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The Nintendo Switch just got a new update that adds Virtual Game Cards as a way to share digital games with other people. But the update also closes a loophole that would let you play shared games online at the same time as somebody you were sharing the game with, as reported by Eurogamer . Before the introduction of Virtual Game Cards, the only way Nintendo allowed you to share digital Switch games was by logging into your Nintendo Account on a second Switch and downloading the game to that console. Using that system, which is now available under “Online License Settings,” it was possible for you and a friend to play that game that you owned online simultaneously.  Following the new Switch update, that digital sharing system is still an option – you don’t have to use Virtual Game Cards. However, with the old system, two people can’t play a shared game online at the same time anymore, which could be a disappointment if you relied on it ahead of this update. If you do opt to us...

A small number of YouTube viewers will now see blurred thumbnails for certain search query results. | Screenshot: YouTube YouTube has announced a new experimental feature that’s “aimed at providing safer search experiences for all users.” The service will begin blurring the thumbnails in search results for some queries “that frequently include sexual themes.” According to a recent update in the Community section of YouTube’s Help Center website, the feature is currently being rolled out to a small percentage of viewers. There are no specifics about what sexual themes may trigger a search to return a list of videos with blurred thumbnails, but YouTube says the video’s title, channel name, and its description will remain visible. Viewers will also have the option to unblur thumbnails. The goal of the limited test rollout is to “understand whether this type of feature helps users avoid accidentally viewing content that follows YouTube’s Community Guidelines but may be sensitive in n...

Poker Face ’s Natasha Lyonne has a new project in the works that seemed poised to become a case study in the debate about how and whether Hollywood should be using generative AI. Lyonne is teaming up with technologist and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier to produce a new sci-fi film that will feature elements generated by AI models. Titled Uncanny Valley , the feature will tell the story — which Lyonne co-wrote with The OA ’s Brit Marling — of a teenage girl whose life is turned upside down by a popular virtual reality game. In addition to directing, Lyonne will star in the film alongside Marling. The film’s more fantastical visuals are being developed by Asteria , a new AI-focused production company Lyonne co-founded with her partner, director / producer Bryn Mooser ( Body Team 12 , Lifeboat ).  In a statement about Uncanney Valley , Lyonne said that collaborating with Marling and Lanier was an “endlessly inspiring” experience, and likened the film to a Wachowski project....

Isuzu has started mass production of an all-electric version of its midsized D-Max pickup truck in Thailand, featuring a dual-motor four-wheel-drive system with 140kW of power that can “match the performance of existing diesel models,” according to the automaker . As reported by Electrek , the new D-Max EV matches the towing capacity of Isuzu’s current diesel powered D-Max at 7,716 pounds (3,500kg) with just slightly less payload capability at about 2,226 pounds (1,010kg) compared to 1,200kg, likely due to the 66.9kWh battery it carries. The D-Max EV has a range of up to 163 miles (263km) per full charge based on Europe’s WLTP standard with a higher 224-mile range if driven in city mode. Other than the electric power, the D-Max EV is built in the image of its diesel counterpart. The D-Max EV is about 207 inches long, which is nearly the same as Europe’s bestselling pickup , the Ford Ranger (210 inches). Isuzu’s new truck will compete against the Ranger when it arrives in left...

This is a screenshot from the PC version of the game — not the unofficial mobile one. | Image: Raw Fury Apple’s App Store review has yet again let at least one unofficial mobile port of a hot new game show up on the store – this time, it’s Blue Prince . In a joint post on Monday , Blue Prince’s developer, Dogubomb, and its publisher, Raw Fury, said that they have “received reports of games claiming to be Blue Prince on iOS.” Currently, the game is only available on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation. Blue Prince is only available on Steam, Xbox & Playstation platforms from Dogubomb & Raw Fury. If we do release on other platforms, we will make an official announcement and let everyone know.We would advise not purchasing or downloading games claiming to be Blue Prince on other platforms. — Blue Prince Out Now! (@blueprincegame.bsky.social) 2025-04-28T17:01:52.621Z I easily found one iOS copy of the game just by searching Blue Prince on the App Store – it was the first s...

WhatsApp’s web-based client may soon get voice and video call functionality built in, reports WABetaInfo . Currently, WhatsApp users who would like to make calls to others have to either rely on the mobile app or the PC or Mac app on desktop. However, WABetaInfo discovered new call buttons appearing on the web client, which means you could soon access all the same features no matter where you use WhatsApp. In an update last month , WhatsApp changed how users can start a voice or video call within individual and group chats by adding a call dropdown menu for beta testers. Now, it seems WhatsApp is doing broader work on call features. WABetaInfo shared a screenshot of what’s allegedly a WhatsApp group chat in a web browser that shows the familiar camera and phone icons available on the main app that weren’t there before. Once WhatsApp is ready to widely push this feature, it will make the app more versatile like other communications platforms, including Microsoft Teams, which lets y...

Elon Musk’s expansive portfolio of companies could avoid more than $2.37 billion in potential legal liability due to his unprecedented influence over the US government, a new Senate report finds. The figure comes from a report assembled by Democratic staff for the Senate Homeland Security permanent subcommittee on investigations (PSI) probing the impact of Musk’s closeness with President Donald Trump and creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on his financial interests. The staff endeavored to quantify “the financial impact of President Trump’s delegation of power on potential liabilities and scrutiny facing Mr. Musk and his companies.” To do so, it calculated the legal exposure The Boring Company, Neuralink, SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI could face as a result of federal investigations, litigation, or regulatory actions pending as of Trump’s inauguration. The staff called the number “a credible, conservative estimate.”  The subcommittee found that Musk and his com...

Yellow line shows actual power, red line is projected. | Image: <a href="https://ift.tt/y0fAshx Eléctrica</a> Power went down Monday afternoon in vast areas of Spain, crossing over into Portugal and France causing widespread outages in homes and businesses and bringing transportation infrastructure to a halt. The cause of the outage is currently unknown. Lisbon, Madrid, Seville, Barcelona, and Valencia are reportedly affected. The outage began at around 12:30PM CET. Play has been suspended at the Madrid Open tennis tournament, according to Sky News . Madrid’s underground rail system has reportedly been evacuated and traffic lights in the city aren’t operating. Air traffic in Spain and Portugal is also reportedly affected by outages at area airports, with Spanish airport operator Aena saying on X that backup generators are currently active at impacted airports. Emergency services in Madrid are also still operational and running on backup generators . Portuguese polic...

Nike’s Cryptokicks iRL, a physical sneaker released under the RTFKT brand. A group of people sued Nike this week over its decision to wind down its virtual show project RTFKT last year. The buyers of the digital assets accuse Nike of causing “the rug to be pulled out from under them,” and say they wouldn’t have bought its NFTs if they’d known they were “unregistered securities,” reports Reuters .  Filed in New York’s Eastern District, the proposed class action lawsuit seeks “unspecified damages of more than $5 million for alleged violations of New York, California, Florida and Oregon consumer protection laws.”  Nike tried to jump into the NFT game by buying RTFKT in 2021 . But, like Starbucks Odyssey , it never quite worked out and the company abandoned the idea, announcing in December via the RTFKT X account that it planned to “wind down RTFKT operations” by the end of January this year.  Since then, RTFKT has seemingly been maintained by a single person named Samu...

A battery that goes for days at a price that’s nice. The OnePlus 13R is a particular kind of midrange phone for a particular kind of person. It's a pared-down version of the OnePlus 13 - which is a full-on flagship and a good one at that . And even though it shares a lot of the flagship DNA, the 13R lacks peace-of-mind features present on the Google Pixel 9A, like full water resistance and new OS versions for seven years. It's also not exactly cheap, with an MSRP of $599. But if all that reduces its mass appeal, the 13R makes up for it in two key places: battery life and screen. Is it worth buying over the $499 Pixel 9A? That depends on the particular kind of person you are. The 13R offers a big 6.78-inch OLED panel with a variable refresh rate up to 120Hz, and its 1264 x 2780 resolution is enough to keep things sharp. You'll have a hard time finding another screen this big and fancy on a midrange phone, at least one sold in the US. It's plenty bright in direct sun...

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has flashy, thrilling battles, but the best thing about them is how you can twist the game's many systems to your advantage. The turn-based RPG combat might feel familiar, but it offers a lot of ways to customize your approach to battles so that you can do absolutely devastating amounts of damage. In Expedition 33, you play as a group of Expeditioners who aim to destroy The Paintress, a mysterious being that erases everyone of a certain age every year. In battles, you can have up to three of your party participating in a fight, and should they all die, you can call in your teammates who are in reserve to try and finish off the enemies. To show you how deep the rabbit hole can go in customizing your team, here's my approach to building out just one character, the fencer Maelle. Every character can equip three "Pictos," which offer passive buffs like giving you the defense-boosting Shell status at the start of a fight. But after you win ...

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 80, your guide to the best and Verge -iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, hope you had better luck than I did preordering a Switch 2, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage .) This week, I've been reading about The Telepathy Tapes and extremely online parenting and translation glasses , watching The Men Who Built America , cackling at this incredible star-studded live reading of the original Star Wars , playing the whole archive of 4×3 , doing some writing in the new Easlo Journal app, testing some headphones I impulse-bought on the TikTok Shop, and seeing if the Kagi Assistant fits into my search-engine world. Oh, also: Thanks to everyone who sent me notes with thoughts about wallpapers! You've given me a bunch of fun ideas about how to expand the Screen Share section, including showing off more of your setups. More on that to come really soon. I also have for you a terrifi...

It's been a busy week for Alien: Earth 's marketing team, having released three new teasers over the last few days. The longest of them - titled "Gestation Complete" - spends two whole minutes on the gestation and birth of an alien creature. Another, "Crate," gives hints that Earth could be facing more than just a xenomorph, the franchise's shiny, acid-spitting ancient aliens. Both teasers were released today, following a goofy nature documentary-themed Earth Day teaser earlier this week. "Gestation Complete" is worth sitting through if you were a fan of the look of the 1979 Alien movie that kicked off the franchise. After the creepy alien birth, you're treated to shots of the inside of the Weyland-Yutani ship that's carrying the alien, complete with the retro-future CRT-style displays and blinking buttons from the ship's Mother's chamber - the room housing the ship's AI computer system interface. On one of the displays,...

Aravind Srinivas is battling Google to get his Perplexity AI assistant preinstalled on Android phones. At the same time, the CEO is refocusing his startup on what he predicts will be the next battleground in the AI race: your web browser. Perplexity plans to release its own browser called Comet next month, Srinivas tells me. "The reason we're doing the browser is that it might be the best way to build agents," he says. "A browser is essentially a containerized operating system. It can let you access other third-party services through hidden tabs if you're already logged into them, scrape the page on the client side, and perform reasoning and take actions on your behalf." Other AI firms are already going in this direction. OpenAI's Operator and Google's Mariner both rely on the browser to execute commands and control websites. OpenAI has yet to release its own browser but is rumored to be developing one. Google, meanwhile, may be compelled by th...

On paper, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 doesn't seem to stand out amidst a recent wave of prestige RPGs, from the newly polished high fantasy of the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remake to the medieval warfare of 15th century Bohemia in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. For one, its fantastical conquests are set in a world reminiscent of France's Belle Époque period, an era known for its economic prosperity and radical artistic movements, from Art Nouveau to Expressionism. Add a tinge of melodrama and an emotional backstory, and its setting resembles a medley of games that take place in vaguely European worlds like Greedfall , Bloodborne, and Dishonored . At the same time, Expedition 33 boasts a turn-based combat system inspired by Japanese RPGs like Final Fantasy and Dragon Ques t. All this is to say that Expedition 33 risks appearing banal and cliche. Fending off impossible odds in a world, where everyone wants to swing their very imposing weapons at your head amidst medieva...

YKK’s self-propelled zipper prototype is chunky and currently being tested for more industrial applications. | Screenshot: YouTube Japan’s YKK, the world’s largest zipper manufacturer (go ahead, grab the nearest zipper, it probably says YKK on the pull), has announced a prototype self-propelled zipper with a built-in motor and gear mechanism it can use to zip itself up at the push of a button on a wired remote. The days of being embarrassed when you forget to zip up could soon be behind us, if it’s ever miniaturized from its current form, which is several inches long and a lot chunkier than the zipper pulls currently used on clothing. Although some recent zipper innovations, such as Under Armour’s one-handed MagZip upgrade , are designed to improve accessibility and make zippers easier to use for those with limited mobility, YKK envisions more industrial use cases for its prototype. As demonstrated in a video recently shared on the company’s YouTube channel, the self-prop...

The subtitles are available with newer Netflix originals, like season 5 of You. Netflix is rolling out a new subtitle option that shows just spoken dialogue. Before this change, Netflix offered Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (SDH/CC), which show spoken dialogue along with speaker names and descriptions of sounds, such as “[phone buzzing]” or [dramatic music swells].” The new option drops these audio cues. It is currently available in English, and you’ll only see it with new Netflix original titles for now, starting with season 5 of You . However, Netflix spokesperson Dorian Rosenburg tells The Verge that the streamer is “actively exploring ways to expand this option to existing titles over time.” According to Netflix, “nearly half of all viewing hours” in the US take place with subtitles or captions, while a CBS News poll last year showed that 50 percent of people across the country use them as well. Many viewers have taken to using subtitles , whether it’s because...

Perplexity Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko said he didn't want to testify in a trial about how to resolve Google's search monopoly because he feared retribution from Google. But after being subpoenaed to appear in court, he seized the moment to pitch a business opportunity for his AI company: buying Chrome. If Judge Amit Mehta sees things the way the Justice Department does, he could force Google to spin out its popular web browser - including the free open source Chromium browser that many other web browsers are built on. Google says this remedy is playing with fire, and could result in a new Chromium owner charging for the product or failing to keep it running in an adequate way, causing ripple effects across the browser industry. But Perplexity would be happy to take on the project, Shevelenko testified. When an attorney asked if Perplexity believes anyone besides Google could run a browser at the scale of Chrome without diminishing its quality or charging for i...

Roomba’s latest robot vacuum can avoid pet waste and has dual rubber roller brushes for digging pet hair out of carpets. iRobot just launched its ninth new robot vacuum of the year. That’s a record number for the company, which is struggling to dig itself out of the giant financial hole it was left in after Amazon’s bid to buy it fell through. The new Roomba Max 705 has the same design and lidar navigation as the rest of the new lineup , and comes with an auto-empty dock and 13,000Pa suction power — the highest advertised on a Roomba. The 705 costs $899.99 (€699) and is available to order now at iRobot.com .  Most exciting for pet owners, the 705 brings back Roomba’s excellent dual rubber roller brushes, which are absent from the rest of the new bots. These were a staple of iRobot’s previous range of mid-to-high-end robots, such as the Roomba j9 and the Roomba i5 . I have recommended Roombas for pet owners specifically because of these brushes.  The nubby rubber rol...

Solar cells are joined together during production at the SunSpark Technology Inc. manufacturing facility in Riverside, California, U.S., on Tuesday, April 3, 2018. | Photo: Getty Images Solar cells from four Southeast Asian countries that have been major suppliers to the US are facing newly increased tariffs , hiked up as high as 3,521 percent.  The tariffs affect Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, which together accounted for more than three quarters of total module imports last year, according to Bloomberg . The tariffs essentially make the products “unmarketable” in the US, the Wall Street Journal reports. The tariffs essentially make the products “unmarketable” The move comes after long-running Commerce Department investigations into whether Chinese companies were funneling products through Southeast Asia to avoid tariffs and lower prices. It also heightens Donald Trump’s trade war with China after roiling global markets with drastic tariff proposals this m...

Max has become the latest streaming service to clamp down on password sharing. Warner Bros. Discovery announced on Tuesday that Max will charge an extra $7.99 per month to add someone to your account outside your household. The new “Extra Member Add-On” allows subscribers across all tiers to invite a friend or family member to create a separate account with their own login credentials. These members can stream from one device at a time and “enjoy all other benefits included in the primary account owner’s base plans,” according to Warner Bros. Discovery. Subscribers can only add one extra member per account. Max is also rolling out a profile transfer feature, which is supposed to make it easier for extra members to carry their watch history, recommendations, and settings over to a new account. Right now, Max’s extra member add-on is only available to people who subscribe directly to the service — not bundle subscribers. Max has been hinting at adding paid sharing to the service si...

How much will Trump’s threatened 245 percent tariffs truly impact Chinese goods and the prices we pay in the US? Some Chinese companies aren’t waiting to see. Anbernic, which makes excellent and controversial Nintendo Game Boy clones , is already suspending US shipments indefinitely. “Due to changes in U.S. tariff policies, we will be suspending all orders shipping from China to the United States starting today,” writes Anbernic. “We strongly recommend prioritizing products shipped from our U.S. warehouse, which are currently not affected by import duties and can be purchased with confidence.” No, Anbernic didn’t set up a brand-new US warehouse in response to tariffs — it’s been an option on its storefront for some time. Generally, Anbernic begins by drop-shipping each new handheld from China directly to buyers’ homes after they’re introduced, then stockpiles additional units in US warehouses for faster ship times. Anbernic lets buyers pick which warehouse they prefer on its c...

Anker’s newest Qi2-compatible chargers might be faster, but if you’re looking for a reliable — and relatively inexpensive — charger to keep you powered on the go, Anker’s last-gen 622 Magnetic Battery (MagGo) is still a solid choice. Thankfully, it’s on sale through April 25th as part of Woot’s Anker Power Mania sale for a mere $22.99 ($25 off) , which is about $3 shy of the power bank’s best price to date.  Before Anker’s pricier 6,600mAh Qi2 power bank took its place, the 5,000mAh Anker 622 was our favorite MagSafe-compatible battery pack . It can deliver a respectable 7.5 watts of power to MagSafe-compatible phones, which isn’t as fast as the newer model’s 15W output but still enough to achieve about an 80 percent charge on an iPhone 16 or 16 Pro (or slightly less if you’re using a power-hungry iPhone 16 Pro Max or a beefier last-gen model) within a couple of hours. What’s more, the power bank features a foldable kickstand, allowing you to stream video, take video calls, o...

If you’ve played both The Last of Us games and are watching along with the show, there’s a pretty strong chance you’ve been waiting to see how the HBO series approaches a very particular moment — and wondering if that moment has been changed at all for TV. Well, it didn’t take too long to find out. The second episode of season 2 just aired, and The Last of Us ’ creators made sure to rip the bandage right off. And not only did they not tone things down, they somehow made things even more intense, while also using the moment as a chance to further expand this post-apocalyptic world. Obviously, there will be spoilers to follow for The Last of Us , which cover both the second game and the show up through episode 2 of the second season. To make sure you don’t see this pivotal spoiler, here is another photo of Pedro Pascal as Joel Miller in the show. Don’t scroll past him if you don’t want to be spoiled on a major development. OK, so, yes, that happened. The inciting...

Meta is expanding how it uses AI to detect teens on Instagram — and, in some cases, will begin overriding account settings. Instagram announced it was using AI for age detection in 2024; the system looked for signals that users were under 18 years old, like if messages from friends say “happy 16th birthday,” for example (Meta also says it uses engagement data — people in the same age group often interact with content they see in similar ways). Teen accounts on Instagram are subject to more restrictive settings: by default, teen accounts are private, strangers aren’t able to send them messages , and Instagram limits what kind of content teens see . Last year, Instagram changed the settings for all teens on the platform so that safety features were automatically enabled. The company now says it will use AI to proactively look for teen accounts that have an adult birthday, and change settings for users it suspects are kids. In a blog post, Instagram says it will begin testing the fe...

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at the White House on April 10, 2025. | Photo: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly shared details about the March 15th Yemen military strikes in another Signal chat with people who weren’t government officials, reports The New York Times . The chat included his wife and “about a dozen” others he knew personally and professionally, the outlet writes, citing conversations with four unnamed sources. The details he shared “included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen,” writes the Times , which notes the details were “essentially the same” as those shared in the Signal chat between Hegseth and other officials last month that included Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, who was added by mistake. But in this case, according to the Times , the chat was one that Hegseth made in January before he was Defense Secretary: Unlike the chat in which The Atlantic was mistakenly inclu...

Many of Logitech’s products are pricier now than they were in the recent past. In a video published this week , YouTuber Cameron Dougherty detailed increases as high as 25 percent on the company’s PC and gaming accessories, including well-known Logitech gear like the MX Master 3S mouse. I took a peek at a few Internet Archive captures of Logitech’s current offerings to confirm the YouTuber’s findings, and sure enough, prices are going up. The MX Master 3S, my favorite mouse and the one I’m using at this very moment, now costs $119.99 , a $20 increase from before . And on the keyboards side, for instance, the Pro X TKL has gone up to $219.99 from $199.99 before . One keyboard Dougherty calls out, the previously $27.99 K400 Plus Wireless Touch, went up by $7 to $34.99 — a relatively small increase that, at 25 percent, is one of the higher price bumps Logitech made. Dougherty notes a few products that didn’t see price increases, including the MX Ergo mouse and ...

Though the larger Star Wars franchise has seen better days, Disney Plus’ Visions animated series has been consistently excellent for the past two seasons, and the creative teams behind its next chapter make it sound like it’s going to be another knockout. The anthology series will see three storylines from previous episodes continue in this third volume — not only that, but Visions Volume 1 episode “The Ninth Jedi” is getting its own spinoff series, under a new Star Wars: Visions Presents label. Star Wars: Visions Volume Three is set to premiere on October 29th, 2025, Disney and Lucasfilm announced as part of Star Wars Celebration in Japan . Visions executive producer James Waugh said during a panel at the event that the show’s third season will have nine episodes, three of which will continue the storylines from popular Volume 1 episodes “The Duel,” “The Village Bride,” and “The Ninth Jedi,” reports The Hollywood Reporter . The third volume will be followed up in 2026 wit...