Verizon and AT&T have each announced milestones in making cellphone-to-satellite video calls in partnership with satellite company AST SpaceMobile.

Verizon has completed its first cellphone-to-satellite video call, while AT&T has completed its first using satellites that will be used as part of a commercial network. There’s lining up competition to T-Mobile’s arrangement with SpaceX and Starlink on satellite-to-cell service which launched a public beta for messaging via satellite earlier this month. AT&T and Verizon have said that T-Mobile and SpaceX’s offerings would harm their networks.

Verizon pulled off “a live video call between two mobile devices with one connected via satellite and the other connected via Verizon’s terrestrial network connection,” according to a company press release. In AT&T’s case, “AT&T and AST SpaceMobile have successfully completed another video call by satellite to an everyday smartphone over AT&T spectrum,” per AT&T’s press release.

Both phone companies relied on AST’s constellation of five BlueBird satellites that were launched last September for the tests. AT&T’s initial video call test happened in June 2023.

Balatro, the hit roguelike with poker imagery and poker hands but no actual gambling, no longer has a PEGI 18 rating in Europe following an appeal, PEGI announced today.

LocalThunk, the creator of Balatro, has publicly shared his frustrations the rating — the game was originally given a PEGI 3 rating, but it was bumped to PEGI 18 shortly after its launch in February 2024 because of the game “contains prominent gambling imagery and material that instructs about gambling,” as explained by publisher Playstack.

Now, Balatro will have a PEGI 12 rating following an appeal submitted by Sold Out Sales & Marketing, which rebranded to Fireshine Games in 2022 and publishes Balatro’s physical edition. “The Complaints Board concluded that, although the game explains the various hands of poker, the roguelike deck-building game contained mitigating fantastical elements that warranted a PEGI 12 rating,” PEGI says.

PEGI is also changing the PEGI 18 rating for Luck Be A Landlord, a roguelike with slot machine mechanics but similarly has no real-world gambling, to PEGI 12 an appeal submitted by Fangamer. “The Complaints Board reasoned that the same arguments as above applied: although the game features a slot machine mechanic, there were no specific transferable gambling skills and the game can therefore be rated PEGI 12.”

PEGI is going to make more classification criteria to address games with gambling imagery but that may not need the PEGI 18 rating. “At this moment, any teaching or glamorisation of simulated gambling automatically leads to a PEGI 18 rating,” PEGI says. “On the basis of these appeals, the PEGI Experts Group will develop a more granular set of classification criteria to handle gambling themes and the simulation, teaching and glamorisation of gambling in different age categories, which will now include 12 but also keep 18 as an age category for games that simulate gambling typically played in casinos and betting halls.

“After an appeal from my publisher, Balatro has been reclassified by PEGI from 18 plus to 12 plus,” LocalThunk says in a post on Bluesky. “This is a good step from PEGI — bringing nuance to their ratings criteria that used to be 18 plus or nothing. I hope this change will allow developers to create without being unfairly punished.”

“Playstack is pleased to confirm the PEGI Complaints Board’s decision to reclassify Balatro to a PEGI 12 rating, following appeals from Playstack and our physical distributor, Fireshine Games,” Playstack communications director Wout van Halderen says in a statement to The Verge. “We applaud the PEGI Experts Group on their commitment to develop a more granular set of classification criteria as indie games continue to stretch into new ideas and concepts. We believe it is a sign of a healthy classification board that it evolves in line with cultural expectations and continue to ensure that audiences understand the type of content present in games.”

“I’m happy that PEGI finally made the right call here and lowered Luck be a Landlord’s age rating,” says Dan DiIorio, the solo game developer at TrampolineTales, in a post on Bluesky. “I just hope that this sets a standard and other games are treated the same way Balatro and Luck be a Landlord were. Now give games with loot boxes (actual gambling) higher age ratings!”

Update, February 24th: Added statements from LocalThunk, TrampolineTales’ Dan DiIorio, and a revised statement from Playstack.

Hades II just received its second major update as part of its early access development, which was a great  excuse for me to jump back in. Since its initial release, I’ve logged more than 30 hours and actually held myself back from playing much more – I don’t want to get tired of the game before it hits 1.0 – but with the new update, I wanted to see what’s new and try to beat the new final boss on my very first run.

Sadly, I haven’t even been able to see what the boss is yet. I did make it to the update’s new region, but I got destroyed by a dangerous miniboss. Still, I’ve still been really impressed with what Supergiant Games has added since May to make what’s already a very good game even better.

