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The new game will be released one day before Amazon’s big new show. | Image: Daedalic Entertainment The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, the upcoming video game starring Gollum that was first revealed in 2019, will finally be released on September 1st, developer Daedalic Entertainment announced Tuesday. The game will be available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X / S, with a Switch version in the works for “later this year,” according to a press release.I was able to see a short preview of the game in a Zoom call last week. If you’re familiar with Gollum’s shadowy nature from the books and movies, you won’t be surprised to hear that you’ll be doing a lot of sneaking around to get to where you need to go. But the video featured quite a bit of environmental traversal as well — Gollum spent a lot of time scaling walls and making... Continue reading…

illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’ve finally given up on the world’s most popular social media network, it’s not too complicated to remove yourself from the service. But before you delete all of those pictures, posts, and likes, you should download your personal information from Facebook.Your Facebook archives contain just about all of the pertinent information related to your account, including your photos, active sessions, chat history, IP addresses, facial recognition data, and which ads you clicked, just to name a few. That’s a ton of personal information that you should probably maintain access to.To download your archive using the web:

The standard Nova Pro is a compelling wired option, too Continue reading…

You can’t summarize the webcomic Mr. Boop better than its first panel, which emerged out of what felt like the raging id of the internet on February 28, 2020. “My wife Betty Boop is really hot,” says Alec, the strip’s spectacled, grinning protagonist, a cartoon avatar for actual writer and artist Alec Robbins.His wife, you see, is Betty Boop. She’s really hot.At first blush, Mr. Boop might not seem all that different from the webcomics that largely defined the genre’s boom a decade or so ago: imperfectly drawn panels, constant flirtation with copyright violation, and a horny, endlessly self-indulgent hero based directly on the author.But Robbins isn’t just channeling the tropes of a largely bygone era of fanfiction; he’s weaponizing... Continue reading…

Remember, the x360s are the flippy ones. | Image: HP HP’s newest budget laptop, the Pavilion x360 14, will be available this summer for a starting price of $599, the company has announced. The clamshell, higher-end Pavilion Plus 14 — HP’s thinnest ever Pavilion model at 0.65 inches — is another addition to the line, available now for a starting price of $799.The new x360 14 also has optional 5G support via Intel’s 5G Solution 5000. While we don’t know exactly how much the 5G-enabled model will cost, the $599 base price makes it likely that this will be one of the most affordable ways to get 5G on a laptop this year (many other 5G-enabled models cost well over $1,000).The Pavilion x360 14 will also be HP’s first consumer laptop to include a manual camera shutter — another feature... Continue reading…

Sample images from Google’s new text-to-image AI. | Image: Google (collage by The Verge) Imagen what else this thing can do Continue reading…

Microsoft’s Build social media profile template has a cute cat as a placeholder. You can download it here (warning: 75MB zip file) along with themed wallpapers and Teams backgrounds. | Screenshot: Umar Shakir / The Verge Microsoft’s yearly developer conference is kicking off Tuesday, May 24th and running through Thursday, May 26th. The conference, historically attended by IT professionals, engineers, and students, moved online in 2020 due to the pandemic and also became an entirely free event.Microsoft is continuing this trend in 2022 and keeping its sessions open to anyone interested in learning the latest on what the company is cooking up. So if you’re into checking out the latest Windows and Edge browser updates, understanding the difference between a product and a platform, and learning from other people that work heavily in Microsoft land, check out the links below!How to watch MS Build 2022 Keynote and SessionsIf you want to attend any sessions,... Continue reading…

Asus’ ROG Swift 500Hz monitor | Image: Asus Nvidia and Asus are announcing the world’s first 500Hz G-Sync display at Computex 2022 today. While we saw a prototype 500Hz gaming monitor earlier this year, Asus is promising a shipping 24-inch 500Hz TN panel that’s designed for esports titles running at 1080p. Asus has not yet announced pricing or a release date for its new ROG Swift 500Hz monitor, though.The announcement comes just over two years since Nvidia and Asus teamed up to introduce 360Hz gaming monitors for esports at CES 2020. PC gamers have typically purchased 144Hz gaming monitors, and even 240Hz panels still aren’t particularly common. So 500Hz might sound like overkill, but Nvidia claims it will make a difference for competitive gamers who want the best of the best.N... Continue reading…

