Don’t like Musk? Work for us! Tech firms woo ex-Twitter staff
Tech companies aim to pick up experienced engineering talent by appealing to dislike of Tesla chief executive’s methods
Put off by Elon Musk’s muscular management style? Move to us! That’s the pitch being used by talent-starved technology firms trying to lure thousands of former Twitter employees laid off by the social media company under its new owner.
Twitter has fired top executives and enforced steep job cuts with little warning following Musk’s tumultuous takeover of the social media platform. About half of the workforce – around 3,700 employees – has been laid off.
A Twitter executive got a court injunction to prevent Elon Musk from firing her
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Sinead McSweeney, Twitter’s Ireland-based global vice president of public policy, secured a temporary injunction from the High Court of Dublin to prevent her from getting fired, according to a report from The Irish Times. McSweeney claims she was locked out of her work accounts and Twitter’s Dublin office after not responding to the email Elon Musk sent to employees, which asked workers to reply “yes” to commit to Twitter’s “extremely hardcore” culture, or otherwise leave.
Musk sent out the email shortly after his Twitter takeover on November 16th, and gave employees a little over a day to confirm whether they wanted to stay at the company. If an employee didn’t click “yes” on the form included in the email, Twitter said it would “treat that as a resignation,” and then provide two months’ worth of payroll with benefits, along with one month of severance pay.
But McSweeney says she didn’t hit “yes.” According to The Times, McSweeney never replied to the email because it didn’t outline Musk’s expectations for employees who decided to stay, and the severance package didn’t meet her “contractual entitlements.” McSweeney later received an email confirming her “voluntary resignation” on November 18th.
While Twitter’s lawyers reportedly acknowledged that McSweeney wants to stay at the company and said they would restore access to her accounts, The Times reports that McSweeney’s still locked out and unable to work. Justice Brian O’Moore granted McSweeney the injunction on Friday, which prevents Twitter from firing her but doesn’t reinstate her employment. The court will revisit her case next week.
McSweeney isn’t the only Twitter executive to face uncertainty about their employment. After Robin Wheeler, Twitter’s former head of ad sales resigned earlier this month, Musk convinced her to stay, but then ended up firing her anyway. McSweeney similarly says she’s been getting “mixed messages” from Musk and that he’s been firing and rehiring employees “with no apparent logic.”
Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder: ‘There are quite a few areas where physics blurs into religion’
To answer life’s biggest questions, says the German theoretical physicist and YouTuber, we need to abandon unscientific ideas such as the multiverse
Sabine Hossenfelder is a German theoretical physicist who writes books and runs a YouTube channel (with 618,000 subscribers at time of writing) called Science Without the Gobbledygook. Born in Frankfurt, she studied mathematics at the Goethe Universität and went on to focus on particle physics – her PhD explored the possibility that the Large Hadron Collider would produce microscopic black holes. She is now a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, where she leads a group studying quantum gravity. Her second book, Existential Physics: A Scientist’s Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions, came out in August.
The first question you ask the physicists you interview in the book is: “Are you religious?” How about you? I tried to be religious when I was a teenager. I was not Christianised because my parents were both atheists, but all of my friends were Christian, so I went to church with them. And I kind of liked it – the singing, the social events. I considered joining, but I just couldn’t get myself to believe that God exists.
The Galaxy Z Fold 4 is the most versatile gadget you can buy
The size of the Fold 4’s inner display changes how you think about what a smartphone can do. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
It’s easy to see the appeal of folding phones — they are big screen devices that get smaller to fit in your pocket. It’s also easy to see the drawbacks; as much as Samsung tries to hide it with trade-in promotions, there’s no denying the Galaxy Z Fold 4’s $1,800 price tag is too steep for the vast majority of people. The question of durability is also hard to ignore — it doesn’t take much searching to find tales of randomly cracked Fold screens.
But until you commit and start using a device like the Fold 4 for some time, it’s hard to see the value that a folding phone can bring. I’ve owned a Fold model since 2020’s Fold 2 (and owned the Fold 3 for a year before upgrading to the Fold 4 thanks to Samsung’s aggressive, if fiscally irresponsible trade-in offers) and it still took three months of time with the Fold 4 to really appreciate all it could do.
The fact is, the Fold 4 is the most versatile gadget you can buy. It may not be the best at every task, but it can morph between form factors better than anything else out there. It’s truly the one gadget to rule them all.
Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
Look, you can tweet from the Fold 4 just like any other phone.
It’s a phone
The first use case for a Fold 4 is the most obvious one — it is a full-fledged high-end smartphone. It makes calls, it sends messages, it takes pictures, it runs apps, it plays games, it connects to high-speed cellular networks — basically, anything you use a smartphone for, the Fold 4 does it.
The Fold 4 keeps up with other high-end smartphones in terms of performance and features (you don’t have to give up conveniences like wireless charging, for example), and while you can buy phones with better cameras, the Fold 4’s camera system is very capable on its own. Perhaps the biggest drawback to using the Fold 4 as a phone is its narrower front screen, which takes a bit of getting used to when thumb typing. It’s also about twice as thick as a standard phone, though that thickness enables the Fold 4’s versatility.
