Listen to our podcast about our website redesign
The VergeEvery Wednesday and Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where our editors make sense of the week’s most important technology news. On Wednesdays, editor-at-large David Pierce leads a selection of The Verge’s expert staffers in...
/ The Vergecast discuss the ideas behind our new look
Sep 14, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC|
The Verge
Every Wednesday and Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where our editors make sense of the week’s most important technology news. On Wednesdays, editor-at-large David Pierce leads a selection of The Verge’s expert staffers in an exploration of how gadgets and software affect our lives — and which ones you should bring into your home.
You may have noticed The Verge looks different: new colors, new typefaces, new layouts. This new version was two years in the making, and now we can finally talk about it. On today’s Vergecast, David chats with editor-in-chief Nilay Patel all about the ideas behind the redesign, including the Storystream news feed, embedding a whole bunch of stuff right on the homepage, and Nilay’s mission to revolutionize the media with blog posts.
David also chats with some folks who worked on the site redesign — senior product manager Tara Kalmanson and senior engineer Matt Crider — about what went into implementing The Verge’s ideas, as well as the constraints they had to deal with, the risk of embed codes, and the balance between design, speed, and content.
You can listen to the full discussion here or in your preferred podcast player.
The Vergecast /
A podcast about technology and emotions
Crypto villain Do Kwon is wanted by authorities in South Korea.
Kwon, the founder of Terraform Labs, was at the center of crypto’s biggest scandal this year: the cataclysmic collapse of Luna/Terra coins from $60 billion to zero. South Korean authorities issued the warrant for his arrest on “allegations that include violations of the nation’s capital markets law,” Bloomberg reports. Kwon is in Singapore.
Will inflation lead to more entry-level gadgets?
This summer I wrote about how tech products may be insulated from inflation more than consumables, but they are far from immune.
Today, Janko Roettgers over at Protocol makes a compelling argument using recent releases from Roku and Sonos and rumored stuff coming soon from Google as evidence that inflation will result in more budget gadget options for us consumers:
Nilay Patel41 minutes ago
Gaze upon the Dynamic Island’s subpixel antialiasing.
In true Apple fashion, the company built a new display system for the iPhone 14 Pro to make the edges of the island three times crisper than the rest of iOS, to make it feel more like hardware. Our full review goes into it!
David Pierce42 minutes ago
The sports streaming wars might get even more confusing.
A few weeks ago, the Big Ten conference signed a huge and confusing deal for sports rights. And it sounds like ESPN, which owns the rights to the soon-to-be-expanding College Football Playoff, might change some things too. Here’s ESPN chief Jimmy Pitaro to Bloomberg:
“We’ve been clear to anyone who is interested that we are very willing to be flexible here and be creative in terms of this expansion.”
That’s business speak for “give me a number, Bezos and Cook.”
Richard Lawler51 minutes ago
Netflix will try to remind you what you’re paying for with another fan event next week.
Despite this spring’s layoffs (and a brand that some exiting writers couldn’t pronounce), Netflix is still making Tudum a thing, including the second edition of its global fan event next week on September 24th.
This new trailer doesn’t give anything away, but Netflix needs to prove to me that it has more than games to offer as a reason to keep it in the subscription streaming rotation.
Your vomit may be valuable a few million years from now.
According to an article in the journal Palaios, paleontologists are enthusiastically examining a bunch of bones apparently regurgitated from a predator in Utah 150 million years ago. The fossil they found contains the remains of an unlucky frog or tadpole that was some predator’s lunch back in prehistoric times.
I’d have a lockscreen full of widgets if I could.
Lockscreen widgets in iOS 16 are great and super useful, but Apple limits how many you can have to just one row below the clock. I’ve got a big screen on my phone that I’d put so many more widgets on if I could. Widgets are great. Widget it up.
Neither snow nor rain nor active crime scene will stay these robot couriers...
Last-mile delivery robots are still trying to prove their worth, but here’s one apparent advantage: they can enter crime scenes. It’s a bit odd that the police didn’t stop the bot, especially as we don’t know whether a computer or human was driving.
What would you name a probe sent to Uranus?
Probey McProbeface is always a fave, but what about Planetary Orbital Observation Probe (aka, P.O.O.P.)? Just a few of the names suggested in response to an unofficial poll for a proposed mission that isn’t even funded — but it’s ok to have fun.
The next iPhone and Mac M3 chip rumors begin.
Nikkei Asia is reporting that Apple is preparing to use TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process for its M3 and A17 chips next year. The upgraded 3nm tech will include performance and power efficiency improvements, and is rumored to appear in premium 2023 iPhones and M3 Mac computers. That could mean the next base iPhone model won’t have Apple’s latest chips again.
A PlayStation exclusive is heading to Xbox.
Deathloop on Xbox ads have started appearing on consoles today. The timed PS5 console exclusive from Microsoft-owned Bethesda looks like it will be available on Xbox soon, a year after it launched on PS5. Microsoft’s store says you can “pre-order now” but the link isn’t working yet. We described Deathloop as “an intricate mystery that also happens to be an amazing action game.”
Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge
Aqara has a new smart thermostat for radiators in Europe.
The Radiator Thermostat E1 arrives in Europe (€56.99 / £54.99) with lots of valve adapters to automate wall-mounted radiators, towel warmers, and heated floors. It’ll support Matter via a future update to Aqara’s hubs.
Showtime streaming might disappear into Paramount Plus.
Next year HBO Max will do the fusion dance with Discovery Plus, and Disney’s CEO is talking about a “hard bundle” for Hulu and Disney Plus, so this rumor about Paramount discontinuing Showtime streaming is no surprise.
Showtime’s content is already in the Paramount app, and Paramount’s pushing a discounted $8 (ads) or $13 (fewer ads) combo subscription until October 2nd. The bundle is back.
iOS 16 should let us swipe down for notifications.
Antonio makes an excellent point here that completely slipped by me in the months I’ve been using the iOS 16 betas. Swiping down on the home screen is part of my muscle memory for Spotlight, but now that there’s an always present button on the home screen to launch Spotlight, the swipe down gesture could easily be repurposed for Notification Center. Or at least give us the option.
With iOS 16 apple now gives you TWO different ways to do a search on your home screen (swipe down from center and tap the pill button at the bottom). This would have been the perfect chance to switch that down swipe to pull down the notification shade, which is all I want in iOS
— Antonio G. Di Benedetto (@SuperAntonio64) September 13, 2022Google’s first-party Pixel 6 case proves to be junk.
I immediately had the impression that Google’s official cases for the Pixel 6 were awful as soon as I touched them last year, but a long-term review from 9to5Google shows just how bad they can get.
Here’s to hoping Google does better with the Pixel 7 cases this year.