Monday’s top tech news: (Twitter) Blue Monday

On Tuesday, December 13th, scientists with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that they’d achieved “fusion ignition.” The Verge has an updated post on the news here.

A “scientific breakthrough” in the development of fusion energy is expected tomorrow from the Biden administration. For more than half a century, people have poured billions of dollars into nuclear fusion research, hoping to create a source of abundant, clean energy.

Christmas has come a little early for the smart home: the first Matter-compatible devices are finally here. Starting today, December 12th, Eve Systems is beginning the roll-out of a firmware update to its Thread-enabled Eve Energy smart plug, Eve Door & Window contact sensor, and Eve Motion motion sensor to upgrade them to Matter. 

Matter is a new smart home standard that will allow devices such as smart plugs, light bulbs, and door locks to work with any platform you choose. Up until now, Eve’s devices have only been compatible with Apple Home. With this update, they’ll work with the Samsung SmartThings ecosystem, as well as Google Home and Amazon Alexa (once those platforms roll out their Matter updates).

Just over one month after the crypto exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy, Ryan Pinder, the Attorney General of the Bahamas, announced the arrest of its founder and former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF).

According to a notice, the arrest came after the US government informed the Bahamas of criminal charges filed against Bankman-Fried and said it’s likely to request his extradition from the nation where he was residing, and which had served as a base of operations for FTX. The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, confirmed the arrest, saying in a statement that “We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time.”

Just over a month after HBO canceled its once-hit original show Westworld, it’s planning on yanking the back catalog from its streaming service, according to Variety, Deadline, IndieWire, and The Wrap.

It’s currently not clear when Westworld will be removed from Warner Bros. Discovery’s flagship streaming service, but it likely won’t be alone. The reports indicate that HBO’s Love Life and The Nevers will also have to find new homes.

Elon Musk’s $8-per-month Twitter Blue subscription with verification is officially available, and you’ll need a verified phone number to sign up.

In a thread on Twitter, the platform notes that Blue will cost $11 per month if you sign up on iOS and will grant you access to the ability to edit tweets, upload 1080p videos, reader mode, and, of course, the coveted blue checkmark. If you paid for the old $4.99 / $2.99 Blue package, then you’ll need to subscribe again to keep its benefits, while anyone who signed up on Apple at the old $7.99 per month price will be automatically renewed at $11 per month unless they cancel.

Dril, the account behind a frankly unbelievable number of viral tweets, is packaging his magnificent archive into a book and selling it for those of us who want to show off just how Online we are. According to Amazon, the Dril Archives paperback is around 240 pages and contains “10,000 of His finest Posts.”

Like Taylor Swift, Dril is selling several “Flavors” of the archive — the “refined” edition lays out his posts in alphabetical order, “beloved” ranks them by the number of favorites they got, “eternal” sorts them in chronological order, and “chaotic,” obviously, is completely random. While many of us here at The Verge are big fans of the reverse chronological timeline (and it would be very interesting to see the evolution of the Dril style in print), my heart is pushing me toward the “beloved” version because... I mean, the man tweets a LOT, and if I’m being honest, having the greatest hits all in one half of the book sounds much easier to read.

The hit comedy podcast How Did This Get Made? is sticking with Earwolf. Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, and Jason Mantzoukas, who host the show about terrible movies, have signed a multiyear deal to remain with the SiriusXM-owned podcast studio. SiriusXM spokesperson Ron Gaskill said the deal will keep most of the show’s archive behind Stitcher Premium’s paywall.

The critically beloved show, which dives into the world of terrible / amazing movies like Cats and Moonfall, has been under the Earwolf umbrella since it launched in 2010. “Twelve years ago, Earwolf believed in us before anyone even knew what a podcast was, and so we are thrilled to continue our relationship with them,” the hosts said in a joint statement. The deal also includes exclusive distribution and ad sales for film podcast Unspooled, which is co-hosted by Scheer and film critic Amy Nicholson.

Yes, it was too expensive. Yes, it looked dated and clunky. Yes, there were weird things going on with the hinge. But the world needed it. Please, Microsoft, bring back the Surface Book.

