It's almost 2025, which means it's nearly time to dive into the next installment in the Assassin's Creed series.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can now stream select games directly on their Xbox consoles, allowing players to jump straight in without waiting.

A new content patch for Black Myth: Wukong is available now for all platforms, and it sure is a big one.

GOP Governor Seeks SNAP Reform: This Should Go National

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge A bunch of Meta apps are down right now. For many staffers at The Verge, apps like Facebook and Instagram haven’t been loading or, when they do, show older posts. Threads seems to be recovering, though it sometimes is loading slowly for me. “We’re aware that a technical issue is impacting some users’ ability to access our apps,” Meta says on X. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and apologize for any inconvenience.” “We know there’s a technical issue impacting some people’s ability to access Instagram,” Instagram says on X. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and are sorry for any inconvenience.” Hi, we know there’s a technical issue impacting some people’s ability to access Instagram. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and are sorry for any inconvenience.#instagramdown— Instagram (@instagram) December 11, 2024 Downdetector is showing big and sudden spikes for Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram, indicating a lot of people have been affected by the outages. The Instagram Downdetector page, for example, shows a peak of more than 70,000 reports of issues with the platform. The Facebook peak exceeded 100,000. This big outage follows another large Meta outage from March that took down Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Meta also saw a major outage affecting Instagram and Facebook in October 2022. Update, December 11th: Added Meta and Instagram comments.

My favorite dynamic wallpaper floating in the desert. | Screenshot: Mac Virtual Display Since its release, I’ve mostly used Apple’s Vision Pro like a movie theater. The VR headset is an amazing way to watch Dune — but beyond that, it hasn’t really lived up to its potential as a general-purpose computing device. Today, that’s finally starting to change. With the update to visionOS 2.2, Apple is seriously upgrading the headset’s ability to work with a Mac. It’s probably the closest thing the Vision Pro has to a killer app. The Vision Pro has been able to mirror the screen of a Mac since day one, but I found the original Mac Virtual Display feature limiting. Text was sharp at low resolutions, but the screen was cramped. I could get more space at higher resolutions, but the text was too small and blurry to read. Yes, I can blow it up to the size of a bus to make things readable, except then, I’m craning my head around way too much to see everything. My normal three-monitor setup lets me see the most important stuff with slight movements, but that just hasn’t been possible before now. Screenshot: Mac Virtual Display options The Vision Pro now has three Mac Virtual Display options. In visionOS 2.2, the standard Mac display is now curved, and it seems sharper. It’s not Retina-sharp at the highest resolutions, but I no longer have to make it gigantic to get legible text. The default virtual display becomes one of three options — Standard, Wide, and Ultrawide — once your Mac is updated to macOS 15.2, which lets it take over foveated rendering from the Vision Pro. Those two extra modes instantly made the virtual display viable for me, giving me the space I’m accustomed to in my three-monitor life. You can crank the resolution in Ultrawide all the way up to 10240 x 2880 if you’d like, but the sweet spot for me has been the Wide display’s maximum 6720 x 2880 resolution, which lets me see everything I need to without constantly rotating my Vision Pro-laden head. It ends up feeling more like a real monitor and not some fantasy display that evokes Weird Al Yankovic’s song “Frank’s 2000” TV.” GIF: Mac Virtual Display in Ultrawide So much room for activities! This has made it much easier for me to relocate to another room in my house, or even outside if I wanted. I wouldn’t take it to a coffee shop for a number of reasons (do I leave it behind when I go to the restroom or wear the Vision Pro in there like a maniac?), but I’d absolutely bring it on a work trip. Apple has also made it so that the audio is sent through the headset instead of your computer’s speakers, as it did before. The widescreen options came in handy recently, when I strained my back in a way that made it painful to sit upright. I hate doing work on a laptop, but reclining in bed with the Vision Pro on was suddenly a real option for me. There are quirks, though. Switching between the display modes can be sluggish, and your Mac doesn’t always remember what resolution you set, so if you switch from Wide to Ultrawide and back, you might find all your windows piled on top of each other. And the Keyboard Awareness feature, which shows your keyboard even if you have one of Apple’s immersive environments fully turned on, works great with my Magic Keyboard but doesn’t reliably show the mechanical one I prefer. Still, those are minor issues. The expanded virtual display is a critical upgrade, and if it’s not in killer app territory, it’s at least right next door to it. It still doesn’t help the Vision Pro with its biggest issues, like that our bodies are all different and not everyone will find it comfortable to use for long stretches of time. And it doesn’t make Apple’s headset any less expensive. But it does help that my Vision Pro is now more than a personal movie theater. Now, it’s a gigantic, high-res curved display with perfect viewing angles, too. That makes the price feel a little closer to right.