The Fold 4 is a good phone, if not an amazing one, but the point here is the Fold 4 story is just beginning to unfold.
It’s a tablet
Here’s where the Fold 4 starts to walk away from the rest of the smartphone field: you can open it up and you have a nearly eight-inch diagonal, almost square tablet screen to work with. Compared to Samsung’s other big phone, the 6.8-inch S22 Ultra, the Fold 4’s inner screen covers 28.42 square inches of area, versus the Ultra’s 17.98 square inches.
It’s hard to quantify how much more room that gives you in practical terms, but it’s a big enough canvas to make a wide variety of tasks easier and more comfortable than on a standard slab smartphone. Compared to the cramped split-screen you get on a slab phone, two apps can be displayed side-by-side at the same time on the Fold 4 without having to constantly switch between them for multitasking. Instead of limiting yourself to short video clips on TikTok, you can comfortably watch long-form video content either on YouTube or the streaming service of your choice, aided by the Fold 4’s best-in-smartphone-class speakers.
Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
The Fold 4’s inner screen effectively replaces small tablets entirely.
Using Google Maps on a screen this large is a completely different experience than the tunnel vision you get on a standard smartphone’s display. Typing out long emails is more comfortable when you have such a large area for your thumbs to roam.
Reading long-form articles or navigating large PDFs is much easier on the Fold 4 than other smartphones because of how much wider it is. Ditto for reading e-books — a folding phone has completely replaced a Kindle for me. As a portable, always-connected reading machine, the Fold 4 is unparalleled.
Basically, anything you might want to use an iPad mini for can be accomplished on the Fold 4, with the added benefit of it can then be folded in half and shoved in your pocket when you’re done.
It’s a notepad
Thanks to that large inner display and support for Samsung’s S Pen stylus, the Fold 4 is an excellent device for taking hand-written notes, which are then synced to the cloud and searchable. You can also mark up screen shots or just doodle and make artwork than you can then easily send anywhere. It’s incredibly convenient to have a digital note-taking system in your pocket.
There’s certainly room for improvement here — there’s currently no way to store the S Pen on the Fold 4 without a bulky and annoying case, and the pen doesn’t work on the outside display at all. But compared to any other smartphone, the Fold 4 is a better device for notes and drawings.
It’s a desktop computer
Perhaps the most surprising thing about the Fold 4 is that it can replace a computer for a lot of tasks. And I don’t mean you just do those things on the Fold’s screen, I mean you plug it into a desktop monitor and pair a wireless keyboard to it and use it like an actual PC. (You can also use Dex wirelessly with some supported Samsung displays, but if you’re going to be using it for any extended period of time, you’ll want it plugged in for power and the lowest latency.)
Samsung’s had the Dex feature that enables this on its phones for years, but it’s now gotten to the point where it’s far more usable. You can run multiple apps, have control over window sizes and placements, and access an extremely capable web browser that can handle many tabs with ease. And since the Fold 4 is a cellular-connected phone, you can use its built-in internet connection without having to rely on Wi-Fi or other available networks.
Screenshot by Dan Seifert / The Verge
Multitasking in Dex is predictable and highly customizable — you can put windows in any size or position you want.
Google’s work to improve tablet support in Android has made Dex much better than it used to be. (The Fold 4 launched with Android 12L, but has since received an update to Android 13.) Many apps now support larger layouts and more and more are adding things like keyboard shortcut support. Dex itself also offers a growing list of keyboard shortcuts for app control and window management. While there are still a few holdouts that can be improved — Slack’s interface on a large screen leaves a lot to be desired — there are fewer and fewer areas where Dex doesn’t just do what you expect it to and let you get work done.
Samsung’s Internet browser is particularly good — it’s fast, it supports extensions, loads desktop versions of apps, and offers multiple ways to manage tabs. I can use it to write, edit, and publish articles in our CMS (yup, I produced this entire article in it), or browse sites like Twitter and Feedly, which don’t have great Android app experiences on large screens.
You can pair a wireless mouse to the Fold 4 for cursor control, but it’s easier to just use the Fold’s inner display as a trackpad, complete with multifinger gestures for navigating open apps and windows. There are even configurable gestures to go back with a three-finger tap or use four fingers to pull up the app launcher.
Unlike Apple and its adventures with Stage Manager on the iPad, Samsung isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to a windowed app environment. Apps and windows can be placed and layered however you want them, you can resize them however you’d like, and you can even use keyboard shortcuts to snap windows to the left or right side.
Screenshot by Dan Seifert / The Verge
Dex now offers a surprisingly long list of supported keyboard shortcuts to make navigating it feel even more like a traditional desktop OS.
Dex running on the Fold 4 isn’t going to replace a gaming PC and I’d be loathe to use it for heavier tasks like photo and video editing. If you really push the system with lots of running apps and tabs you will hit its performance limits and you’ll certainly see browser tabs reloading more often than on a full desktop OS.
Nor is it as convenient as a laptop that you can just open up and get working on, since it requires accessories like an external display, keyboard, and likely a USB-C hub. But for web browsing, communications, and other “basic” PC tasks with the right set up, it’s surprisingly capable. The best comparison is to ChromeOS — you might use a dedicated app or two while in Dex, but you’ll spend most of your time in the browser doing web-based activities.