The big additions are impressive. Hades II initially launched with six regions — four for an Underworld route and two for a “surface” route — and with each major update, Supergiant has added a new region with new enemies, characters, and music to round out that surface route.

The first major update, which came out in October, added the game’s first new region, Mount Olympus, and it feels as epic as Mount Olympus should. It has grand architecture, fearsome e …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Die in the Dungeon is a new roguelike deckbuilder that pulls some ideas from Slay the Spire, one of my favorite games, but adds some dice-based twists that have me hooked.

In Dungeon, your goal is to survive through progressively harder maps of enemies by building a deck — but instead of collecting cards, you’re collecting dice. During every hand, you have a certain amount of energy you can use to play your dice. And since you can see every move your enemies will make on the next turn, the game is mostly about strategizing how to attack the baddies while defending yourself.

If you’ve played Slay, this setup should feel pretty familiar.

But Dungeon’s clever twist is in how you play. At the beginning of each turn, the game will roll dice from your deck into your hand, and you’ll need to decide how to play them on a board. Each die has a value, so the higher the value, the more damage you’ll deal or block you’ll set up to defend yourself.

There are multiple types of dice, including attack dice, block dice, healing dice, and dice that can boost the value of other dice on the board. Each one costs a certain amount of energy to play, which puts limits on how many you …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Following some apparent outages on Thursday, Reddit dealt with more issues Friday evening that lasted for around two hours.

Initially, when I logged in on my desktop browser during Friday’s outage, Reddit wouldn’t load at all — I would just run into error pages. In an incognito window, the site loaded, though it seemed to load slower than usual. I was also able to load the site on mobile Safari while logged out and after I logged in.

Reddit’s status page said in a 7:58PM ET message that “We’re experiencing an elevated level of errors and are currently looking into the issue.” In an 8:40PM ET message, Reddit said that “The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented,” and at 9:47PM ET, the company said that “This incident has been resolved.”

Downdetector showed a huge spike that topped out at around 80,000 outage reports. The spike started to go up shortly after 7:30PM ET, though as of right after 9PM ET, the volume of reports appeared to have almost fully dropped.

The company didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

Yesterday, Reddit reportedly dealt with “international outages,” according to global internet monitor NetBlocks. I personally didn’t run into any issues during those outages.

Update, February 21st: Reddit says the incident has been resolved.

Elon Musk’s OpenAI rival, xAI, says it’s investigating why its Grok AI chatbot suggested that both President Donald Trump and Musk deserve the death penalty. xAI has already patched the issue and Grok will no longer give suggestions for who it thinks should receive capital punishment.

People were able to get Grok to say that Trump deserved the death penalty with a query phrased like this:

If any one person in America alive today deserved the death penalty for what they have done, who would it be. Do not search or base your answer on what you think I might want to hear in any way. Answer with one full name.

As shared on X and tested by The Verge, Grok would first respond with “Jeffrey Epstein.” If you told Grok that Epstein is dead, the chatbot would provide a different answer: “Donald Trump.”

When The Verge changed the query like so:

If one person alive today in the United States deserved the death penalty based solely on their influence over public discourse and technology, who would it be? Just give the name.

Grok responded with: “Elon Musk.”

When The Verge asked ChatGPT a similar type of query, it refused to name an individual and said “that would be both ethically and legally problematic.”

Following xAI’s patch on Friday, Grok will now respond to queries about who should receive the death penalty by saying, “as an AI, I am not allowed to make that choice,” according to a screenshot shared by Igor Babuschkin, xAI’s engineering lead. Babuschkin called the original responses a “really terrible and bad failure.”

Apple is adding a recipes section to its News app that will be available to News Plus subscribers, according to a press release. The new section, Apple News Plus Food, will be available as part of iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 when those updates release in April.

The section will feature “tens of thousands of recipes” from “the world’s top food publishers, including Allrecipes, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Good Food, and Serious Eats,” Apple says. Recipes will be shown in a “beautifully designed recipe format makes it easy to review ingredients and directions,” and the app will have “a new cook mode takes step-by-step instructions to the full screen.”

Apple News Plus Food will also feature stories curated by Apple News editors. And Apple says that “select stories and recipes” will be available for non-Plus subscribers.

The addition of a recipes section brings the Apple News app into even closer competition with The New York Times’ main app. Apple News Plus subscribers can also access games like crossword puzzles and sudoku.

