butted heads with Apple in late 2015 after the company refused to help law enforcement get around the encryption on the San Bernardino, California shooter’s iPhone. Early in the following year, Apple refused a federal court order to help the FBI access the shooter’s phone, which the company said would effectively require it to build a backdoor for the iPhone’s encryption software.
“The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers,” Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in a February 2016 open letter. The FBI did have access to the a backup of the shooter’s phone that had been uploaded to his iCloud account — but the last backup appeared to have occurred six weeks before the shooting, hence the FBI’s desire to unlock the phone. In his letter, Cook claimed that the FBI had asked Apple to modify its iOS so passcodes could be input electronically in what he called a “brute force” attack.
“The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor,” Cook wrote. “While we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products. And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.”
Trump — at the time one of several candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination — was among those who demanded that Apple cave to the FBI. “First of all, Apple ought to give the security for that phone,” he told the crowd during one of his rallies. “What I think you ought to do is boycott Apple until such time as they give that security number.”
The FBI dropped its case against Apple in March 2016, three months after the shooting — not because Apple decided to comply with the FBI’s request, but because the bureau had obtained a break-in method from an “outside source” and no longer needed Apple’s assistance. Reuters initially reported that the Cellebrite had helped the FBI break into the device, which the bureau never confirmed, though then-director James Comey and Senator Dianne Feinstein did disclose that the FBI spent around $1 million to unlock the phone.
In 2021, the Washington Post reported that the Australian security firm Azimuth Security unlocked the San Bernardino shooter’s phone.
The San Bernardino shooting was not the only instance in which the FBI tried to compel Apple to break into an iPhone on its behalf. After a shooter opened fire at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida on December 2019, the FBI asked Apple to unlock two iPhones linked to the shooter. After Apple refused, Attorney General William Barr said the company had failed to provide “substantive assistance” in the case. Apple, for its part, maintained that it “produced a wide variety of information associated with the investigation,” and turned over “gigabytes of information” to the FBI, including “iCloud backups, account information and transactional data for multiple accounts” related to the shooter. But Apple once again refused to unlock the shooter’s phones.
The FBI said it was able to break into the shooter’s phones in March 2020, after several months of trying — and the bureau lambasted Apple in its announcement. “Thanks to the great work of the FBI — and no thanks to Apple — we were able to unlock Alshamrani’s phones,” Barr said at the time. FBI director Christopher Wray said this was done with “effectively no help from Apple.”
Riana Pfefferkorn, a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory, said the Pensacola shooting was one of the last times federal law enforcement agencies loudly denounced encryption.
“That was over four years ago, and the technology on both sides of the equation has only evolved since then,” Pfefferkorn said in an email to The Verge.
Pfefferkorn said vendors and law enforcement agencies often gain access to phones by exploiting “a vulnerability in the software that’s running on the phone” or by guessing the password through brute force. “It takes a matter of minutes to brute-force a 4-digit passcode and a matter of hours for a 6-digit one,” Pfefferkorn said.
“In addition to the FBI’s own in-house tools, there are tools available from third-party vendors (as with the San Bernardino shooter’s phone), some of which are more scrupulous than others about who their customers are. There are serious human rights risks when technology for breaking into people’s phones gets leveraged by undemocratic governments, yet those tools are widely available for the right price.”
Google is reportedly planning its biggest startup acquisition ever
Illustration: The Verge
Google is considering spending $23 billion to buy Wiz, a cloud cybersecurity startup with partners that include Amazon and Oracle, reports The Wall Street Journal. At close to twice what it spent for Motorola Mobility in 2012, it would be the most Google has ever paid for another company.
The New York City-based Wiz offers “siloed security tools and scanners” for the enterprise space, according to the company. Wiz writes that it secures corporate cloud infrastructure “by creating a normalizing layer between cloud environments,” letting businesses “rapidly identify and remove critical risks.” Buying such a company feels particularly targeted at an increasingly vulnerable-looking Microsoft that’s recently weathered multiplehigh-profile security breaches.
The deal “looks likely,” according to the Times, but it could fall through and risks triggering reviews from US regulators. The Biden administration has presided over significant antitrust action, including the Department of Justice’s lawsuit over Google’s Search deal with Apple and the Federal Trade Commission’s failed effort to block Microsoft from buying Activision.