And then when I’m done I can simply unplug my phone, fold it closed, shove it in my pocket, and walk away.
None of these various capabilities are particularly new to the Fold 4 — Samsung is now four generations into this folding phone design and even the very first one could technically perform many of the same tasks.
But the Fold 4 is able to do all of this better than its predecessors because Samsung has iterated on all of these experiences over the years. Samsung’s typical order of operations is to bring an idea to market that’s good in concept, but lacking in execution, and then relentlessly iterate on it until all the rough edges are sanded away and what’s left is a genuinely good experience.
Samsung still has work to do, though, including finding ways to make the price more accessible and addressing the concerns of reliability and durability. (I reserve the right to recant any praise for the Fold 4 if the inner screen on mine randomly cracks in the future.) There’s not a lot of competition out there for devices like this, especially in the US, but the few other folding phones that have hit the global market recently have sleeker and thinner designs that Samsung could learn from.
The first Fold felt very much like a proof of concept, but four generations in, the Fold 4 now provides a very good experience that you just can’t get from a standard smartphone. It’s not that the Fold 4 is the best at any particular task, but it is good at all of them and having all of those options in a device that fits in your pocket can’t be understated. Future iterations (and hopefully some competition from other phone makers) will likely improve it further and perhaps one day we’ll all be carrying such versatile devices in our pockets. But if you want that future today, the Fold 4 is the way to get it.
The best smartphones to help older people beat the tech divide
Simplified home screens and customisable interfaces aid those who struggle with touchscreens
These days many daily tasks require a smartphone because of new online payment security checks and the widespread use of parking apps. This is a potential nightmare for those who struggle with touchscreens, apps and texting but there are some easier-to-use models to help conquer the technology divide.
Manufacturers continually modify their smartphones to make them more straightforward to use but, unfortunately, when it comes to apps, whether it is your bank or WhatsApp, you will still be at the mercy of their interface as this cannot be changed. So while there is no truly simple smartphone that can do every task, here are some of the best options.
Sony’s noise-canceling WF-1000XM4 earbuds are on sale for $100 off
Sony’s WF-1000XM4 are still on sale for $178 instead of $279.99, which is an all-time low. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
In terms of specs, the XM4s balance superb noise cancellation capabilities with excellent sound quality and long battery life. In fact, you can listen to them for eight hours with noise cancellation turned on before you’ll need to recharge them, making them perfect for long flights or road trips. They also carry an IPX4 rating for sweat and water resistance, so you don’t have to worry about them if they get a little wet.
Their drawbacks are few and far between. Their mic performance leaves something to be desired and they currently lack multipoint connectivity; however, they are set to receive the latter feature at some point this fall, meaning you’ll soon be able to pair them with two Bluetooth devices at the same time. And if you can live without all the bells and whistles found on Apple-centric earbuds like the AirPods Pro, well, it’s hard to go wrong with the XM4s at this price. Read our review.
iRobot’s terrific Roomba i3 Plus EVO is on sale for $200 off for Black Friday
The iRobot Roomba i3 Plus EVO is on sale for just $349 right now. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
Cleaning is probably one of the most tedious tasks for many people, which is why the right robot vacuum can make for a fantastic gift (and cat Uber, of course). And while there are plenty of heavily-discounted robovacs available right now for Black Friday — including the top-of-the-line Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra and Roomba j7 Plus — the iRobot Roomba i3 Plus EVO offers great bang for your buck, especially since it’s currently available at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target promotion for around $350 ($201 off), matching its best price to date.
In addition to doing a terrific job of cleaning your house, the i3 Plus Evo comes with a few perks that just make life easier. Its advanced mapping features, for instance, mean you can program it to clean up select rooms at certain times. Meanwhile, its support for virtual assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant means you can control it with just your voice (or using the accompanying app, if you prefer). This particular model even features the same suction level and similar battery life as the Roomba j7, though, it’s still prone to getting stuck on cables, toys, and other items strewn about your home.
Best of all, it comes with iRobot’s Clean Base auto-empty dock, helping cement it as our favorite auto-emptying robot vacuum. True, it doesn’t have the AI obstacle avoidance or keep-out zones our favorite robot vacuum, the j7, offers. Yet if you don’t need those features, the i3 Plus Evo is still an excellent robot vacuum that’s significantly cheaper today.
Amazon warehouse workers stage Black Friday strikes and protests around world
On one of firm’s biggest shopping days of year, employees demand better wages and conditions
Amazon warehouse workers in the UK and 40 other countries are to strike and stage protests timed to coincide with the Black Friday sales, one of the company’s biggest shopping days of the year.
Employees in dozens of countries, from Japan and Australia to India, the US and across Europe, are taking part in strikes and protests demanding better wages and conditions in a campaign dubbed “Make Amazon Pay”.
UK’s digital services tax reaps almost £360m from US tech giants in first year
Figure raised exceeds what most of the digital businesses have been paying in UK corporation tax
The digital services tax has reaped almost £360m from US tech giants including Amazon, Google and Apple in its first year, raising more from most of the digital businesses than they have been paying in UK corporation tax.
