Tech

/ Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg offered employees nine months of pay if they weren’t on board with his WP Engine dispute. a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Automattic CEO Matt Mullenwegoffered a second buyout round to employees who don’t agree with his actions, according to a report from 404 Media. In a message to employees seen by the outlet, Mullenweg gave employees until October 17th to decide whether they would resign in exchange for nine months of pay. “New alignment offer: I guess some people were sad they missed the last window. Some have been...

/ McLaren’s F1 car is adding more Chrome branding — and more chrome — to its livery for the US Grand Prix. a:hover]:text-black [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-e9 dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray-63 [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-13 dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63″>Man, that’s Chrome.

Loading ... By Jennifer Pattison Tuohy Design by Cath Virginia Photos by Amelia Holowaty Krales Developed by Graham MAcAree It was a chilly winter morning in 2004. The scene was Stanley, Idaho — a city with a population of 101 and a current temperature of negative 17. My boyfriend, who had lured me here from London, England, handed me a bright red envelope and asked if I could drop it in the mailbox on my way into town.  “What’s Netflix?” I asked, peering at the white letters printed on the side. “It’s DVD by mail,” he said. “They send you movies in the mail. You send them back when you’re done. Then, they send you another one.” It was a revelation. While Netflix had been growing in the US since its launch in 1998, it wouldn’t cross the pond for another eight years. For the rest of th...

Loading ... World of Warcraft, or WoW, is like the Red Hot Chili Peppers of the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre: not only is it still going strong but it’s also somehow even bigger than you thought. World of Warcraft’s current numbers aren’t public, but one recent educated guess came in at 7 million paying subscribers, which, at $15 / month, would make the game a billion-dollar earner by itself. Its developer, Blizzard, merged with Activision in 2008, and Microsoft gobbled up both companies in 2022, but World of Warcraft remains a load-bearing spine of the newly formed corporate turducken. The game that redefined gold mining for the 21st century is still a 19th-century gold mine for its landlords.  It’s also thriving in a subscription ecosystem that it helped to legitim...

/ The company says the imminent deadline to implement changes gives it little time to try to mitigate ‘serious risks.’

Between the Apple Watch Series 10, the Ultra 2, and the second-gen SE, there are more options than ever. We’ll help you sort through them. By Victoria Song, a senior reporter focusing on wearables, health tech, and more with 12 years of experience. Before coming to The Verge, she worked for Gizmodo and PC Magazine. Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales Editor’s note: Due to a patent dispute with medical device maker Masimo, new Apple Watch Series 9, 10, and Ultra 2 units sold in the US no longer have the blood oxygen feature. Older models are unaffected. You can tell if you have a unit with the blood oxygen feature disabled if the part number ends in LW/A. It used to be easy to pick an Apple Watch. All you had to do was choose whether you wanted the larger model or the smaller one. Then Ap...

/ Korean game publisher Nexon wants information on users it suspects of infringing on its IP. a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Image: The Verge Discord is fighting to keep its users anonymous in a court battle over piracy on the platform, claiming it would violate users’ First Amendment rights to hand over too much of their information. Nexon, which publishes games including MapleStory, alleges that Discord has refused to comply with a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) subpoena issued by a federal court in Texas that ordered the platform to disclose user information connected...

/ Finally, we can send rich people to the moon. a:hover]:text-black [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-e9 dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray-63 [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-13 dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63″>High fashion for zero gravity.a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Image: Axiom Space The suit includes a helmet and visor equipped with lights, an HD camera, and 4G/LTE communication. As you’d expect from haute couture, the gloves are custom made, the boots are designed for lunar terrain, and according to the press relea...

/ The 14-day Game Pass trial also disappeared just before Starfield’s release last year. a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft has pulled its $1 Xbox Game Pass trial, just days before Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 releases on October 25th. The 14-day Game Pass trial was removed on October 8th, preventing people from signing up for a trial and playing through the Black Ops 6 campaign without paying for a full month of Game Pass. Microsoft first stopped its $1 trial for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass in March last year, before bringi...

Microsoft/ Tech / Is this a Surface Laptop 7 variant or a Surface Laptop 8? a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Microsoft launched its Surface Laptop 7 earlier this year without Intel chips, in a bid to promote Windows on Arm and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips. Now, it looks like a Surface Laptop might arrive next year with Intel’s latest Lunar Lake chips. A Surface Laptop prototype has appeared in a since-deleted listing on Chinese second-hand marketplace Goofish, complete with what looks like Intel’s Core Ultra 7 268V processor inside. Windows C...