Google Close to Its Biggest Acquisition Ever, Despite Antitrust Scrutiny The search giant’s negotiations to buy Wiz, a cybersecurity start-up, for $23 billion, come as the Biden administration has taken a hard line against consolidation in tech and other industries.
Hopefully, this new PARAMOUNT logo won’t stick around for long
This probably isn’t Paramount’s new logo. | Image: Paramount
If you didn’t know Paramount Global is set to merge with Skydance, then the logo included in their recent investor presentation would like to share an important update. Under its traditional mountain and stars, it shouts PARAMOUNT, using the all-caps styling and arched text of the Skydance logo instead of a more gently whispered Paramount.
It’s... not good. But, like the very bad Warner Bros. Discovery logo that appeared in 2021 when their merger was announced but disappeared by the time the deal closed a year later, it’s unlikely this is the final version of whatever redesign Paramount might cook up. If and when the deal gets done, the logo at that time probably won’t look like some poor shmoe had to jam out a quick synergistic symbol twenty minutes before an investor presentation.
Images: Paramount / Skydance
Paramount’s quick symbolic redesign is a clear nod to the Skydance logo.
And with any luck, also like the Warner Bros. Discovery logo that eventually popped up in 2022, it won’t be nearly as bad.
Images: Warner Bros. Discovery
The graphic announcing Warner Bros. Discovery’s new name (left) was bad, but the eventual logo (right) was more sensible.
Images: Disney
The Disney Plus logo didn’t survive the Hulu transition.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been seeing some version of Paramount’s logo in front of films for four decades. Movies that I bonded over with people I cherished or escaped into when life was too hard to deal with. Those images end up tied to that logo screen, then both to whatever sentimental experience I had watching them. It’s like visual comfort food.
Google Readies $23 Billion Deal for Wiz, a Start-Up, Despite Antitrust Scrutiny The deal to acquire the cybersecurity company would easily be Google’s most expensive acquisition.
How Microsoft’s Satya Nadella Became Tech’s Steely Eyed A.I. Gambler Microsoft’s all-in moment on artificial intelligence has been defined by billions in spending and a C.E.O. counting on technology with huge potential and huge risks.
Shooting conspiracies trend on X as Musk endorses Trump
Illustration: The Verge
Conspiracy theories about the shooting at a Trump rally began surfacing on X shortly after the news broke this afternoon, with the platform promoting topics including “#falseflag” and “staged” to users. X owner Elon Musk has staunchly advocated for “free speech” on social media platforms — which can include misinformation like the above.
On X, neither trending topic about the shooting is flush with particularly robust or coherent conspiracies; clicking through, you’ll largely find short posts from X users saying that the shooting looks fake or is a stunt. (There is no evidence of either.) But by placing the subjects into X’s trending topics area, the conspiracies are elevated to more people.
Other major social media platforms seemed to be handling the situation better in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. YouTube surfaced news clips and largely directed search results toward news reports and verified creators. Facebook’s search results primarily pointed to news outlets; the platform removed its trending topics section in 2018 over constant complaints about its curation. Threads occasionally displayed conspiracy-related posts atop its trending topic for the incident, but they didn’t appear to surface consistently.
X did not return a request for comment. An email to its press team returned an auto-reply saying, “Busy now, please check back later.”
The company seems to be embracing its role as a center of discussion, though — accurate or otherwise. Even as conspiracy subjects continued to trend, X’s official account posted a short note this evening saying simply, “global town square.”
Fantasmas’ vision of the future is a dystopian dreamland
Image: HBO
In Julio Torres’ series Fantasmas, survival in the future is an intricate, corporate-owned game of feeding your identity to the machine.
The avant-garde weirdness and practically created artistry of Fantasmas — Max’s new series from Problemista writer / director Julio Torres — makes it seem infinitely more whimsical and lighthearted than most other TV shows about people living in the robot-filled near-future. But in addition to being a story about a misunderstood artist trying to survive in a world hostile toward creativity, Fantasmas’ first season has been one of this year’s most brilliant examinations of the torturous experience we commonly refer to as “being (too) online.”
The rent is long past due as Fantasmas first introduces multidisciplinary artist Julio (Torres), who, after multiple threatening letters from his landlord, finds himself in desperate need of a Proof of Existence ID in order to keep his apartment. In Fantasmas’ heightened spin on New York City, getting ahold of one’s Proof of Existence is easy enough if you can provide a social security number, a credit score, or demonstrate that you’re an exceptional individual like Beyoncé.