A National Audit Office (NAO) report has found the UK’s digital services tax, which was introduced in April 2020 and imposes a 2% charge on the gross revenues made by digital titans running search engines, social media services and online marketplaces, hauled in 30% more than the government had forecast in 2021.
Elon Musk says Twitter will begin manually authenticating Blue, Grey, and Gold accounts as soon as next week
Elon’s answer to Twitter verification hell is to go back to manually authenticating accounts. Oh, and making the tick a different color. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Elon Musk says that Twitter’s check mark program could return on Friday, December 2nd, with a new procedure to verify individual identities in order to resolve impersonation issues. Musk described the new manual authentication process as “painful, but necessary.” Verified checkmarks will also be expanded with additional colors — gold for companies, grey for the government, and the original blue for individual accounts.
Sorry for the delay, we’re tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week.
Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates.
Musk had previously said that Twitter “will probably use different color check for organizations than individuals,” though this is the first time he’s offered details. “All verified individual humans will have same blue check, as boundary of what constitutes ‘notable’ is otherwise too subjective,” Musk said in a tweet. “Individuals can have [a] secondary tiny logo showing they belong to an org if verified as such by that org.”
The Twitter CEO says he’ll offer a longer explanation about how everything will work at some point next week.
Don’t like Musk? Work for us! Tech firms woo ex-Twitter staff
Tech companies aim to pick up experienced engineering talent by appealing to dislike of Tesla chief executive’s methods
Put off by Elon Musk’s muscular management style? Move to us! That’s the pitch being used by talent-starved technology firms trying to lure thousands of former Twitter employees laid off by the social media company under its new owner.
Twitter has fired top executives and enforced steep job cuts with little warning following Musk’s tumultuous takeover of the social media platform. About half of the workforce – around 3,700 employees – has been laid off.
Over millions of years of evolution, nature has worked out solutions to many problems. Humans have arrived late in the day and pinched them. For example, Velcro was invented after a Swiss engineer marvelled at the burdock burrs that got stuck to his dog’s fur; the idea for robotic arms came from the motion and gripping ability of elephant trunks, and the front of Japan’s bullet trains were redesigned to mimic a kingfisher’s streamlined beak, reducing the sonic boom they made exiting tunnels.
There are different types of mimicry, the most straightforward is the simple idea of copying something that exists in nature. Buildings are an obvious example, as outlined by research published in Nature. The Beijing national stadium is inspired by a bird’s nest, the Lotus Temple in India is shaped, unsurprisingly, like a lotus and the Palm Jumeirah in Dubai is shaped like a palm tree.
Tracking Amazon: the New Yorkers monitoring pollution from delivery hubs
Brooklyn residents are using air quality and traffic sensors to see how new warehouses affect their community
For the past year, a pair of plain-looking buildings has been at the center of a simmering conflict in a close-knit waterfront community in New York City. They look like warehouses, with tall concrete walls, loading bays and few windows. They sound like warehouses, emitting the rev of diesel engines and the chirps of reversing trucks. But by all accounts, they’re something very different.
The two newcomers to Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood are hubs for Amazon’s growing last-mile delivery network. Unlike traditional warehouses, they’re bustling with around-the-clock activity, attracting convoys of cars, delivery vans, and semi-trucks to a neighborhood of narrow two-lane streets. Every day, shipments jostle through Red Hook’s crowded truck routes and make their way across New York, fulfilling Amazon’s promise of blistering-fast delivery.
The FTC could challenge Microsoft’s Activision purchase by December
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
The Federal Trade Commission is preparing a potential legal challenge to Microsoft’s plan to buy Activision for $68.7 billion, and it could file the lawsuit by next month, according to Politico. The outlet’s sources say both CEOs — Satya Nadella and Bobby Kotick — have already been deposed, and yet the FTC remains skeptical.
The report notes that there are still a few steps to go before the regulator is ready to act, including a vote from its commissioners. If it does end up happening, it’d mean the deal would face antitrust challenges in the US, UK and the EU. This is despite Microsoft’s repeated attempts to assure regulators that its purchase of Activision — the company in charge of Candy Crush, Call of Duty, and all of Blizzard — wouldn’t hurt competition in the gaming space.
The company has basically been in an all-out PR battle with its competitor, Sony (which may be getting nervous now that major game makers like Obsidian, Mojang, and Bethesda are all now Xbox Game Studios). A major sticking point for the PlayStation company has been that the deal would give Microsoft power over Call of Duty, though Xbox head Phil Spencer has now told The Verge that Microsoft will keep making the games for Sony’s consoles as long as the company is selling them. However, it’s possible the decision was the result of pressure from the public and Sony, after PlayStation boss Jim Ryan said that Microsoft only offered to extend Sony’s existing contract by three years, which could have resulted in 2028’s installment being an Xbox-exclusive.
The fight between the two companies has gotten ugly at times. Microsoft accused Sony of paying developers to keep their content off of its Game Pass service, and just this week Sony argued that Microsoft’s master plan was getting everybody to move over to Xbox before jacking up prices. Both companies will likely reiterate these arguments — and more — to whichever regulators come knocking. And at the moment, it feels like that list is only getting bigger.
