Новости за 11.01.2022

You can buy the cloth once again. | Image: Apple

Apple’s $19 polishing cloth is back in stock at the company’s online store, as spotted by 9to5Mac. The very expensive piece of cloth was first introduced following Apple’s October event, but it was quickly backordered — according to MacRumors, it was “impossible” to get one before the holidays — so if you’ve been waiting to get one, now’s your chance.

Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

At a press conference on Monday, the Biden administration announced a policy that will require insurance companies to reimburse up to eight over-the-counter at-home COVID-19 tests for their customers beginning January 15th, as first reported by the Associated Press. The administration said in a Twitter thread that the “update” is a part of a larger plan to “increase access to COVID-19 testing.”

The NLRB said Amazon broke labor laws in the original election. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The second union election at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama will begin on February 4th, according to a notice posted Tuesday by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which you can read below. The election is a redo of the one that was carried out in 2021, the results of which were declared invalid by the regulatory agency after reports that Amazon had broken labor laws during the union drive. Читать дальше...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Turo, the peer-to-peer car-sharing service, has filed for its initial public offering, the latest transportation-related startup to sell its shares on a public stock exchange. The company proposes to sell $100 million of stock, but that figure could change as Turo gets closer to its public debut.

The monolithic Xbox Series X console is still a bit tricky to get. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Update 12:58PM ET, January 11th: Best Buy has sold out of consoles for now.

Photo by Alix Diaconis / The Verge

Hello again. Welcome to your Tuesday Hot Pod. Today, we’re catching up on all sorts of big moves in the industry, layoffs at Spotify, and talking about what makes a podcast a hit. Let’s get to it.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Facebook moderators at an Accenture site in Austin are facing a payroll disaster that has left many without their holiday paychecks. Workers at the site handle moderation, customer service, and other tasks for Facebook and WhatsApp — and a work stoppage has already been threatened if the situation is not resolved.

Photo: Blizzard

The name Overwatch 2 has become synonymous with delay. First reported by The Brick Fan, a Lego review site, the extremely popular toymaker is delaying the release of an Overwatch 2-themed set as the company reviews its relationship with Overwatch 2 publisher Activision Blizzard.

Roku is making live TV even easier to find with its new Live TV Zone, a one-stop shop for all things live and linear.

Judge rules Google has to turn over 180 documents in an NLRB case | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A judge appointed by the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Google must turn over some 180 documents related to an internal campaign to fight union organizing efforts by employees. Dubbed Project Vivian, a Google attorney described the ongoing effort between 2018 and 2020 as a way to “engage employees more positively and convince them that unions suck,” according to one of the documents. Читать дальше...

Microsoft is announcing a new matte black option of its Surface Go 3 today, with optional LTE connectivity. The announcement comes just a day after images of the new Surface Go 3 model leaked online, with a new matte black finish. The new color option and LTE connectivity are the only changes, as it’s identical to the regular Surface Go 3 otherwise.

Image: Sony

Sony’s Xperia 5 III, the compact counterpart to its Xperia 1 III, is now on sale in the US, almost nine months after the company initially announced the device in April 2021. The phone retails for $999.99 and will be available in black or green, with the latter exclusive to Sony’s own online store. The phone went on sale in the second half of last year in the UK and Europe.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

It’s a new year, and like clockwork, 2022 has brought with it a plethora of new chips for laptops, desktops, phones, and more.

We found three discounted gaming keyboards from Corsair that should please most people, coming in a variety of form factors and with different features. First up is Corsair’s first 60 percent keyboard, the K65. This compact keyboard is normally $109.99 but has recently dropped to $89.99 at Best Buy and Amazon. We last saw the K65 drop to this price during Black Friday. While the diminutive layout of this keyboard certainly isn’t for everyone, it should appeal to those who are striving for a minimalist aesthetic on their desk. Читать дальше...

Photo by Visual China Group via Getty Images/Visual China Group via Getty Images

US Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has threatened the government funding of chipmaker Intel after the company made what Rubio described as “humiliating apologies” to China.

An email sent to customers warning them about the change. | Image: Pottermore

If you own digital Harry Potter books purchased on Pottermore, you might want to redownload your copies before the option disappears for good at the end of the month. The site is emailing its customers to warn them that the books will no longer be available to redownload after January 31st, since being removed from sale in September last year.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Travis Kalanick in the show’s first season. | Image: Showtime

There’s a new teaser for the first season of Super Pumped, Showtime’s upcoming anthology show about Silicon Valley startups that hit it big. As we saw in the teaser from December, season one will revolve around Uber and its former CEO Travis Kalanick, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Having trouble connecting to a big game of Halo Infinite multiplayer with a bunch of your friends in the game’s 12-person Big Team Battle mode? That will hopefully soon be a thing of the past: developer 343 says it’s not only aware, it believes it has “a fix in hand for the core issue” and will release a special hotfix specifically for it. “It’s a little too soon to give an ETA yet but please know our goal is to release this as soon as we can,” write the developers in an official blog post,” adding that “It won’t be this week... Читать дальше...

The company has announced changes to its office reopening plans. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, will require staffers to have received a COVID-19 booster shot to be able to work from its US offices, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. Meta had already said that US office employees would have to be vaccinated against COVID-19 when they returned to the office, but beginning March 28th, they’ll also need proof of a booster vaccine, Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton confirmed to The Verge. Читать дальше...

On Saturday, Android boss Hiroshi Lockheimer accused Apple of “using peer pressure and bullying as a way to sell products,” after a Wall Street Journal report revealed how US teens have turned Apple’s iMessage into a social status symbol that locks Android users out.

Resellers will also be to get in on the action. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Associated Press, or AP, has announced that it’s starting a marketplace to sell NFTs of its photojournalists’ work in collaboration with a company called Xooa. It’s billing its foray into NFTs as a way for collectors to “purchase the news agency’s award-winning contemporary and historic photojournalism” and says that the virtual tokens will be released at “broad and inclusive price points” (though... Читать дальше...

Two LAPD officers who were fired from their jobs in 2017 for playing Pokémon Go while on duty have had their appeal for reinstatement denied by a California judge.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

T-Mobile appears to be blocking some iPhone users from enabling iCloud Private Relay, a feature that lets you hide the websites you visit from third parties, according to a report from 9to5Mac.

Take-Two wants to bring its franchises to mobile, and Zynga can help. | Image: Rockstar Games

Take-Two Interactive just announced its intent to buy FarmVille developer Zynga for $12.7 billion in what could be the biggest acquisition in video game history. It’s an absolutely massive deal; to put it in perspective, the acquisition would be $5 billion more than Microsoft’s $7.5 billion purchase of the parent company of Skyrim maker Bethesda Softworks. You could throw in the money Disney paid for Lucasfilm and still have cash left over. Читать дальше...

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Uber has quietly shut down its Apple Watch app, with the software now showing a message that instructs people to “please switch to the Uber mobile app.” The company is “no longer supporting the Apple Watch app,” according to the text, which ends with Uber apologizing for any inconvenience caused by the app’s discontinuation. There’s also a sad face emoji to drive that sentiment home.