But aside from Julio’s agent Vanesja (Martine Gutierrez) — the “J” is silent — few people can appreciate his raw talent for designing things like clear crayons and communicating with bodies of water (Tilda Swinton). And while the ID’s kind of necessary to live freely and get a job, the idea of having to prove that he exists is so mind-boggling to Julio that he insists on going without one on principle.
Because Julio’s robot assistant Bibo (Joe Rumrill) isn’t trying to kill him, and his need for an apartment becomes subsumed in a quest to find a lost oyster-shaped earring, Fantasmas doesn’t look or feel like many other recent stories about dystopian futures. But the show’s jokes about Zappos becoming a film studio and Exxon getting into the multi-family real estate business both underline the degree to which people’s lives have become ensnared in corporate-owned systems that technologies like the Proof of Existence feed into.
Though Fantasmas isn’t going for a Matrix-style narrative about humans fighting machines, it becomes easier to read as a story about resisting the commodification of one’s entire being as Julio encounters other eccentrics like Chester (Tomas Matos) — a cab driver rallying against Uber with his one-man ridesharing service — reluctant to sign up for Proof of Existence.
Fantasmas offsets the heft of its deeper themes by using a series of absurdist skits to build an entire fantastical world around Julio. His social media manager is a minuscule gnome who refuses to take any feedback, and his hunt for the earring leads him to a former queer hamster nightclub that has been gentrified into a tiny CVS. The show revels in its own silliness as much as it does its cleverness, which is part of why it seldom feels as if it’s speaking down to you about the perils of trusting social media algorithms (Dominique Jackson).
As batshit (positive) as Fantasmas might seem, with its plots about soul-sucking demons catfishing men on Grindr and dresses for toilets, the show presents them as things that people have become inured to with time and constant encouragement to accept the new norm.
That last point in particular has a fascinating way of making Julio’s journey feel very similar to the experience of being bombarded with noise on the internet that’s really just meant to extract engagement rather than giving you something you actually want. But in a world like ours that’s currently so committed to cranking that noise up at every opportunity, Fantasmas’ willingness to poke fun at it has made the show a surprising summer TV gem.
Here’s how much Valve pays its staff — and how few people it employs
Image: The Verge
Valve is a famously secretive company with an enormous influence on the gaming industry, particularly because it runs the massive PC gaming storefront Steam. But despite that influence, Valve isn’t a large organization on par with EA or Riot Games’ thousands of employees: according to leaked data we’ve seen, as of 2021, Valve employed just 336 staffers.
The data was included as part of an otherwise heavily redacted document from Wolfire’s antitrust lawsuit against Valve. As spotted by SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik, some data in the document was viewable despite the black redaction boxes, including Valve’s headcount and gross pay across various parts of the company over 18 years, and even some data about its gross margins that we weren’t able to uncover fully.
the wolfire v. valve case had a document published with request for redaction so it has a bunch of black boxes, but some data still remained under it like valves gross margins and commission for 2009-2021, and their employee counts and how much they pay them
The employee data starts with 2003, which is a few years after Valve’s 1996 founding and the same year Valve launched Steam, and goes all the way up until 2021. The data breaks Valve employees into four different groups: “Admin,” “Games,” “Steam,” and, starting in 2011, “Hardware.”
If you want to sift through the numbers yourself, I’ve included a full table of the data, sorted by year and category, at the end of this story.
One data point I found interesting: Valve peaked with its “Games” payroll spending in 2017 at $221 million (the company didn’t release any new games that year, but that spending could have gone toward supporting games like Dota 2 and developing new games like Artifact); by 2021, that was down to $192 million. Another: as of 2021, Valve employed just 79 people for Steam, which is one of the most influential gaming storefronts on the planet.
“Hardware,” to my surprise, has been a relatively small part of the company, with just 41 employees paid a gross of more than $17 million in 2021. But I’m guessing Valve now employs more hardware-focused staffers following the runaway success of the Steam Deck. In November 2023, Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais told The Verge that he thinks “we’re firmly in the camp of being a full fledged hardware company by now.”
The small number of staff across the board seemingly explains why Valve’s product list is so limited despite its immense business as basically the de facto PC gaming platform. It’s had to get help on hardware and software and has worked with other companies to have them build Steam boxes and controllers. (The company’s flat structure may have something to do with it, too.)