San Francisco police consider letting robots use ‘deadly force’
A remote-controlled robot used to disarm bombs. | ARNO BURGI/DPA/AFP via Getty Images
The San Francisco Police Department is proposing a new policy that would give robots the license to kill, as reported earlier by Mission Local (via Engadget). The draft policy, which outlines how the SFPD can use military-style weapons, states robots can be “used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option.”
As reported by Mission Local, members of the city’s Board of Supervisors Rules Committee have been reviewing the new equipment policy for several weeks. The original version of the draft didn’t include any language surrounding robots’ use of deadly force until Aaron Peskin, the Dean of the city’s Board of Supervisors, initially added that “robots shall not be used as a Use of Force against any person.”
However, the SFPD returned the draft with a red line crossing out Peskin’s addition, replacing it with the line that gives robots the authority to kill suspects. According to Mission Local, Peskin eventually decided to accept the change because “there could be scenarios where deployment of lethal force was the only option.” San Francisco’s rules committee unanimously approved a version of the draft last week, which will face the Board of Supervisors on November 29th.
As outlined in the equipment policy, the SFPD currently has 17 remotely piloted robots, but only 12 are functioning. In addition to granting robots the ability to use deadly force, the proposal also authorizes them for use in “training and simulations, criminal apprehensions, critical incidents, exigent circumstances, executing a warrant or during suspicious device assessments.”
While most of the robots listed in the SFPD’s inventory are primarily used for defusing bombs or dealing with hazardous materials, newer Remotec models have an optional weapons system, and the department’s existing F5A has a tool called the PAN disruptor that can load 12-gauge shotgun shells. It’s typically used to detonate bombs from a distance. The department’s QinetiQ Talon can also be modified to hold various weapons — a weaponized version of the robot is currently used by the US Army and can equip grenade launchers, machine guns, or even a .50-caliber anti-materiel rifle.
“SFPD has always had the ability to use lethal force when the risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers are imminent and outweigh any other force option available,” says SFPD Officer Eve Laokwansathitaya, in a statement to The Verge. “SFPD does not have any sort of specific plan in place as the unusually dangerous or spontaneous operations where SFPD’s need to deliver deadly force via robot would be a rare and exceptional circumstance.”
The Dallas Police Department used a robot to carry out deadly force for the first time in 2016. It used a bomb-disposal robot — the same Remotec F5A model owned by the SFPD — armed with an explosive device to kill a suspect who shot and killed five police officers and wounded several others. At the time, Dallas police chief David Brown said the department “saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was.”
Last month, a report from The Intercept revealed that California’s Oakland Police Department was also considering letting shotgun-equipped Remotec F5A robots use deadly force. Shortly after the report came out, the Oakland PD announced on Facebook it decided against adding “armed remote vehicles to the department.” Meanwhile, a group of robot makers, including Boston Dynamics, signed a pledge not to weaponize their robots earlier this year.
Google Messages has started letting some users react with any emoji
And just like that, Messages are now way more fun.
Google has started letting some users of its Messages app react to text messages with any emoji, instead of limiting them to the standard set of seven that have been available in the app for a while now (via 9to5Google). The feature’s similar to what other messaging platforms like Slack, WhatsApp, and paid versions of Telegram have — pressing and holding on a message gives you the standard emoji reactions, but you can then access the picker to react with whatever you want.
The expanded emoji reactions appear to be a limited test at this point — 9to5Google says it’s heard two reports of it being rolled out, and while one person on The Verge’s staff has access to it, two other people who checked do not. Google didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment on the feature.
As with any features that are added to messaging services, the extra reactions can be a bit messy depending on who you’re texting, and what communications standards their phone supports. They seem to work fine if both parties are using RCS, the SMS replacement that Google’s been pushing for. My phone doesn’t have access to the extended picker yet, but my colleague’s reactions showed up correctly when I was using Google’s Messages app.
I can’t react with this emoji, but I was able to see when someone reacted to my message with it.
Other configurations can get messy, though. On the same phone, which obviously supports RCS, Samsung’s Messages app shows the reaction as a separate text message, saying “ to ‘Can you react to this message?’” The same’s true when my colleague reacts to a text from an iPhone user, as those are SMS only (much to Google’s chagrin).
So we’re back to this...
That the reactions don’t translate to iPhones isn’t a surprise. For one, Apple’s Tapback system only lets you use a specific set of symbols, so it’s unlikely the company’s Messages app has the ability to add an arbitrary emoji to a message. Even if it did, who knows if it would; after years of Apple users’ reactions showing up as separate text messages for Android users, it appeared as if the two companies had worked out a solution, with iMessage’s and Google Message’s reactions translating between the two platforms. And yet, when I tested it today with the standard reactions, I was back to the same old system of getting separate “[emoji] to [message]” texts instead of beautifully-displayed reactions when messaging between an Android phone and iPhone.
