Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images The fate of TikTok in the US now lies with the Senate after House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to pass a bill that would ban the app unless Chinese parent company ByteDance sells it.President Joe Biden has already said he would sign the bill, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, if both chambers advance it. But even though the bill sailed through the House only about a week after it was first introduced, the Senate will present a whole different set of challenges.To start, there’s no companion bill yet, so the legislation is barely at the start line in that chamber. And even if one is introduced, Senate rules could make it tricky to maintain enough support (60 out of 100 members) to clear it.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sellers on Amazon will soon be able to make product pages with just the copy-and-paste of a link.Amazon is releasing a new generative AI feature that takes information from a seller’s external website and then generates an Amazon product page for the item, complete with a written description and images. The goal is to help sellers reduce the time it takes to bring the product from a different website onto Amazon, says Mary Beth Westmoreland, Amazon’s VP of worldwide selling partner experience, in a blog post. Image: Amazon Amazon’s AI will parse through a separate link to generate product pages. Amazon warns sellers that if they choose to paste a URL to create the product page, they must be the owner, rights... Continue reading…

Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Elon Musk canceled Don Lemon’s show on X over some interview questions Musk didn’t like. Lemon says that Musk terminated their partnership just hours after a “tense” interview between him and the platform’s owner.Lemon doesn’t say what exactly transpired during his interview, but he does say that Musk “is mad” at him. “Throughout our conversation, I kept reiterating to him that although it was tense at times, I thought it was good for people to see and hear our exchange, and that they would learn from our conversation,” Lemon says in a video posted to X. Elon Musk canceled #TheDonLemonShow Watch on YouTube and listen everywhere on Monday March 18. pic.twitter.com/AAhnvcY0ny— Don Lemon (@donlemon) March 13, 2024Lemon adds that... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Epic Games isn’t done with Apple. A 2021 ruling forced Apple to allow developers of App Store apps to link to outside payments, and Epic has now filed a motion asking Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to enforce her original order. Epic says Apple’s updated developer policy that still reserves 27 percent of outside payments (or 12 percent for small developers) for Apple itself is still unjustified. Epic argues these fees are “essentially the same” as those the company charges for using its payments system. Christian Owens, who founded payments processor Paddle, and Benjamin Simon, the founder behind the Down Dog fitness apps for iOS, agreed in declarations also filed by Epic. Owens called the choice offered by Apple “illusory,” while Simon... Continue reading…

Image: Turtle Beach Gaming accessory company Turtle Beach has announced it’s getting into the controller collecting game and buying PDP for a cool $118 million. PDP getting bought could be a good thing, depending on how you feel about its slate of generally affordable and fun-colored controllers.Turtle Beach has added a lot of accessory irons to the gaming fire in the last couple years, including forays into flight yokes and the recently-announced Velocity One racing wheel. It sells controllers too, but it only began doing so in 2021, and doesn’t sell any for PlayStation or Nintendo consoles. Image: PDP Correct layout, best fighter. Gamepads are PDP’s bread and butter — and it’s got licenses to sell them for every major... Continue reading…

The MSI Claw promises to bring a great gaming experience to the handheld market. It boasts an Intel Core Ultra processor and the base model has an internal 512GB SSD, while the top-of-the-line model has a 1TB SSD. That may sound like a lot of space, but with plenty of titles available to run on it, you can end up filling the hard drive quickly. For instance, some games are over 100GB, so only around five will fit on the 512GB SSD. If you want to store all your games, save files, screenshots, downloads, and more, you'll be better off adding a bit of extra space as well. Thankfully, this handheld gaming console accepts microSD cards, and here are some of the best options available.

Yikes! | Photo by Paul Ellis / AFP via Getty Images How a bad Photoshop job turned into an existential crisis for the British monarchy. Continue reading…

It's no secret that Microsoft is unveiling its next set of Surface devices in just a few weeks' time on March 21. The company is said to have made some big changes to both the Surface Pro 10 and the Surface Laptop 6, both of which are expected to headline the digital event which it quietly announced a few days back. Having heard some rumors about the changes coming to these devices, I have to admit that I have never been more excited about a Surface lineup launch. The Surface Laptop 6, in particular, is the one that has my undivided attention, and I am way more pumped about it than I was for the M3 MacBook Air.

With a new update you can now view recorded footage from cameras like the Google Nest Cam (indoor, wired) on Google Home’s web interface. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Google has announced that in the next few days, Nest Cam users will finally be able to view and download recorded clips and scroll through their event timeline on its new home.google.com web portal. While you’ve been able to view livestreams from here, if you want to see what happened earlier, you need to go to the Google Home app. The company also says it's bringing the ability to create custom clips from recorded footage both on the web and in the app, finally bringing the full functionality of its Nest cameras to its own platform. These features will require a Nest Aware subscription, starting at $8 a month.Google first promised to bring a web view to its cameras in 2021, but it didn’t materialize until 2022. Then, it was limited... Continue reading…

SpaceX Starship on a Super Heavy rocket booster | Image: SpaceX Now that the Federal Aviation Administration has granted SpaceX a license (pdf), the third test flight of its Starship Super Heavy vehicle could take place as soon as Thursday morning. SpaceX says that a 110-minute launch window will open at 7AM CT / 8AM ET / 5AM PT tomorrow, March 14th. If you’re planning on watching to see what happens, we recommend getting up early before the launch just in case it’s either canceled or, as we’ve seen on previous attempts, occurs at the very beginning of the launch window.In a post on X (which, like SpaceX, is owned by Elon Musk), the FAA said it has “determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements.” While both of the first two Starship launches took... Continue reading…

Leaks of the DJI Avata 2 drone show it with a sleeker battery housing and updated triple-bladed propellers. | Image: @Quadro_News DJI’s unannounced Avata 2 drone and Goggles 3 have leaked, showing some exciting updates over their predecessors — such as a bigger battery and sensor and cameras that might let you see through the first-person view (FPV) headset.The image atop this story, via @Quadro_News, shows the new drone is ditching much of the original skeletal design and uses brand-new triple-bladed propellers and batteries, which now appear to be fully encased within the frame. More intriguing are the new alleged Goggles 3, though: they appear to feature two cameras on the front that could possibly be used for passthrough vision and what appears to be a hinged forehead rest for flipping the goggles up when not in use. The leak doesn’t explicitly say what... Continue reading…

Hot drink lovers will know the gamble of taking a sip from your favorite beverage. Go in too quickly, and you risk burning your tongue on its hot contents; wait too long, and it goes into the lukewarm (or worse, stone-cold) territory. Ideally, you'd know how warm your drink is without doing any sheepish touches around the outside of your mug.