Valve’s small staff is also something that’s been a sticking point for Wolfire. When it filed its lawsuit in 2021, Wolfire alleged that Valve “...devotes a miniscule percentage of its revenue to maintaining and improving the Steam Store.” Valve, as a private company, doesn’t have to share its headcount or financials, but Wolfire estimated that Valve had roughly 360 employees (a number likely sourced from Valve itself in 2016) and that per-employee profit was around $15 million per year.
Even if that $15 million number isn’t exactly right, Valve, in its public employee handbook, says that “our profitability per employee is higher than that of Google or Amazon or Microsoft.” A document from the Wolfire lawsuit revealed Valve employees discussing just how much higher — though the specific number for Valve employees is redacted.
While we haven’t seen any leaked profit numbers from this new headcount and payroll data, the figures give a more detailed picture of how much Valve is spending on its staff — which, given the massive popularity of Steam, is probably still just a fraction of the money the company is pulling in.
Valve didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. After we reached out, the court pulled the document from the docket.
Engwe P20 folding e-bike review: how forgiving are you?
Fully equipped direct-to-consumer e-bikes still require compromises at $1,000.
It’s easy to make a folding e-bike like the Engwe P20 look great on paper.
First, you price it near $1,000 and promise a 10-second folding time. Then, you replace the traditional oily chain, derailleur, cassette, and shifter with a belt-driven motor and torque sensor that should intuitively ramp up the pedal-assisted power without requiring any gears or maintenance. Finally, you add hydraulic disc brakes to bring everything to a controlled stop and wrap it all up in a nice-looking package that can be carried onto a train or tossed into the trunk of a car.
On paper, then, the €1,099 (about $1,190) Engwe P20 ticks all the boxes for an e-bike that recently went on sale in Europe. Riding it for the last month at my home in Amsterdam, however, makes it clear that you still get what you pay for.
The P20’s price and feature set makes its faults mostly forgivable, but they are faults nonetheless.
My first issue with the P20 is with the tuning of the torque sensor. There’s a noticeable delay in the pedal assist delivered by the P20’s “Talengo JKaero” belt drive when coming off the line. Trying to start on an incline is even worse, requiring a few seconds of fairly significant effort from the rider. And since it’s a single-speed bike, you can’t switch gears for relief.
Perhaps this tuning is on purpose since the unbranded 250W rear-hub motor is only capable of 42Nm of torque. It wouldn’t be the first e-bike that shifts the burden to the rider’s quadriceps instead of the motor (and battery) in favor of eking out a bit more range per charge. The P20 is not the bike to own if you need to regularly climb hilly terrain, but it handles moderate slopes fine.
The front and rear lights are integrated and included in the price.
My second issue makes itself known after getting the P20 up to speed. At about 23km/h (14mph), my legs started spinning so quickly that the saddle began to feel uncomfortable. That upper limit is fine if you’re good with rolling along at a casual pace but annoying if you need to get anywhere at the P20’s 25km/h (15.5mph) top speed, per European limits.
And like nearly all mail-order e-bikes, you can unlock the motor for even more speed if you know the trick — which I did for this review. Not surprisingly, I found pedaling at US speeds of 20mph (32km/h) to be impossible. Fortunately, my review model shipped with a throttle lever despite being a no-no in much of Europe. It was disabled in the software but can also be unlocked with some Konami code magic. Annoyingly, even the P20’s throttle suffers from a delay.
I pedal along at 23km/h, hit the throttle to stop the windmilling and... the motor cuts out, resuming after a second or two once the throttle finally engages. It does eventually get the bike up to 32km/h — and beyond, if you dare.
These performance quirks would be unforgivable for an e-bike in the $3,000-plus range that I usually review — but the Engwe P20 costs just a third of that. And there are plenty of things to like here.
The P20’s hydraulic disc brakes bring those 20 x 1.95-inch tires to a stop quickly and under control. Just note that the brakes are unbranded, which could cause issues finding replacement brake pads when the time comes.
The P20’s geometry also rides larger than its size, so the steering doesn’t feel overly twitchy like some smaller foldable bikes. It’s heavy for a foldable with 20-inch tires, coming in at 18.5kg (41 pounds) or 22kg (55 pounds) when slotting in that removable (and lockable) 346Wh (36V / 9.6A) battery. But that added heft helps the ride feel a bit more secure at the expense of portability.
The range is decent, though heavy use of the throttle will diminish it considerably. When only using the motor as a pedal assist, I was getting about 52km (32 miles) from a full battery when riding in power levels two or three (out of three). Not bad. The battery takes over five hours to charge.