Regardless of whatever Apple and Google have going on, I am happy to see Google bringing this feature to its texting platform, even if it’s really only elegant when you’re doing RCS chats. It’s a feature I’ve always wanted everywhere, and it seems like Google’s working on making that the case, at least for the people using its app.
Power-hungry robots, space colonization, cyborgs: inside the bizarre world of ‘longtermism’
Sam Bankman-Fried said his billions would save the world – but his philanthropic ideas ranged from the worthy to the severely outlandish
Most of us don’t think of power-hungry killer robots as an imminent threat to humanity, especially when poverty and the climate crisis are already ravaging the Earth.
This wasn’t the case for Sam Bankman-Fried and his followers, powerful actors who have embraced a school of thought within the effective altruism movement called “longtermism”.
Frederick P. Brooks Jr., Computer Design Innovator, Dies at 91 He was a lead designer of the computers that cemented IBM’s dominance for decades. He later wrote a book on software engineering that became a quirky classic.
Casual observers could be forgiven for thinking the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX is another typical tale of financial mismanagement. That’s how its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, terms it: a liquidity crisis that tipped over into a solvency one.
FTX had deposits and loans and when depositors tried to get their money back, FTX didn’t have it to hand. Sure, the loans were in fancy digital money, rather than stale dollars, but at first glance, it appears like just another big company failure.
Three weeks after shutting down the studio that produced it (which had incidentally just finished going through an expensive rebrand), Embracer has decided not only to remove their games from mobile app stores, it’s apparently taking the extra step of making them inaccessible even if you’ve already downloaded them — or in the case of Deus Ex, even if you’ve paid $5 or $6 to do so.
“Current players will not be able to access the games past January 4th,” reads part of a tweet from the defunct Studio Onoma, which is also seeing three free-to-play games (Arena Battle Champions, Hitman Sniper: The Shadows and Space Invaders: Hidden Heroes) shut down. “We encourage prior in-game purchases to be used before January 4th, as they will not be refunded.”
Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge
No refunds.
Usually when a downloadable game is removed from a digital marketplace, you can at least download a copy first — in many cases, you can even re-download purchased games indefinitely. (I can still get my Steam copies of Mass Effect 2 and Indigo Prophecy even though they were yanked from the Steam store many years ago.)
But apparently that won’t be the case here. Like Kotaku’s Luke Plunkett says, it’s a games preservation tragedy. It’s also ready-made ammunition for critics of digital purchases, and of Embracer Group itself, which is already under scrutiny from gamers both for buying up franchises and for taking a billion dollars from Saudi Arabia.
And it’s not clear why this is happening with Deus Ex in particular. There shouldn’t be a rights issue, right? Embracer explicitly purchased the rights to Deus Ex alongside the mobile games studio that developed the title. All we know, via games journalist Jason Schreier, is that Embracer apparently decided it wasn’t interested in mobile games anymore.
Onoma was part of the acquisition that saw Embracer take control of Eidos and the Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, and Legacy of Kain franchises. The company informed staff at a 2pm ET meeting today that Onoma is shutting down as the company pivots to focus only on PC and console
UK’s digital services tax reaps almost £360m from US tech giants in first year
Figure raised exceeds what most of the digital businesses have been paying in UK corporation tax
The digital services tax has reaped almost £360m from US tech giants including Amazon, Google and Apple in its first year, raising more from most of the digital businesses than they have been paying in UK corporation tax.
A National Audit Office (NAO) report has found the UK’s digital services tax, which was introduced in April 2020 and imposes a 2% charge on the gross revenues made by digital titans running search engines, social media services and online marketplaces, hauled in 30% more than the government had forecast in 2021.
The best Black Friday Google deals you can get
The Pixel 7 (left) and Pixel 7 Pro (right) are some of the many big Google deals going on. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
It’s a good time to be in the market for some new Google hardware. Google recently kicked off its Black Friday sales promotions on its store, and that set off a chain reaction of the same or better deals being offered all over. While some products on sale are mainstays that see frequent discounts (like the Nest Mini smart speaker for $19.99), there are also excellent deals on the latest flagship phones and accessories. For example, the Pixel 7 Pro is on sale for $749, and the new Pixel Watch is $50 off.
This may just be the tip of the iceberg of this season’s Black Friday sales, as there are all kinds of other early deals worth your attention. So we’ll forgive you if you need a moment to digest it all, but the good thing about these Google deals is they’re set to stick around for Black Friday and even through the weekend, ending on November 28th.
We’ve combed through all the Pixel, Nest, and Chromecast sales to pool together the best and most worthwhile deals you should know about.
Pixel phone deals
The latest crop of Pixel phones is just over a month old, but they’re already nicely discounted. The Pixel 7 and 7 Pro are an excellent follow-up to last year’s Pixel 6 generation, honing the quality of the hardware and software for an overall better experience. They both have a new, second-gen Google Tensor CPU and refined camera performance.
The jumbo-sized flagship Pixel 7 Pro is normally a little more affordable than its direct competition from Apple and Samsung, but it’s even more appealing at a lower $749 ($150 off) from Best Buy, Target, Amazon, and Google.
