Thursday’s top tech news: leaving, on an @ElonJet plane – The Verge

Google is beta testing digital state ID cards in its Android Wallet app

2022-12-15T19:42:05-05:00

Maryland ID in Google Wallet can be tapped at participating airports. | Image: Google

Maryland was one of the first states to make state IDs available on Apple's Wallet app for iPhones, and now Google is beta testing support for the "Digital Driver's License" in the Wallet app on Android phones. The Apple Wallet integration can already be used to get through TSA at airports like the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport that allow the use of digital state IDs, which should be similar on Android.

According to Google's updated support page: users running Android 8.0 (or later) who are in the Google Play Services beta program (specifically, version 48.22) are eligible. After enabling Bluetooth and Nearby …

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A plasma physicist explains what’s next after this week’s nuclear fusion breakthrough

2022-12-15T13:42:32-05:00

Scientists, engineers and administrators from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories following the announcement of a breakthrough in fusion research on December 13th, 2022, in Washington, DC. | Photo by Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Tammy Ma was about to board a plane at the San Francisco International Airport when she got the call of a lifetime. She's a plasma physicist at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world's largest and most energetic laser. An experiment at the facility had just accomplished a breakthrough in nuclear fusion that scientists have been trying to achieve for decades.

"I burst into tears, and I was jumping up and down in the waiting area," Ma told reporters at a technical briefing on the achievement in Washington, DC, this week.

NIF shot 192 laser beams at a tiny target filled with fuel and achieved "fusion ignition" in a controlled setting …

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Death Stranding is getting a film adaptation

2022-12-15T13:33:48-05:00

Death Stranding | Image: Kojima Productions

The Death Stranding cinematic universe is getting a little bigger. Not long after a sequel to the 2019 video game was announced, now comes news that a film is also in the works.

The project will be a joint collaboration between developer Kojima Productions and Hammerstone Studios, led by Alex Lebovici, who served as a producer on the horror film Barbarian. According to a press release, the plot for the film is being kept quiet for now, but it will "introduce new elements and characters within the Death Stranding universe."

The news shouldn't be too surprising. Last year, Kojima Productions launched a film and TV division for just this sort …

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Apple is expanding Mythic Quest with a new spinoff series

2022-12-15T13:25:23-05:00

Ashly Burch, who stars in Mythic Quest, is part of the team heading up the new series. | Image: Apple

Apple is building on the success of its Apple TV Plus comedy about game development, Mythic Quest, with a new spinoff series titled Mere Mortals. The eight-episode series will be more like the excellent episodes in the main show that focus on a time and place outside of the primary settings and characters, Variety reports. "Mere Mortals will explore the lives of employees, players and fans who are impacted by the game," according to Apple in a press release.

Ashly Burch, who plays Rachel in Mythic Quest, is part of the team writing Mere Mortals alongside John Howell Harris and Katie McElhenney. Megan Ganz, Rob McElhenney (Ian on Mythic Ques …

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The Echo Show 15 with Fire TV: a major upgrade with a major flaw

2022-12-15T13:15:46-05:00

Fire TV comes to the Echo Show 15, but you need to use a remote.

The Echo Show 15 now comes with the Fire TV interface, thanks to a software update that started rolling out last week. Amazon's largest smart display already offered a few streaming apps, but the update brings more streaming services, more live TV options, and a native YouTube app on an Echo device for the first time since 2017. It makes the Echo Show 15 a better television but a slightly worse smart display.

If your main beef with the Show 15 was the limited video options, this is a great update. But it does remove some touch functionality from the Show 15 and makes it more reliant on either voice control through Alexa, a new physical remo …

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Some Peacock originals are coming to JetBlue’s in-flight entertainment system

2022-12-15T13:15:36-05:00

Some new content for the in-seat screens. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Peacock original show Bel-Air doesn't actually have anything to do with flying, but you may be able to watch it next time you're in the air. JetBlue has announced that it's partnered with NBC's streaming service to bring some of its content to the seatback screens on its planes - including the Fresh Prince spinoff, Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin, and Rian Johnson's comedy caper show Poker Face.

You'll also be able to stream anything from Peacock's catalog using your own device and the in-flight Wi-Fi, according to the airline's Thursday press release, though you'll need an active Peacock subscription to do so, according to JetBlue spok …

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Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 launches on PS5 in fall 2023

2022-12-15T12:36:24-05:00

The Spideys are back in the fall of next year. | Image: Sony

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 from PlayStation's Insomniac Games will officially be launching on PS5 in fall 2023, Sony announced on Thursday. While we don't have any more specific timing than that launch window, it means that there will be one more major game for next year that you might want to add to your list of things to look forward to.

Sony also shared a brief and vague synopsis. "Following the events of Marvel's Spider-Man and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the Spider-duo of Peter Parker and Miles Morales are back in the next blockbuster action chapter of the Marvel's Spider-Man series," Sony's De'Angelo Epps wrote. Sony debuted a brie …

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Apple’s planned classical music app is still MIA as 2022 winds down

2022-12-15T12:35:00-05:00

When Apple acquired classical music streaming service Primephonic back in 2021, the company revealed plans to launch a standalone app with many of Primephonic's best features by the end of this year. But we're now in mid-December. iOS 16.2 was just released without any sign of the app - believed to be called Apple Classical - and it's not present in the latest iOS 16.3 betas, either.

With many Apple employees nearing holiday vacation, it seems increasingly unlikely that Apple Classical will be a year-end surprise.

In its original press release from August of last year, Apple said Apple Music Classical would combine "Primephonic's classical …

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Corsair’s Xeneon OLED flexes on them other gaming monitors

2022-12-15T12:00:00-05:00

When it’s flat, it’s impossible to tell that the Xeneon Flex is hiding a clever bending mechanism behind it. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

You're either on team flat or team curved when it comes to how you prefer your gaming monitors to look. Corsair's new $1,999 Xeneon Flex, a new 45-inch OLED option that's shipping early next year, doesn't make you pick sides. It can morph between the two modes - sadly, not by pressing a button - but by primitively squeezing the screen together with its two handles. It requires a surprising amount of force to pull it into a curve and to push it back into a flat panel, letting out faint clicks when each side has reached its destination.

After testing a non-final version of the Xeneon Flex for several days, my fear of breaking it has nearly s …

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Amazon is publishing the next Tomb Raider game

2022-12-15T11:30:00-05:00

Rise of the Tomb Raider | Image: Square Enix

Amazon's latest foray into video game publishing will star Lara Croft. The company announced a new deal with developer Crystal Dynamics, which will see it publish the next entry in the long-running Tomb Raider series. Crystal Dynamics will handle development, with Amazon "providing full support and publishing the game globally."

The studio revealed it was working on a new Tomb Raider earlier this year as part of a showcase for Epic's Unreal Engine game-making tools. Very few details are available at the moment, but it's described as "a single-player, narrative-driven adventure that continues Lara Croft's story in the Tomb Raider series." A …

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