Engwe calls the P20 a 10-second folder, which is certainly ambitious — my best time was about twice that, but you might fare better with lots of practice. The handlebars and seat can both be dropped with quick-release latches, and even the pedals fold with some effort. The bike then folds in half along what feels like a reassuringly strong latch found midway along the center tube.
A magnet helps keep the front and rear wheels attached when folded, allowing you to push or pull the unwieldy package if you balance it on one wheel while holding the seat with two hands. It takes some practice and strength to get right. A tiny integrated metal stand lets the bike rest on the ground in the upright position without toppling over too easily.
The P20 also comes with lots of extras baked into the price, including integrated fenders, a rear rack, a kickstand, and front and rear lights (with useful brake light), which are all required by most city commuters. It also has a turn signal feature with dedicated buttons on the handlebar. Using them is tricky since they don’t make a sound, don’t automatically turn off, and aren’t very visible during the day. You’re better off using hand signals, in my opinion.
There’s no app, the display is tiny but fine, and the whole bike can withstand rain and jets of water while riding. You’d think an IP6 rating would be standard for all e-bikes meant to be ridden outdoors, but it’s not guaranteed at this price range.
What frustrates me about the P20 is that it could be a great e-bike but instead feels like it was developed by a marketing team using available parts picked from a catalog, without anyone taking the time to optimize the riding experience. But that’s what you get at the budget end of the e-bike spectrum.
For €1,099 / £1,099, the Engwe P20 is a decent choice for anyone who needs a relatively inexpensive e-bike as part of a multimodal commute or is looking for a foldable that rides more like a traditional bike.
The best ebook reader to buy right now
Image: Will Joel / The Verge
From reading in the bath to scribbling notes in the margins, from diving into the Amazon ecosystem to avoiding it outright, there’s an e-reader for everyone.
Writer’s note:Amazon Prime Day willoccur on July 16th and 17th. While we don’t know what deals the event will bring, we expect to see discounts on many of the e-readers featured in this guide. Until then, stay up to date with our roundup of thebest early Prime Day deals.
Any ebook reader will let you cram a Beauty and the Beast-sized library’s worth of books in your pocket, but so will your phone. An ebook reader offers a more book-like reading experience, with fewer distractions and less eye strain, and many include extra features, like adjustable frontlighting. Some really are pocketable. Others are waterproof or offer physical page-turning buttons, while a few even let you take notes.
I’ve been using ebook readers for nearly a decade, and I’ve gone hands-on with dozens, from the Kindle Paperwhite to lesser-known rivals like the Pocketbook Era. Whether you want something your kid can throw against the wall or a waterproof, warm-glow Kindle that won’t ruin your spa ambiance, these are the best ebook readers for everyone.
The best Kindle
Dimensions:6.9 x 4.9 x .32 inches/Weight:205 grams /Screen area and resolution: 6.8-inch screen, 300ppi resolution /Storage:16GB /Other features:IPX8 waterproofing, Bluetooth audio support
If you mostly buy ebooks from Amazon, you’ll want a Kindle, and the 11th-gen Kindle Paperwhite is the best choice for most people. Starting at $139.99, it’s cheaper than the Kobo Libra Colour — my top non-Amazon ebook reader, which I’ll dive into later — for many of the same features. Those include a large 300pi display and an adjustable warm white frontlight, which make for a clear and enjoyable reading experience. The latter also conveniently improves sleep by cutting down on blue light that interrupts melatonin production.
That warm white frontlighting is an advantage over the cool white of the $99.99 base-model Kindle, and unlike the base Kindle, the Paperwhite has IPX8 water resistance. The $189.99 Signature Edition Paperwhite also has an auto-adjusting frontlight and no lockscreen ads. It also has wireless charging, which is a rare feature to find in an e-reader.
Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge
The Kindle Paperwhite comes with an adjustable warm white frontlight.
Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world, and it dominates the US ebook market, so Kindle owners have access to advantages owners of other ebook readers don’t. Much of Amazon’s hardware strategy depends on offering cut-rate discounts to pull you into its content ecosystem. If you have Prime and buy a lot of Kindle ebooks, the Paperwhite is the best choice because Amazon makes it incredibly easy to buy and read its stuff. Its ebooks and audiobooks are often on sale, and Prime members get more free content through Prime Reading. Rivals like Kobo offer sales, too, but it’s hard for them to offer discounts as steep as Amazon does.