Image: Krispy Kreme Krispy Kreme is currently dealing with a cybersecurity breach that has brought down parts of its online donut ordering service in the US. The company has been working to resolve the issue for over a week now after detecting unauthorized access to its systems on November 29th. In a filing issued to the SEC on Wednesday, Krispy Kreme says it was “notified regarding unauthorized activity on a portion of its information technology systems” and pulled in “leading cybersecurity experts” for remediation. The event took down Krispy Kreme’s consumer online ordering operations but it has not affected its commercial distribution business. However, the company says there’s “a material impact” on its business operations and that there will be significant financial implications stemming from the incident due to cybersecurity experts’ and advisers’ fees. Otherwise, Krispy Kreme says it has cybersecurity insurance and it does not expect “long-term material impact on its results of operations and financial condition.” Krispy Kreme did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the cause of the cybersecurity incident. As speculated in a report by Bleeping Computer, the timeline may suggest the company is negotiating with possible threat actors so as not to leak internal data.

After a month of beta testing, Apple is finally releasing macOS 15.2, the second major update of the macOS Sequoia cycle. With this version, Mac users get newer Apple Intelligence features, nice-to-have functions, and some bug fixes. Here's everything you need to know about it. These are the main Apple Intelligence features available with macOS 15.2: Image Playground: Users can create playful images in seconds, choosing from Animation or Illustration. This app is built right into apps like Messages and is also available in a dedicated app; ChatGPT integration: When you feel Apple Intelligence isn’t enough, you can allow ChatGPT to access Writing Tools and other features for a better response; Create Images expansion: Another Apple Intelligence feature available with macOS 15.2 beta 4 is the ability to create an image when you highlight text in the Notes app. Apple has delayed Genmoji's introduction. With it, you can create custom emojis by combining two figures; users can type a prompt like “monkey with pink hat” to make an entirely new emoji; here’s how to use it. Still, if someone on an iPhone sends a message with a Genmoji, Mac users can see it. Besides that, macOS 15.2 also brings these features to all Mac users: Photos: Favorite album appears in the Utilities collection in addition to Pined Collections and Recently Viewed and Recently Shared album history can be cleared; Safari: New background images to customize your Safari Start Page, HTTPS upgrade tries to use secure HTTPS on all websites, and simplified import and export for history, bookmarks, and passwords are now available; Share Item Location in Find My helps you locate and recover misplaced items by easily and securely sharing the location of an Airtag or Find My network accessory with trusted third parties, such as airlines Natural language search in Apple Music and Apple TV app lets you describe what you’re looking for using any combination of categories like genres, moods, actors, decades, and more Favorite Categories in Podcasts allows you to choose your favorite categories and get relevant show recommendations that you can easily access in your Library Personalized Search page in Podcasts highlights the most relevant categories and editorially curated collections tailored to you Sudoku for News+ Puzzles provided in three difficulty levels and available for News+ subscribers Presenter preview lets you choose what to share — an app or your whole screen — before you share it when connecting to an external display or using AirPlay Pre-market price quotes in Stocks let you track NASDAQ and NYSE tickers prior to market open Weather in the menu bar allows you to get current weather conditions from the menu bar on your Mac and click through to quickly access detailed forecasts Below, you can learn more about macOS Sequoia. Don't Miss: macOS Sequoia 15: Features, Apple Intelligence, download, beta, Mac compatibility The post macOS Sequoia 15.2 now available with 13 new features appeared first on BGR. Today's Top Deals Cyber Week deals: $180 iPhone SE 3, $199 Bose QC headphones, $29 Roku Stick 4K, $279 Google Nest WiFi Pro, more ECOVACS has the biggest robot vacuum sale of Black Friday and Cyber Monday Cyber Week deals: $139 AirPods 4 with ANC, $4 smart plugs, $40 Ninja blender, last-chance PS5 deals, more Today’s deals: $769 M2 MacBook Air, $198 Sony XM4 headphones, $24 AirTag, $600 off Narwal Freo X Ultra, more