Not one to be outdone when it comes to value proposition, the midrange Google Pixel 6A is still an excellent option if you prefer your Pixel a little smaller (though 6.1 inches isn’t exactly tiny). It’s on sale for $299 ($150 off) at Google, Amazon, Target, and Best Buy.
Pixel accessories deals
The new Google Pixel Watch is on sale for $299.99 at Target, Best Buy, Amazon, and Google. The battery life leaves a bit to be desired, but it’s a very functional smartwatch for notifications on your wrist and tracking your fitness; it also looks pretty sharp and unique with that domed glass case. Be sure to check out our excellent Versus video comparing it to the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5.
The Pixel Buds Pro are on sale for $149.99 ($50 off) from Google, Amazon, Target, and Walmart. Google’s flagship wireless earbuds have active noise cancellation, some great sound, and a quality microphone for calls.
If you need some budget-friendly earbuds, the Pixel Buds A-Series are great for just $64 ($35 off) at Google, Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy. They’re not noise-canceling, but they’re very affordable and offer hands-free Google Assistant controls.
Nest smart home deals
Several quality Google Nest products are on some sizable sales for Black Friday. Each one can be worth considering unless you’ve already staked a claim over your home with a rival ecosystem.
The tiny and colorful second-gen Nest Mini smart speaker is just $18 ($31 off) at Walmart. It’s priced slightly higher at $19.99 from Best Buy, Target, and Google. It doesn’t have room-filling sound for listening to music, but it does sound better when mounted to a wall, and it’s the cheapest way to get Google Assistant voice controls into your home.
Speaking of tiny Google smart home devices, the latest Nest Hub smart display is $49.99 ($50 off) at Walmart, Google, Target, and Best Buy. This little seven-inch display is handy for news and weather or listening to music, and it doubles as a digital photo frame for Google Photos shared albums.
Google’s larger 10-inch Nest Hub Max smart display is $164 ($65 off) at Google, Best Buy, Target, and Walmart. It’s a similar formula to the smaller version but with a bigger screen and front-facing camera for video calls.
The Nest Audio smart speaker is $49.99 ($50 off) at Target, Walmart, Best Buy, and Google or $89 ($110.98 off) when you buy two from Google. You can pair these Google Assistant-powered speakers in stereo mode, so buying the two-pack may make some sense if you’re looking to pump lots of music in your home.
The entry-level Nest Thermostat is on sale for $89.99 ($40 off) at Best Buy, Target, Amazon, and Google. It’s not the most advanced smart thermostat on the market, but it’s simple to operate remotely and has a clean, modern aesthetic.
Google’s latest Nest Learning Thermostat is $179 ($70 off) at Best Buy, Target, Google, and Amazon. This is Google’s smart thermostat with a whole lot more smarts in it; it can learn your habits and preferences over time to make automatic adjustments for comfort and saving energy.
Chromecast deals
The best deal around on the 4K Chromecast with Google TV is Walmart’s bundle of it with a Stranger Things Funko Pop! vinyl figure for $29 (about $20 off the Chromecast alone) if it’s available for store pickup in your area. It’s somehow cheaper than the sale price of the 4K Chromecast itself, which is widely available to ship for $39.99 ($10 off) at Best Buy, Target, and Amazon. This may be the weirdest deal of all for Black Friday — it’s certainly the strangest... thing. Alright, we’re done here.
Actually, the newer but lower-res HD Chromecast with Google TV is also on sale. It’s discounted to $18 (about $12 off) at Walmart and $19.99 ($10 off) at Best Buy, Target, and Google. But unless you need to save every dollar, you might as well get higher quality video with the deal on the 4K version above, plus you get that free figure of Eleven for... $11 more (seriously???).
Musk antagonist George Hotz hired to fix Twitter search — he’s got 12 weeks
Hotz demonstrating his former company’s advanced driver assistance technology. | Photo by Michael Zelenko / The Verge
The internship came about after Hotz expressed support for Musk’s “extremely hardcore” ultimatum to Twitter’s employees, which demanded that they work “long hours at high intensity” or else depart the company. Hotz said that “this is the attitude that builds incredible things” and that he’d be willing to do an internship at the company. “Sure, let’s talk,” was Musk’s response.
Hotz appears to be in-between major projects right now, having recently departed his advanced driver assistance company Comma.ai late last month (although he was quick to announce a new company developing software for AI chips). In a note announcing his departure, Hotz suggested that Comma.ai requires a new style of leader as it attempts to scale up from a startup into a sustainable consumer-focused business.
Comma.ai aims to build driver assistance technology that can be retrofitted into existing cars, as opposed to Tesla vehicles which ship with the technology built-in. But early claims about the Hotz’s driver assistance technology in a feature in Bloomberg prompted a stern rebuke from Tesla, which said that it was “extremely unlikely that a single person or even a small company that lacks extensive engineering validation capability will be able to produce an autonomous driving system that can be deployed to production vehicles.” Comma.ai currently sells a $1,999 driver assistance developer kit that it claims is compatible with over 200 vehicles, and is working on turning this into a consumer product, TechCrunch notes.