There are downsides, though. The Paperwhite has lockscreen ads unless you pay $20 extra to get rid of them. It’s also too big to hold comfortably with one hand. Perhaps the Kindle Paperwhite’s biggest flaw, though — which it shares with all Kindles aside from Fire tablets — is that it’s not easy to read books purchased outside of Amazon’s store. Kindle ebook formats are proprietary and only work on Kindle. Unlike Kobo and other ebook readers, Kindles don’t support EPUB files, an open file format used by pretty much everyone except Amazon. So, for example, if you often shop from Kobo’s bookstore (or Barnes & Noble or Google Play Books or many other ebook stores), you can’t easily read those books on a Kindle without using a workaround. There are ways to convert and transfer file formats so you can read on the Kindle and vice versa, but it’ll take a couple of extra steps.
However, if you don’t buy your books elsewhere or you don’t mind shopping from Amazon, you’ll be more than happy with the Kindle Paperwhite.
Dimensions:5.69 x 6.34 x 0.33 inches /Weight:199.5 grams /Screen area and resolution:7-inch screen, 300ppi (black-and-white), 150ppi (color) /Storage:32GB /Other features:Physical page-turning buttons, waterproofing, Kobo Stylus 2 support, Bluetooth audio support
The Kobo Libra Colour is an excellent alternative to Amazon’s ebook readers, especially for readers outside the US or anyone who doesn’t want to tap into Amazon’s ecosystem. Kobo’s latest slate offers many of the standout features found on the 11th-gen Kindle Paperwhite — including waterproofing, USB-C support, and a 300ppi display — along with a few perks that make it more helpful and enjoyable to use.
The color display is the most obvious. The Libra Colour uses E Ink’s latest Kaledio color screen technology, which provides soothing, pastel-like hues that still pop in direct sunlight. It’s not as sharp as reading in monochrome — the resolution drops to 150ppi when viewing content in color — but it’s a nice touch that makes viewing a wider range of content more pleasant. Book covers and comics, while still muted, have an added layer of depth, even if the colors are nowhere near as vivid as that of a traditional LED tablet.
Photo by Sheena Vasani / The Verge
Thanks to its physical page-turning buttons and color display, the Kobo Libra Colour is an impressive e-reader.
Additionally, the Libra Colour works with the Kobo Stylus 2 (sold separately), which means you can highlight text with various colors or take notes using Kobo’s integrated notebooks. You can also take advantage of some of the more advanced capabilities found in the Kobo Elipsa 2E, allowing you to solve math equations, convert handwriting into typed text, and insert diagrams. This lets the Libra Colour function as a mini notebook of sorts, though I wouldn’t use it as a primary note-taking device since the seven-inch display can feel cramped to write on.
The color display is only part of the appeal, though. The Libra Colour also lacks lockscreen ads — unlike the base Paperwhite — and packs physical page-turning buttons, which feel more intuitive to use than tapping either side of the display. The speedy e-reader also supports more file formats, including EPUB files, and makes it much easier to borrow books from the Overdrive library system. Native support for Pocket, meanwhile, means you can read your articles offline if you’re someone who uses the long-standing bookmarking app.
Image: Kobo
Kobo’s lightweight Libra Colour makes for a great ebook reader, even if it’s not the cheapest model.
However, at $219.99, the Libra Colour costs $70 more than the entry-level Paperwhite — and that’s without Kobo’s $69.99 stylus, which is required for performing certain tasks. That gap widens further when the Paperwhite is on sale, which it regularly is. There’s also the fact that the Kobo can’t easily tap into Amazon’s vast library of ebooks, which can be frustrating if you’ve amassed a collection of Kindle titles over the years. It can be done, but you have to convert file formats using third-party apps, which is tricky and can take time.
But if those things don’t matter or apply to you, the Kobo Libra Colour will give you the best digital reading experience of all the e-readers on our list. It’s my personal favorite, if nothing else.
Dimensions:6.2 x 4.3 x 0.32 inches/Weight:158 grams /Screen area and resolution: 6-inch screen, 300ppi resolution /Storage:16GB /Other features:USB-C support, Bluetooth audio support
The base-model Kindle ($99.99 with ads) is the best cheap ebook reader. Its 300ppi resolution makes text clearer and easier to read than the lower-resolution screens on other ebook readers in its price range. Plus, it even has USB-C for relatively fast charging.