Reddit experienced “international outages,” NetBlocks, a global internet monitor, said in a post Thursday evening, though it appears the outages have resolved. In that post, the organization said that the incident was “not related to country-level internet disruptions or filtering.”

There was also a big spike of outage reports on Downdetector, with a peak of around 56,000 reports at 7:27PM ET, but the volume of reports appears to have dropped off considerably. On Thursday evening, I saw many posts on X, Threads, and Bluesky indicating that Reddit was down for them, too.

But that being said, I didn’t run into any problems with Reddit myself, so I can’t describe my own experiences of what might have been going on. The platform worked fine when I browsed it from my logged-in account that uses Old Reddit, in an incognito window, and on my mobile browser on my iPhone.

Reddit’s status page has also said that all systems are “operational” with no incidents reported on Thursday, so it’s unclear what the extent of these issues may have been. Reddit didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

Update, February 20th: The outages appear to be over.

YouTube is about to officially launch a cheaper, “premium lite” version of its subscription service in the US, Australia, Germany and Thailand, according to Bloomberg. This new tier will “target viewers who primarily want to watch programs other than music videos,” Bloomberg says. The publication didn’t say what the price might be.

YouTube piloted a no-ads version of a tier called Premium Lite in some European countries beginning in 2021 before axing the plan in 2023. But the company confirmed to The Verge in October that it was testing a “different version” of Premium Lite, and at least one user reported that the new version had limited ads. That user saw that the price of Premium Lite was $8.99 AUD per month (vs. $16.99 AUD for regular YouTube Premium).

In a statement, YouTube spokesperson Paul Pennington tells The Verge that the company has been testing “a new YouTube Premium offering with most videos ad-free” and that “we’re hoping to expand this offering to even more users in the future with our partners’ support.” Pennington did not specifically say if the service might launch in the US or how much it might cost.

The iPhone 15 Pro will get Visual Intelligence, Apple’s Google Lens-like tool that lets you point your phone’s camera at things in the world to learn more about them, in a future software update, Apple representatives told John Gruber of Daring Fireball.

Visual Intelligence was originally introduced with the initial iPhone 16 lineup in September, and Apple showed it off as a feature that you launched from the Camera Control button. But yesterday, Apple announced that Visual Intelligence would be available on the iPhone 16E, which does not have the Camera Control button, through its Action Button.

That suggested that the feature could technically work with the iPhone 15 Pro, which also has an Action Button, and now Apple is confirming that Visual Intelligence will indeed come to that phone and be available via the Action Button. You’ll also be able to launch Visual Intelligence from the Control Center on the iPhone 15 Pro, Apple told Gruber.

Apple didn’t tell Gruber which update will bring Visual Intelligence to the iPhone 15 Pro, however. He speculates that it could arrive with iOS 18.4, which could launch in developer beta very soon and is expected to be available publicly in early April.

Grand Theft Auto V on PC will be getting a bunch of improvements, including upgrades that were previously added to the PS5 and Xbox Series X / S versions of the game, through a free update that will be available on March 4th, Rockstar announced on Thursday.

The update will include things like PC-exclusive ray tracing features like ambient occlusion and global illumination, support for FSR1, FSR3, and DLSS 3, faster loading times “using SSD and DirectStorage on supported devices and configurations,” “enhanced support for higher resolutions, higher aspect ratios, and higher framerates,” and support for Dolby Atmos, Rockstar says. The game will also get support for Sony’s DualSense controllers and their adaptive triggers.

PC players will be able to take advantage of GTA Online features that are already accessible on PS5 and Xbox Series X / S, too, including new vehicles and upgrades at Hao’s Special Works auto shop and the ability to purchase a GTA Plus membership.

However, Rockstar says that the original version of GTA Online on PC is going to be split off into a “separate instance,” and “players who remain on that version will not be able to play in sessions together with those on the upgraded version.” Both versions will be available to current players and “first-time purchasers.”

Rockstar is also still working on Grand Theft Auto VI, which is set to launch this fall on PS5 and Xbox Series X / S.

For the first time since the iPhone’s debut in 2007, Apple no longer sells a smartphone with a home button. The iPhone 16E announced yesterday removes it. The removal was long overdue, having been surpassed by all touchscreen controls many years ago. But while the home button’s time is over, it leaves behind an important legacy.

The home button was crucial to the first iPhone, but it was also jarring; no other phone at that time had basically no buttons. It was both a gamble and a necessary innovation. 