In the same 2015 Bloomberg feature Hotz said that he’d been discussing working at Tesla, but that the plans fell through when Musk kept changing the terms of their deal. “I appreciate the offer,” Hotz told Musk, “but like I’ve said, I’m not looking for a job. I’ll ping you when I crush Mobileye.” At the time, Mobileye was the company supplying some of the technology Tesla used in its Autopilot system, before the two parted ways in 2016.
George Hotz is wasting no time working out fixes for Twitter’s search feature. In a tweet, Hotz said these include making it easier to find the search function’s advanced modifiers, and making the feature less reliant on typing the exact text you want to find.
Okay, summarizing:
‣ Searching within "liked" and "seen" tweets with a modifier should be table stakes.
‣ The modifiers and advanced search should be surfaced a lot better. Discord does this well.
‣ Move away from exact text search and toward embeddings.
Crypto exchange FTX owes nearly $3.1bn to 50 biggest creditors
Company says cryptocurrency allegedly stolen in collapse being transferred to other exchanges
The collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX owes its 50 biggest creditors nearly $3.1bn (£2.6bn), according to a filing in a US bankruptcy court.
The exchange owes about $1.45bn to its top 10 creditors, it said in a court filing over the weekend, without naming them. The largest creditor is owed $226m.
‘Verified’ anti-vax accounts proliferate as Twitter struggles to police content
Platform’s paid verification system is being used to give sense of validity to accounts pushing health misinformation
As the troubled social media platform Twitter rolled out a paid verification system and laid off thousands of content moderators, health misinformation accounts on the social network began pushing their messages to a wider audience than ever.
Under Elon Musk’s new direction for Twitter, several anti-vaccine accounts with tens of thousands of followers are now verified by paying $7.99 a month for Twitter Blue.
Monday’s top tech news: Don’t call it a comeback
Nick Barclay / The Verge
Bob Iger’s back at Disney, and Ye, Trump, and others are back on Twitter.
Iger is back, Trump is back, Ye is back, and Elon Musk, well, he never leaves the news cycle.
Ex-Disney CEO Bob Iger is back at the helm of the Mouse House in an announcement that surprised everyone, including executives and employees who thought Iger’s email announcing the change came from a hacked account, according to the Wall Street Journal. The outgoing Bob — Bob Chapek — wasn’t even quoted in Disney’s official announcement.
Elon Musk brought Trump, Ye, and others back to Twitter, despite previously saying that “no major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen” before a new content moderation council “with widely diverse viewpoints” had a chance to convene. Trump has yet to tweet, but Ye returned with an is-thing-on mic test followed by a smiley face and the Jewish greeting for peace.
The metaverse will be a digital graveyard if we let new technologies distract us from today’s problems | Jordan Guiao
The collapse of digital ventures like FTX shows that no amount of hype and starry-eyed proselytising can escape reality
The tiny island nation of Tuvalu recently announced that it would be the first country to fully replicate itself as a virtual reproduction in the metaverse.
Tuvalu, comprising of nine small islands in the Pacific situated between Australia and Hawaii, fears that its demise is inevitable due to human-induced climate change, and wanted to preserve “the most precious assets of its people … and move them to the cloud”.
Inside Gary Gensler’s SEC Campaign to Rein In the Crypto Industry Gary Gensler, the chair of the S.E.C., is at the center of a reckoning over the future of cryptocurrency after the implosion of FTX.
Bob Iger steps back in as Disney CEO, replacing Bob Chapek
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
In a sudden turn of events, Disney has reversed the CEO swap that surprised us in early 2020, with Bob Iger returning to his post, replacing his own successor, Bob Chapek. Iger, who is also the company’s largest shareholder, is now set to serve a new two-year term as CEO. Part of Iger’s job in those two years will be to pick and groom his long-term successor.
During an episode of the Decoder podcast in April, former Verge writer and now Parrot Analytics senior strategy analyst Julia Alexander described the issues facing Chapek:
...Bob Chapek is in a difficult position of trying to take Disney, a legacy company of yesterday, and make it into a legacy company of tomorrow. That means becoming more like a tech company rather than a traditional media and entertainment company. He arguably runs it the way that some tech companies might, where he breaks up the content production and the distribution. He goes in and says, “This is how it is going to work; we are focusing on streaming, on the Metaverse, and on how to get into these different positions.”
All of these issues happen at the same time. So it seems like Bob Chapek is losing control of the kingdom, versus Bob Iger had control over it. But what I think gets lost in that is that Bob Chapek is just over two years into his tenure as CEO, and his first job was pulling the company out of the pandemic and focusing on how to just survive it. Now he’s being tasked with carrying the company very publicly in a way that generates support from the shareholders, from the consumers, and from his employees. That’s easier said than done, especially for someone who’s so new to the role.
While Iger initially pushed Disney into the streaming wars, Chapek’s reorganization of the company ruffled feathers by placing Kareem Daniel, a non-streaming executive, in charge of everything streaming and studio budgets and increasing the emphasis on streaming.
Disney’s board chair Susan Arnold said in a statement that, “We thank Bob Chapek for his service to Disney over his long career, including navigating the company through the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic. The Board has concluded that as Disney embarks on an increasingly complex period of industry transformation, Bob Iger is uniquely situated to lead the Company through this pivotal period.”
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