Reading on its six-inch screen feels a little more cramped than it does on the larger displays of the Kindle Paperwhite and Kobo Libra Colour. However, the flip side is that its small size makes it pocketable, light, and easy for small hands to hold. Combined with its relatively affordable price, the Kindle is also the best ebook reader for kids — especially in the kids version Amazon sells for $20 more. It shares the same exact specs but is ad-free with parental controls, a two-year extended replacement guarantee, and a case. It also comes with one year of Amazon Kids Plus, which grants kids access to thousands of kids books and audiobooks for free. After that, though, you’ll have to pay $79 per year.
Image: Kindle Kids
The kid-friendly version of the Kindle comes with colorful cases.
The base Kindle doesn’t have extra conveniences like the physical page-turning buttons found on Barnes & Noble’s entry-level e-reader, the Nook GlowLight 4e. However, you do get something more important: snappier responses. On most of the other entry-level ebook readers I tested, including the GlowLight 4e, I had to wait a few seconds after tapping the screen for the page to turn. The Kindle, in comparison, offered no perceptive lag.
There are other tradeoffs. There’s no water resistance, unlike the Paperwhite, and battery life is good, but it’ll last you three weeks tops — not months, like the Paperwhite. And because it’s an Amazon ebook reader, you’re also locked into the Amazon ecosystem and have to pay extra to get rid of ads. But if you can do without all of that, the Kindle delivers the essentials for under $100.
Dimensions:7.6 x 8.94 x 0.30 inches /Weight:390 grams /Screen area and resolution: 10.3-inches, 227ppi resolution /Storage:32GB /Other features:Handwriting to text conversion, magnetic stylus, Bluetooth audio support
Of all the large ebook readers I tested, the Kobo Elipsa 2E stood out the most because of its excellent note-taking abilities. You can directly write on pages, and the notes will not disappear, which makes for a more intuitive note-taking experience than the Kindle Scribe, which only supports on-page notes on select Kindle titles. Otherwise, you’re limited to making annotations on cards that are like disappearing sticky notes.
You can also sync your notes with Dropbox or view them online, and Kobo can even convert handwriting to typed text. Amazon rolled out a similar capability for the Kindle Scribe, but it can only convert handwriting to typed text when you export notebooks and not as accurately. By contrast, Kobo lets you convert your handwriting not just while exporting but also from within a notebook itself.
The Elipsa 2E also offers other helpful note-taking tools. Like the Kobo Libra Colour, it’s capable, for example, of solving math equations for you. You can also insert diagrams and drawings, and it’ll automatically snap them into something that looks cleaner and nicer. There’s also a great selection of pen types and ink shades.
True, the Kindle Scribe starts at $60 less, but the Kobo Elipsa 2E comes with twice the storage. You can step up to the 32GB Kindle Scribe if you want the same storage capacity, but that puts it at essentially the same price as the Kobo. I recommend just forking out the money on the Elipsa 2E instead.
I also recommend the Elipsa 2E over the Onyx Boox Note Air 2 Plus, even though it, too, offers much better writing tools than the Kindle Scribe. That’s because it costs a whopping $449 and also isn’t as readily available in the US market. The Onyx Boox Note Air 2 Plus also comes with too many distracting extras, like an easy-to-access music player and the Google Play app store preinstalled so you can download multiple reading apps, including both the Kindle and Kobo apps. However, Kindle and Kobo notes didn’t show up on the Onyx Boox Note Air 2 Plus — and you can’t annotate their books anywhere as easily as you can on their respective devices.
Note-taking capabilities aside, the Kobo Elipsa 2E is also a good e-reader, but it comes with the same strengths and weaknesses as other Kobo e-readers. There’s support for a wide range of file formats, but you can’t easily read Kindle books without converting them first. Its 227ppi display is also slightly less sharp than the 300ppi screen found on the Kindle Scribe and the Kobo Libra Colour. However, the 10.3-inch screen does balance things out a bit and makes text easier to read, so it’s not really a noticeable drawback.
Other ebook readers that didn’t make the cut
There are some other ebook readers I tested that I didn’t feature above but are still worth highlighting. Here are the most notable:
If you’re looking for a non-Amazon alternative that’s more affordable than the Kobo Libra Colour, the new Kobo Clara Colour — the successor to the Kobo Clara 2E — is worth a look. At $149.99, the ad-free e-reader costs more than the Kobo Clara 2E (which you can still buy), but I think it’s worth the extra $10. It continues to offer the same six-inch display and IPX8 waterproof design, but the e-reader now offers color. Plus, it’s noticeably faster — something I was happy to see, considering the occasional lag on the Clara 2E sometimes got on my nerves. You don’t get the Clara Colour’s physical buttons or stylus support, but that’s a fair tradeoff at this price point.
