Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Your PS5, PS4, PS3, and Vita might look normal — but if you’re having issues, it’s because Sony’s PlayStation Network is not completely healthy right now. Sony’s Network Service Status page is all red, and a spike at Downdetector suggests the partial outage began roughly two hours ago at around 12PM ET. Personally, we’re still seeing our friends online, can play games that require network authentication, download updates, and access the PlayStation Store, but there are a lot of “Can’t load data” error messages under player profiles, and the web version of the PlayStation Store isn’t loading.And when I tried to fire up multiplayer in Hot Wheels Unleashed, I got this communication error: Photo by Sean Hollister / The... Continue reading…

There are plenty of good reasons to use an AMD CPU in your PC build, whether for gaming, content creation, everyday work, or all of the above. Thanks to their excellent price-to-performance ratio, AMD CPUs and GPUs are hugely popular among PC builders. The Ryzen 5 6800G, part of AMD's Zen 4 processor lineup and featuring an AM5 socket, is the best AMD CPU on a budget right now. If you're using it for your build, there are plenty of great motherboards for the AMD Ryzen 5 6800G for you to choose from.

Ikea is now selling a pair of its own USB-C chargers that start at just $7.99. The 30W Sjöss charger comes with a single USB-C port, and there’s also a 45W model (also called Sjöss) that has two USB-C ports for $14.99. This dual-port charger can only output 45W of power when using one port at a time, with the output halved at 22W to each device when plugging in two simultaneously. Ikea’s chargers are compatible with Power Delivery (PD 3.0), Quick Charge (QC4+), and Programmable Power Supply (PPS) specs. Both chargers come with a sheet of colored stickers that lets you “personalize” them — useful in households where kids or flatmates can easily mix them up.The big news here is how affordable Ikea’s two chargers are. At the time of... Continue reading…

Image: Ford Buried in the 88-page antitrust lawsuit filed by the US Department of Justice against Apple is a reference to everyone’s favorite phone-projection system, CarPlay. The DOJ says that, like smartphones, vehicle infotainment systems have become a new way in which Apple exhibits anticompetitive behavior to harm consumers as well as its competitors. Apple’s plans to introduce a more immersive version of CarPlay, in which the system displays key aspects of the vehicle’s functions like speed and HVAC, are further evidence of the company’s illegal monopoly over smartphones, prosecutors say. Infotainment systems have become a new way in which Apple exhibits anticompetitive behavior“By applying the same playbook of restrictions to CarPlay,... Continue reading…

Incorrect spelling will be a thing of the past in Notepad soon. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is bringing the spellcheck feature to its Notepad app on Windows 11. Testers can now access the new spellcheck support in Notepad, which will be available to all Windows 11 users later this year.Spellcheck in Notepad works much like it does in Microsoft Word or inside the Microsoft Edge browser. Misspelled words are automatically underlined in red, and you can fix mistakes with a right-click to see suggestions for spellings. Microsoft has even added autocorrect, so mistakes are fixed as you continue typing. Spellcheck in Notepad will also support multiple languages, and you can ignore words in documents and add them to a dictionary.“This feature is enabled by default for some file types but is off by default in log files and... Continue reading…

The Music Frame comes with room to hold a physical art print or photo while integrating with voice assistants like Amazon Alexa. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Samsung’s just opened up preorders for its 2024 TV and audio lineup, which includes everything from the latest version of The Frame TV to Samsung’s glare-free OLED TV. However, the real star of the show here is the Music Frame smart speaker, which was one of our favorite audio products from this year’s CES and now comes with $50 in Samsung credit when you preorder it for $399.99 for arrival on April 1st.There are a few caveats to keep in mind, though. First, you won’t be able to use the $50 to offset the cost of the smart speaker itself, but you can spend it on other Samsung devices. Second, you won’t see the credit for a while. Samsung will only email details about how to redeem it after the speaker is delivered, and it may take up to... Continue reading…

Now's going to be the perfect time if you're thinking about building a new PC. This AMD Ryzen 7 5700X is the perfect CPU if you want to build a PC on a budget, with the CPU offering lots of power, at an extremely affordable price. While it has a retail price of $319, it's been seen much lower over the past few months, but this new deal during Amazon's Big Spring Sale drops the price down to its lowest yet, falling to just $168.18 for a limited time.

Image: The Verge Threads is rolling out a beta of its fediverse integration in the US, Canada, and Japan. In a post on Thursday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that toggling on the feature will let you cross-post and view likes from other federated platforms, like Mastodon.Threads previewed its fediverse integration earlier this week during the FediForum. As outlined on its support page, Meta says that you must have a public account to turn on fediverse sharing, which will allow users on other servers to “search for and follow your profile, view your posts, interact with your content, and share your content to anyone on or off their server.” Image: Meta There are still a few limitations, though. The beta currently doesn’t let... Continue reading…

Green bubbles are actually a big part of the DOJ’s case against Apple. | Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge It’s no secret that Apple products work best if you stick with an iPhone. It turns out that’s a big reason why Apple landed in hot water today with the US Department of Justice, which alleges that the company went too far in locking down messaging, smartwatches, and digital wallets to intentionally hobble its rivals. This won’t be a surprise to most consumers. We’ve all known for years about green bubbles and that you can’t bring your Apple Watch to an Android phone. What the DOJ is saying is that, altogether, this series of protective policies makes it extremely difficult for an iPhone user to leave its walled garden, limiting competition so much that it breaks the law.MessagingGreen bubbles make a key appearance in the lawsuit. It’s... Continue reading…

MSI's first gaming handheld has finally landed, and even though it looks a lot like an Asus ROG Ally painted black, it's very different from the high-end handhelds we're used to under the hood. With its Intel Core Ultra processor and Arc 5 graphics, the Claw puts plenty of power on your palms, but is it better than its biggest rivals? Should you spend your money on a Legion Go instead? Let's find out.

Image: The Verge / Android Google’s second developer preview for Android 15 has arrived, bringing long-awaited support for satellite connectivity alongside several improvements to contactless payments, multi-language recognition, volume consistency, and interaction with PDFs via apps. These developer-focused betas are a proving ground for features that will likely make it into the final public release scheduled for later this year. According to Google, public beta releases should be available to test between April and July. Image: Google Here’s Google’s release timeline for Android 15, which may see a full release between August and October this year. The latest developer preview addresses some nuisances and security concerns... Continue reading…

Dark clouds gather over the Baltic Sea on November 8, 2023. | Photo by Stefan Sauer/picture alliance via Getty Images Brightening Earth’s clouds so that they reflect more sunlight just might cool the planet — that is if we can figure out how to do it without causing any unintended harm. To test the theory out, a group of over 30 leading scientists have written up a research road map that was published in the journal Science Advances yesterday. The paper focuses on how to approach attempts to artificially shade Earth’s surface with marine clouds by spraying saltwater into the air from ships, a strategy called marine cloud brightening (MCB). They’ll need to be really careful with any future experiments, which would fall into the controversial category of solar geoengineering. The idea is to counteract some of the effects of climate change by finding ways... Continue reading…