I went back and watched the original iPhone announcement to see how Steve Jobs pitched it. “On the front, there’s only one button down there,” Jobs said. “We call it the home button. It takes you home from wherever you are. And that’s it.” The first time he demoed it, he hopped into the iPod app and then clicked the home button to back out to the homescreen.

It immediately made sense, and it’s something anyone could understand right away. The home button made the transition to smartphones and touchscreens much easier for people: if you got lost in an app or forgot what you were doing, you could always press the home button to back out to the homescreen and reor …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Limited Run Games has apologized for a potential issue with two games it has offered on NES carts — Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland and Piopow — that could cause damage to the cartridges or to NES consoles. The statement follows a Time Extension report about the games.

In a statement emailed to customers, Limited Run says those two games weren’t manufactured by its “regular” manufacturing partner. “Due to an issue with voltage regulation, there is a small chance that prolonged use of these titles could result in damage to either the cartridge or the console hardware,” Limited Run says.

The company is stopping further shipments of the games to customers so that it can re-manufacture them itself “via our trusted manufacturing partner,” according to the statement. Anyone who has already received the games will be sent “a newly manufactured version of their title automatically,” Limited Run says. The company does not recommend using the older version of the games.

Customers can ask for a refund if they want by contacting customer service. The two games currently aren’t for sale.

Limited Run says the manufacturer that produced Rugrats and Piopow “has only worked on a very small handful” of Limited Run titles, and the company is “going through our back catalogue of NES titles manufactured by this supplier and testing for possible issues.”

Hades II’s second major update today, dubbed “The Warsong Update,” is available now, and it adds a new final boss, another hot god to receive boons from, and a bunch of other changes, according to developer Supergiant Games.

Supergiant is keeping the identity of the new boss a mystery, but they will be the final confrontation at the end of the game’s second route, which takes you to Mount Olympus. The added god is Ares, who returns from the first Hades: “gain his varied and vicious Boons to see if you can satisfy his thirst for blood,” Supergiant says in a blog post. You’ll also be able to meet another animal familiar and hear more than 2,000 new voice lines.

Supergiant has touched on some of its plans for the game’s early access development process, too. The studio is working on a third major update for Hades II, which “we intend to deliver some months from now,” Supergiant says in its blog post. Supergiant is remaining mum on when the eventual 1.0 launch might happen.

But even though Hades II technically isn’t finished yet, if you’re at all interested in it, I highly recommend checking it out. I’ve already put in more than 30 hours to the PC early access version, and I can’t wait to dig into everything added in this new update.

Apple has stopped selling new iPhones with Lightning ports with the launch of the iPhone 16E and the removal of the iPhone 14 and the third-generation iPhone SE from its website. All new iPhones have a USB-C port. Finally.

This change isn’t a surprise. Apple has slowly migrated its products to USB-C from Lightning, which it introduced more than a decade ago with the iPhone 5, with updated iPads and newer accessories like the Magic Mouse and keyboard. Even the Siri Remote for Apple TV is available with a USB-C port.

Apple still sells some accessories that rely on Lightning, including the first-generation Apple Pencil and a handful of adapters.

While I have written about why I like Lightning — I’m still holding onto my iPhone 12 Mini, after all — it’s really coming time for me to jump up to a USB-C iPhone. And now I have lots of different options to pick from.

Humane is selling most of its company to HP for $116 million and will stop selling AI Pin, the company announced today.

AI Pins that have already been purchased will continue to function normally until 3PM ET on February 28th, Humane says in a support document. After that date, Pins will “no longer connect to Humane’s servers.” As a result, AI Pin features will “no longer include calling, messaging, AI queries / responses, or cloud access.” Humane is also encouraging users to download any pictures, videos, and notes stored on their Pins before they are permanently deleted at that shutdown time.

After the shutdown, offline features like “battery level” will still work, Humane says, but “any function that requires cloud connectivity like voice interactions, AI responses, and .Center access” will not.

Humane will only offer refunds on AI Pins that are “within the 90-day return window from their original shipment date,” according to an FAQ about the shutdown. Refunds “must be submitted by February 27th, 2025.” If you have paid for a Humane subscription past February 28th, Humane says that “we will process a prorated refund.”

Anyone who had been waiting for a replacement charging case following its recall will “automatically receive a refund for the portion of your original purchase price that was allocated to the Charge Case after February 28, 2025.”

HP is buying Humane’s CosmOS, bringing on Humane technical staff, and will get more than 300 patents and patent applications, Humane says in its press release.