I’m currently waiting to get my hands on the $280 Boox Palma, which my colleague David Pierce is a big fan of. The smartphone-sized, 6.1-inch ebook reader runs on Android and can access the Google Play Store, meaning you can download a wider selection of apps, from Amazon’s own Kindle app to various note-taking apps. That said, it’s too slow to really use apps that could be distracting, like TikTok or Instagram, so you probably don’t need to worry about losing focus or distractions in the same you would with a tablet or a more capable device. I’m curious to see how it holds up against other e-readers I’ve used, even if I haven’t tested many small-screen models.
In 2023, Barnes and Noble released the new Nook Glowlight 4 Plus. If you own a lot of digital books from Barnes and Noble, this could be a good Kindle alternative. Otherwise, I’d still recommend the Kobo Libra Colour to everybody else. The $199.99 Nook Glowlight 4 Plus is a good e-reader with a lot to offer, including a lovely 300ppi screen, waterproofing, physical page-turning buttons, and even a headphone jack. However, it’s just not as snappy, which makes setting it up, buying books from the device itself, and navigating the interface a slow ordeal. It didn’t help that the screen sometimes froze, too, which meant I had to restart the device while in the middle of a book.
Finally, I didn’t mention the Kindle Oasis, which has physical page-turning buttons, a larger screen, and was considered a high-end device when it launched in 2019. Amazon no longer lists the aging e-reader in its official Kindle lineup, however, and it lacks some features even the base model offers, including USB-C. That makes it less appealing at $249.99 — that is, assuming you can even find it in stock. If you’re willing to pay that much for a high-end reader, I’d take a look at the Kobo Libra Colour instead.
Update, July 11th:Updated to include a link to our review of the Kobo Libra Colour and Kobo Clara Colour and mention the Boox Palma, as well as to accommodate various price changes.
Starlink Mini is now available for anyone in the US to roam
The Starlink Mini can be powered by a portable USB battery. | Image: SpaceX
SpaceX’s Starlink Mini dish — which Elon Musk says “will change the world” — is now available to anyone in the US. The diminutive internet-from-space kit neatly integrates the dish and Wi-Fi router into a weatherproof package that’s significantly smaller and uses less power than previous Starlink kits. The laptop-sized all-in-one dish can even be powered directly by a USB-PD power bank capable of 100W (20V/5A).
Initially, Starlink Mini was only available as an add-on for current Residential subscribers in the US. Now, just a few weeks since launch, it’s available to a wide spectrum of vanlifers and digital nomads who want to stay connected no matter where they set up shop.
The Starlink Mini hardware costs $599 and is available with both Regional and Mini Roam services. Regional costs $150 per month for unlimited portable data in North America, with an option to pay per GB for in-motion use. Mini Roam is just $50 per month but is limited to 50GB of portable or in-motion data on the continent, with additional data priced per GB. Both services can be paused between adventures.
Florida’s digital ID app has suddenly disappeared
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FLHSMV) has shut down its digital ID app, Florida Smart ID, for iPhones and Android phones. The department emailed users asking them to delete the app and said it’s looking for another vendor to help it revive the service by “early 2025,” according to 9to5Mac.
The state promoted its Smart ID app as a contact-free way to show proof of age or identity at stores or when talking to police, but now it’s gone. According to a report by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel last year, not many people were using it, with only 95,000 activations out of more than 17 million licensed drivers, and many police departments said they weren’t using it, either.
The Florida Smart ID applications will be updated and improved by a new vendor. At this time, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles is removing the current Florida Smart ID application from the app store. Please email FloridaSmartID@flhsmv.gov to receive notification of future availability.
I’ve been using the Florida smart ID for a while and just received an email out of the blue that they are redeveloping with a new vendor and thus the virtual ID can’t be used until 2025. What the heck. Florida is such a mess.
Other states, like Louisiana and New York, are part of a slowly increasing number of states adopting digital IDs. Like Florida, they’re offering the service through their own apps, while other states like Maryland and Arizona support digital IDs added to Google Wallet or Apple Wallet.
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