I’ve been using a Surface Book 2 as my primary personal laptop since 2018. When I was shopping for a computer back then, I had a particular constellation of needs that I was finding it very difficult to fill. I wanted a convertible device to watch TV and read piano music. (You laugh, but balancing a full-sized laptop atop an electric piano is a task I would not advise anyone here to attempt. Ask me how I know.) I wanted something that wasn’t too heavy because I am whatever the opposite of buff is. I also wanted to play games — not daily, but every so often — and I didn’t want them to suck. And I would not consider anything with a 16:9 aspect ratio.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has always been a beautiful game. One of my favorite things to do when I played for the first time in 2015 was just wander around on horseback soaking in the incredible atmosphere, from the crumbling ancient ruins to the bustling towns. Seven years later and I found myself awed once again while playing it on the PlayStation 5.

A free next-gen patch for The Witcher 3 launches on December 14th, giving the aging open-world a boost if you’re playing on a PS5, Xbox Series X/S, or high-end PC. I’ve managed to play through the first few hours of the new version — for those who’ve already played, I’m right in the thick of the haunting “Bloody Baron” quest — and while it’s still fundamentally the same game, some of the improvements make a noticeable difference.

MrBeast, who recently became the most-subscribed-to creator on YouTube, is the next person to join Fortnite’s Icon Series. The creator made a brief appearance in a trailer for Fortnite’s newest season, and Epic Games is now confirming that not only will MrBeast be getting his own Fortnite skins, but also a MrBeast-themed in-game competition with a $1 million prize.

If you’ve watched any of MrBeast’s outrageous challenges on his YouTube channel (recent examples: “Last To Take Hand Off Jet, Keeps It!” or “Survive 100 Days In Circle, Win $500,000”), then you might not be surprised that the in-game event is called an “extreme survival challenge.” Players will have to try and get the highest score they can on a custom-built island and the player with the best five high scores will earn $1 million. The top 100,000 players will get a special in-game umbrella.

If you’ve been on Twitter (or Discord or plenty of other places) this month and your feed is anything like mine, it’s currently full of weird machine-generated text and art. The launch of ChatGPT, Lensa, and other tools has made a once difficult-to-access tool ubiquitous, and the result is an explosion of people posting their interactions with artificial intelligence.

I love these tools, and I’ve been playing with them for a while now — at least since the release of AI Dungeon 2 in 2019. But over the years, I’ve realized there’s a huge gap between the way I experience work I generate and work created by someone else. The closest way I can describe it is this: seeing somebody else’s AI art is like hearing the plot of someone else’s dream. Occasionally it’s fascinating. Often it’s dull. And for me, it’s almost never as much fun as experiencing the process.

Meta’s shuttering its Connectivity arm almost 10 years after launching the initiative, according to a report from Light Reading. The company confirmed to both Light Reading and Fierce Wireless that it will instead split the division across its Infrastructure and Central Products teams.

Meta Connectivity (formerly Facebook Connectivity) launched in 2013 with the goal of getting more people online so they could use the company’s social networks. Through the initiative, the company developed and then shut down a project that involved autonomous, high-flying drones beaming the internet to underserved parts of the world. It also worked on creating a Starlink-like internet system using low Earth orbit satellites, but the staff developing it were picked up by Amazon last year.

Elon Musk took a brief break from running multiple companies mired in drama to create a little more drama by appearing onstage with Dave Chappelle during his show Sunday night at the Chase Center in San Francisco.

During Chappelle’s set, the controversial comedian introduced the controversial billionaire, who came onstage to confused applause and booing. Musk proceeded to bomb harder than the time he appeared on SNL.

I was impressed with AMD’s answer to Nvidia’s RTX 3080 two years ago, but can team red manage to beat Nvidia’s RTX 4080 two years later? Well, the answer is yes, absolutely yes, and for $200 less.

The Radeon RX 7900 XT ($899) and XTX ($999) cards are designed to deliver next-gen gaming performance at under $1,000, and at the top end (XTX), AMD manages to comfortably beat Nvidia’s latest RTX 4080 ($1,199) card in a variety of games at 4K.

Correction, January 18th: While Sony originally recommended an unprecedented 32GB of RAM to play Returnal, it walked that back today. Now, you should be fine with 16GB of RAM, unless you play at 4K or with ray tracing.

Original story follows:

NASA’s Orion spacecraft has returned to Earth. The uncrewed capsule safely splashed down into the Pacific Ocean off of Mexico’s Baja California around 12:40PM ET on Sunday, marking the end of the landmark Artemis I mission.

The capsule reached speeds of about 24,500mph as it returned to Earth, while its heat shield sustained scorching temperatures of around 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Orion traveled a total of 1.4 million miles through space over the span of 25.5 days.