Photo: Getty Images Newspaper giant Gannett is shutting down Reviewed, its product reviews site, effective November 1st, according to sources familiar with the decision. The site offers recommendations for products ranging from shoes to home appliances and employs journalists to test and review items — but has also been at the center of questions around whether its work is actually produced by humans. “After careful consideration and evaluation of our Reviewed business, we have decided to close the operation. We extend our sincere gratitude to our employees who have provided consumers with trusted product reviews,” Reviewed spokesperson Lark-Marie Antón told The Verge in an email. But the site more recently has been the subject of scrutiny, at times by... Continue reading…

Image: Ikea Ikea is now testing an online platform in Madrid and Oslo where people can sell their used Ikea furniture to others. The platform, Ikea Preowned, lets users list their furniture with photos and a price, and the actual listings (like this example) look a lot like what you might see on Ikea’s main website. However, buyers and sellers have to agree on a place and time to meet to hand over the furniture.Right now, sellers have the option to get paid via a bank transfer with no added fees or by receiving an Ikea gift card with an extra 15 percent added to the furniture’s purchase price, per the Ikea Preowned website. You can’t return items that are damaged or aren’t in the condition you might have expected, though you can request a refund, I... Continue reading…

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov. | Getty Images Telegram says its CEO and founder Pavel Durov has “nothing to hide” after he was arrested by French authorities outside of Paris.“It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform,” the company says in an unnamed statement posted to its official channel in the Telegram app on Sunday. French officials have confirmed to multiple outlets that Durov was arrested as part of a police investigation into criminal activity taking place on the social network.While not encrypted by default, Telegram’s largely hands-off approach to moderation means that the app is seen by many as a private, censorship-free alternative to other social networks. “Almost a billion users globally use Telegram as means of... Continue reading…

Image: Wizards of the Coast Wizards of the Coast has walked back some of its planned updates to D&D Beyond. All your current Dungeons & Dragons characters sheets are once again safe with the publisher no longer forcing updates to newer versions of spells, weapons, and magic items.Last week, as a part of the updates to Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition — collectively known as the 2024 revision — the publisher announced that it would update D&D Beyond, the tabletop RPG’s official digital toolkit that players use to reference content and create characters using a host of official and third-party sources. The update would add the new 2024 rulebooks to the toolkit, mark outdated content with a “legacy” badge, and change players’ character sheets to reflect all the new... Continue reading…

From the uber-popular Ubuntu to its more obscure rivals like Elementary OS and O4OS, most Linux distributions support the live USB facility. If youre unfamiliar with the term, the live USB facility lets you boot into the operating system and test it out before installing it on a storage drive.

A visualization of PM2.5 air pollution concentrations in Islamabad, Pakistan, from 1850 to 2021. | Image: Air Quality Stripes A new tool shows how much air quality has changed since the Industrial Revolution in cities across the world. It generates a single image made up of different colored stripes representing pollution each year in each major city. You can see stark contrasts from place to place, showing how much work is left to do to clean up pollution and also how well those efforts can pay off in the long run. Air pollution has fallen sharply in wealthy Western nations but is still a serious health risk in many places around the world.“These images make the invisible visible.”“Air pollution is often called the ‘invisible killer,’ but these images make the invisible visible,” Kirsty Pringle, a codirector of the project who is based at the University of... Continue reading…

Image: Sony Sony has announced the $59.99 WF-C510 wireless earbuds, the latest budget offering in its “Truly Wireless” line. They’re fairly bare-bones but improve on their predecessor with voice isolation and slightly longer battery life while costing $30 less. The earbuds come in four colors — black, blue, white, and yellow — and are available for preorder now on Sony’s website or at Amazon.The WF-C510 earbuds, besides having a name that rolls right off the tongue, come with Ambient Sound Mode (Sony’s transparency mode, which pipes in external sound) in addition to voice isolation. They’re also the “smallest ever closed type earbuds” Sony says it has produced. According to Sony’s specs list, they’ll get as long as five hours of “continuous... Continue reading…

Rivian’s factory in 2022. | Photo by Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service via Getty Images A fire broke out in a parking lot at Rivian’s Normal, Illinois, factory over the weekend, damaging several electric vehicles, local media is reporting. No injuries are being reported at this time. A spokesperson for the Normal Fire Department told The Verge that a report of a fire was called in at 9:43PM CT on Saturday at the Rivian factory. That said, Rivian is now leading the investigation into the nature of the blaze, along with the company’s insurance company, with the town’s fire officials lending their support as needed, Normal Fire Department spokesperson Matt Swaney said in an email. “It is a very intricate and complex investigation so we do not have a timeline of when and if any origin or cause may be determined at this time,”... Continue reading…

Formula 1 racer Lando Norris in Bahrain in 2022. | Photo: Hasan Bratic / Picture Alliance via Getty Images Formula 1 broadcast footage from the Dutch Grand Prix qualifiers at Circuit Zandvoort this weekend that was captured by a gyro camera system mounted above the helmet of the weekend’s race winner, Lando Norris. The camera, which F1 has been testing since 2022, was conceived with an eye particularly toward accentuating exaggerated angles of banked turns at Zandvoort, but despite using it there last year, F1 wasn’t able to broadcast it, according to AutoSport. Watch Lando Norris soar through the sand dunes (via gyro cam) as he secured pole position at Zandvoort #F1 #DutchGP @pirellisport pic.twitter.com/aa5ZPD13U6— Formula 1 (@F1) August 24, 2024Many F1 fans on social media praised the broadcasts from Norris’ car, saying things... Continue reading…

It seems we've been waiting forever for the next-gen graphics cards from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel, despite the release cadence not having changed at all. We still haven't completed two years since the launch of the Ada Lovelace, RDNA 3, and Arc Alchemist series, but the rumors around the next-gen cards have been swirling around for what seems like an eternity.

Do you know about Windows' God Mode? It's a feature Microsoft put into its operating system designed for advanced users. It gives you a swathe of advanced tools and options that let you tweak Windows to your liking. Despite offering a ton of features, not everyone is happy with it, as proven by someone developing an unofficial "Super God Mode" that can now do even more than ever before.

Dexcom first announced the Stelo earlier this year at CES 2024. The Dexcom Stelo aims to help people with Type 2 diabetes access CGMs more affordably. Continue reading…