Apple has finally released tvOS 18.2, the latest tvOS 18 update for Apple TV users. Cupertino adds some long-awaited features with this version, first announced in June during the WWDC 2024 keynote. One of the biggest changes available with tvOS 18.2 is that it now supports the new 21:9 aspect ratio, which is perfect for Apple TVs connected to projectors. The company has also added a few other options, such as 2.37:1, 2.39:1, 2.40:1, DCI 4K, and 32:9. They are available under Apple TV’s Audio and Video settings. Besides that, Apple finally added the Snoopy screensavers to tvOS. References about this feature coming with tvOS 18.2 were already spotted by MacRumors a few weeks ago. According to the publication, Apple is working on four categories of screen savers, including Snoopy, TV and Movies, Music, and Soundscapes. While MacRumors got an early look at some of those screensavers, Apple said we'd see the Snoopy and TV and Movies screensavers “later this year.” The Music and Soundscapes options are new and will likely be added alongside the previously announced options eventually. However, it seems the “TV and Movies” screensavers were also delayed. Another delayed feature was the robot vacuum cleaner integration with the Home app. Apple previously said it would be available "later this year" but then updated its iOS 18 features page to indicate that it has been delayed until early next year. Once it's available, users will be able to control select robot vacuum cleaners through the Home app, making this software a better home hub. Alongside tvOS 18.2, Apple has also released iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, macOS Sequoia 15.2, watchOS 11.2, and visionOS 2.2. Below, you can learn more about tvOS 18 features, including the possibility of Apple Intelligence coming to this platform eventually. Don't Miss: tvOS 18: Release date, features, download, Apple TV compatibility, more The post tvOS 18.2 now available with these delayed features appeared first on BGR. Today's Top Deals Best deals: Tech, laptops, TVs, and more sales Best Black Friday deals 2024: Ultimate roundup Cyber Week deals: $139 AirPods 4 with ANC, $4 smart plugs, $40 Ninja blender, last-chance PS5 deals, more Cyber Week deals: $329 Apple Watch S10, $50 off Microsoft Office 2024, $374 PS5 Slim, Vitamix blenders, more

Apple just released visionOS 2.2. This update brings a long-awaited feature: wider Mac Virtual Display options. Mac Virtual Display is one of the OG features of Apple Vision Pro. However, with new wide and ultrawide modes, the spatial computer offers a more immersive experience for professionals to work in a spatial environment. Here’s what this feature is all about: Using Mac Virtual Display is like having an expandable, ultrawide screen that wraps around you. It’s the equivalent of having two 4K displays sitting side by side — everything looks astoundingly sharp and incredibly detailed. Now, with an ultrawide view, Apple says it feels like you have two physical 4K displays sitting side by side on a desk, except you don’t have something limiting the two displays. This Apple Vision Pro feature is perfect for anyone multitasking on a Mac, and it feels better than having several windows floating around. With this feature, you can open several apps at once and visualize them before you with Vision Pro’s incredible displays. Not only will this boost productivity, but it will also make this spatial computer a more compelling upgrade than two Studio Displays, as you can use it for more than just mirroring your Mac once you finish working. While rumors about a new Vision Pro are contradictory, the latest reports expect Apple to update this product next year with a more capable processor, most likely the M5. However, a revamped interaction is still a few years away. Alongside visionOS 2.2, Apple released iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, macOS Sequoia 15.2, watchOS 11.2, and tvOS 18.2. Below, you can learn more about visionOS and other Vision Pro features already available to its users. Don't Miss: visionOS: Features, 2.0, release date, Apple Vision Pro, more The post visionOS 2.2 now available with a game-changer working feature appeared first on BGR. Today's Top Deals Best Echo Dot deals for December 2024 Cyber Week deals: $139 AirPods 4 with ANC, $4 smart plugs, $40 Ninja blender, last-chance PS5 deals, more Black Friday blowout: Massive Apple sale, LG OLED TVs, KitchenAid mixers, Instant Pots, laptops, more Best Black Friday deals 2024: Ultimate roundup