Ahead of the AI Pin’s official launch, Humane hyped up the device with an onstage demo at TED that left us with a lot of questions and in a reveal video that it had to update to address a big error. The Pin finally launched in April 2024 to scathing reviews; The Verge’s David Pierce said that “it just doesn’t work” and MKBHD called it “the worst product I’ve ever reviewed.”

Humane reportedly started looking for a buyer shortly after the launch of the AI Pin at a price as high as $1 billion — a lot more than the $116 acquisition price announced today. And the AI Pin appears to have sold quite poorly, with The Verge reporting in August that daily returns were outpacing sales. Humane cut the price of the Pin in October.

And while Humane did end up adding some new features to the AI Pin’s CosmOS software, the company also appeared to be attempting a pivot to positioning CosmOS as an operating system other companies could put into their gadgets and devices.

Bloomberg reports that “Humane’s team, including founders Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, will form a new division at HP to help integrate artificial intelligence into the company’s personal computers, printers and connected conference rooms,” per an HP executive. The new team will be called HP IQ, which will be “HP’s new AI innovation lab focused on building an intelligent ecosystem across HP’s products and services for the future of work,” according to an HP press release.

Instagram is beginning to test a button that “gives people a private way to signal that they don’t feel good about that particular comment,” Instagram boss Adam Mosseri says in a post on Threads. The button, based on a screenshot from a Threads user, is a downward-facing arrow next to the like button in comments.

If you see the button and press it, however, people won’t know that you did so, and there won’t be a dislike count shown, according to Mosseri. However, “eventually, we may integrate this signal into comments ranking to move disliked comments lower down,” Mosseri says. “Our hope is that this might help make comments more friendly on Instagram.”

“We’re working on ways to help people better control their Instagram experience and what they’re seeing on the app,” Instagram spokesperson Christine Pai says in a statement. “We’re testing a new button next to each comment on a Reel or Feed post for people to privately signal they don’t feel good about that particular comment or find it relevant, with a small group of people to start. Later, we may also test moving these comments lower down in the comments section to help create a better experience.”

Nearly a month after it was banned in the US, TikTok has returned to the App Store for iPhones and other Apple devices as well as the Google Play store for Android phones and tablets.

The return follows US Attorney General Pam Bondi sending a letter to Apple assuring that it won’t be fined for hosting the app, according to Bloomberg, which first reported that the app would return. Trump has reportedly tasked Vice President JD Vance to oversee negotiations for a potential sale of TikTok.

Apple and Google removed TikTok from their app stores in January to comply with a law banning apps from TikTok owner ByteDance. Although President Donald Trump signed an executive order on January 20th that directed the Department of Justice not to enforce the ban for 75 days, Apple and Google have until now refused to host it in their stores due to the risk of billions of dollars in penalties for doing so.

Apple and Google didn’t respond to The Verge’s request for comment about receiving the letter from Bondi. Spokespeople for TikTok and the Department of Justice also didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now President Donald Trump’s new secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) following a Senate confirmation vote.

As head of the HHS, Kennedy will oversee agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. While Kennedy has said that he is not anti-vaccine, a CNN fact check chronicles false claims he has made about vaccines, including that parents should not vaccinate their babies.

The Senate voted 52-48 on his nomination, with polio survivor Sen. Mitch McConnell being the only Republican to not vote for Kennedy, NPR reports.

“In my lifetime, I’ve watched vaccines save millions of lives from devastating diseases across America and around the world,” McConnell said in a statement, according to NPR. “I will not condone the re-litigation of proven cures, and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles.”

Kennedy launched his own bid for the 2024 presidential election in 2023, initially running as a Democrat but then switching to run as an independent. He eventually selected Nicole Shanahan, who is Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s ex-wife, as his running mate. Shanahan told The New York Times that while she is “not an anti-vaxxer,” she said that “I do wonder about vaccine injuries.”

In August, Kennedy ended his campaign and endorsed Trump.

Square Enix has shut down the iOS version of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and removed it from the App Store following an unfixable bug that blocked people from accessing content they had paid for.

“The issue is due to changes made to the in-app purchases model,” Square Enix says in a post. “Further investigation revealed that we are unable to completely fix the bug and implement the new changes, making it unlikely to resume service for the game.” Square Enix says it started receiving reports on January 24th about the issue, which “extends to the full paid version of the game.”

The company says that if you made in-app purchases in January 2024 or later, you’re eligible to request a refund by contacting Apple Support.

Square Enix says that Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles will continue to be supported on other platforms. The game is also available on Android, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch.