Technology

There have been lots of great deals this week despite Memorial Day having come and gone, some of which are still available to Walmart Plus subscribers through the weekend. But if you’re someone who cares more about smart home tech than the current highlights at Walmart, we’ve got an exclusive treat just for you. Wellbots is offering Verge readers up to $80 off on select Google Nest devices until Sunday, June 19th. This includes two great options for video doorbells if you favor using Google Assistant in your smart home setup. The longstanding Google Nest Hello — now known as the Nest Doorbell (wired) — is $80 off when you use promo code VERGE80 at checkout, which drops the excellent wired doorbell to $149. While this model has been around since 2018 and offers a 1600 x 1200-resolution sens...

Some people use camomile tea, others use breathing exercises, but, for me, the most reliable tactic for getting to sleep quickly is to avoid screens before bed. Yet, actually doing so requires some creativity if I want to keep up with news online. My current system involves saving articles to the read-later app Instapaper, which sends a daily digest to my Kindle each evening. But it’s a hacky approach where articles often aren’t formatted properly and sometimes don’t appear at all. I could switch to a Kobo, which offers native integration with rival read-later app Pocket, but the Onyx Boox Nova Air C offers a much more tantalizing alternative. Unlike either a Kindle or Kobo, its E Ink display is capable of showing colors, and it’s running a modified version of Android that allows you to do...

Google is expanding its custom text stickers to Android users who use the US-English version of its Gboard keyboard. Previously, only Google Pixel users had access to the feature, which lets you create and send personalized stickers by typing in your own text and choosing a premade design. In addition to expanding custom stickers, Google is also introducing over 1,600 new Pride Month and summer-themed mashups to Gboard’s Emoji Kitchen. You can use the feature by simply typing in an emoji (or two) into a message, and then seeing what kind of mashups you can translate into stickers. The result is fun, and sometimes unconventional emoji combinations, like a soccer ball made out of watermelon. You can create custom stickers using your own text in Gboard.Image: Google Aside from Gboard, Google ...

Apple’s software is very good, generally speaking. Even as the company has spread its focus among more platforms than ever — macOS and iOS and iPadOS and tvOS and watchOS and whatever software Apple’s building for its maybe-possibly-coming-someday car and its almost-certainly-coming-soon AR / VR headset — those platforms have continued to be excellent. It’s been a while since we got an Apple Maps-style fiasco; the biggest mistakes Apple makes now are much more on the level of putting the Safari URL bar on the wrong part of the screen. What all that success and maturity breeds, though, is a sense that Apple’s software is… finished — or at least very close. Over the last couple of years, the company’s software announcements at WWDC have been almost exclusively iterative and additive, with fe...

Saturday morning, aerospace company Blue Origin is slated to conduct its fifth tourist flight, sending a crew of six to the edge of space and back out of West Texas. Once again, it’s a flight without any major celebrities on board, as the company transitions into making these quick jaunts to space relatively routine. The flight, called NS-21, comes just two months after Blue Origin’s last tourist trip on March 31st. That mission sent up five paying customers and one company employee — the first time no big names flew. The Blue Origin employee was actually a last-minute replacement for comedian and actor Pete Davidson, who was originally slated to fly but had to drop out due to scheduling issues when the mission was delayed. Prior to that flight, Blue Origin made a point to have at least on...

The New York state legislature has passed the United States’ first “right to repair” bill covering electronics. Called the Fair Repair Act, the measure would require all manufacturers who sell “digital electronic products” within state borders to make tools, parts, and instructions for repair available to both consumers and independent shops. Having passed the legislature, it is awaiting signature by Governor Kathy Hochul, who is expected to support the measure. The measure will take effect one year after it passes into law. “One giant leap for repairkind” Self-repair groups like iFixit have applauded the ruling, calling it “one giant leap for repairkind” in a blog post following the announcement. “The passage of this bill means that repairs should become less expensive and more comprehens...

Hello! Welcome (or welcome back) to This Week in Elon, The Verge’s occasionally revived newsletter for when there’s Too Much Elon News. And, I mean, there’s always too much Elon news. But what’s happening right now feels worth digging into more deeply. So, let’s get into it. On Tuesday, Musk demanded Tesla employees come back to the office or “pretend to work somewhere else,” which is an odd thing to say for a guy who splits his time between cities and at least four different companies. He’s also looking to cut about 10 percent of Tesla’s workforce, Reuters reported this morning, based on his “super bad feeling” about the economy, and all I’m saying is I don’t want to do layoffs, so I’m going to make you miserable enough to quit would not be a particularly off-brand management tactic for M...

What do you gift your mom? That’s a challenging question to answer, especially given mothers — the generous, unselfish beings they can be — are not likely to spill the beans when asked. Luckily, we’ve done the hard work for you. With the help of The Verge staff, we’ve curated a list of some of the best tech gifts you can treat your mom — or any mother figure, really — to year-round. Whether it’s for her birthday, Mother’s Day, or Christmas, here you’ll find something that caters to all kinds of budgets and interests, ranging from smartwatches and Kindles to massage guns, robot vacuums, and more. You can rest assured that these are items we can personally vouch for as well, having tested and reviewed them ourselves. Peruse this list below and see if there’s anything on here you can either b...

LG is catching up with Samsung in “lifestyle” TV land, adding a new model to its LG OLED Objet Collection that launched last year. The new Posé is a slimline take on Samsung’s Serif; it comes in 42-inch, 48-inch, and 55-inch screen sizes and launches in the third quarter of 2022, starting in Europe. The Posé joins the 65-inch Easel that was announced at CES (then called the Objet), which is designed to look like an art easel and has a sliding fabric cover to conceal the screen. Both can display artwork or photos when not in use. But what is a lifestyle TV? Why is there a premium for a TV to look good in our homes? “Looks nice when in the middle of my living room” seems like a key consideration when buying a TV just as it is when you buy a couch. Of course, that’s along with the other essen...

Square announced on Thursday that it will begin to support Apple’s Tap to Pay technology later this year with a beta test arriving this summer as part of the company’s Early Access Program. Right now if a company is using Square to process sales it needs to use Square’s familiar dongle to receive payments. With support for Apple’s Tap to Pay it should be able to process a big chunk of payments with nothing but an iPhone and the Square app. The new program will allow iPhone users to pay with their phone within Square’s point of sale (POS) app. Apple first announced Tap to Pay in February 2022, and first supported Square’s competitor Stripe. The partnership with Stripe also supports payments made in the Shopify POS app. The Tap to Pay feature is currently only available on iPhone models XS a...