Photo by Annette Riedl/picture alliance via Getty Images Grocery app Gorillas, which promises to deliver goods in as quickly as 10 minutes, is laying off half of its office staff. In a press release, the company said it was letting go of roughly 300 employees from a “global office workforce” of 600. (This workforce also includes roughly 14,400 staff working in warehouse and as delivery drivers.)The company is also planning to tighten its focus on five markets that account for 90 percent of its revenue: the UK, US, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. The company also operates in four other European markets — Spain, Denmark, Italy, and Belgium — where it says it is “looking at all possible strategic options for the Gorillas brand.” That might mean pulling out of these markets, but Gorillas... Continue reading…

Leaked renders of Motorola’s rumored smartphone. | Image: WinFuture Motorola could have not one, but two very interesting smartphones launching in China next month. The company has teased the first in a Weibo post, which promises to be one of the first phones in the world with a 200-megapixel camera. It could be joined by a third-generation foldable Razr, too. Motorola’s general manager Shen Jin recently posted a cryptic teaser for the new foldable on Weibo, which appeared to show a silhouette of a device unfolding.The smartphone with the 200-megapixel camera has reportedly been developed under the codename “Frontier,” and has leaked a couple of times in recent months. In January, WinFuture posted several renders of the device along with a more-or-less complete set of specs. The phone’s all-important... Continue reading…

See how a location has changed over time. | Image: Google Google Maps’ Street View feature is getting a couple of upgrades to celebrate the service’s 15th anniversary, the search giant announced today. The first is a new feature coming to its iOS and Android apps that’ll display historical Street View imagery on your phone. The second is a new, more portable camera that Google hopes will make it easier for it to capture Street View imagery in the future.Since 2014, it’s been possible to use Street View to see how a place has changed over the years via the desktop version of Google Maps. But now, the service’s iOS and Android apps will have the same ability. You access it by tapping anywhere on the screen while in Street View mode, and then select “see more dates” to access a location’s... Continue reading…

A rack full of these could hold so much liquid (and computing power). | Image: Nvidia Nvidia has announced its new plan for reducing the energy use of data centers crunching massive amounts of data or training AI models: liquid-cooled graphics cards. The company announced at Computex that it’s introducing a liquid-cooled version of its A100 compute card, and says that it consumes 30 percent less power than the air-cooled version. Nvidia’s also pledging that this isn’t just a one-off, it’s already got more liquid-cooled server cards on its roadmap, and hints at bringing the tech to other applications like in-car systems that need to keep cool in enclosed spaces. Of course, Tesla’s recent recall for overheating chips shows how tricky that can be, even with liquid cooling.According to Nvidia, reducing the energy needed to... Continue reading…

Thor: Love and Thunder | Image: Marvel The first full trailer for Thor: Love and Thunder has arrived, and somehow found a new angle on the journey of Chris Hemsworth’s titular hero. This time around we’re also getting a solid look at Christian Bale as Gorr the God Butcher, a galactic killer “who seeks the extinction of the gods.”There are also more shots of Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), playing up some interactions she’ll have with Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who, as we saw in the teaser trailer, is wielding Mjolnir, and even a quick flash of some Guardians of the Galaxy friends. Image: Marvel Christian Bale as Gorr the God Butcher. So, who is holding the title of Mighty Thor, and what has Jane been doing for the last eight years, seven months,... Continue reading…

Image: Starlink SpaceX’s Starlink is still scaling up its constellation of internet satellites, and the service is only intended for use at the specific location where the user is registered. But as we noted earlier this month, for an additional $25 per month, it will let users take their dish somewhere else every now and then with the service’s new “portability” feature.For that package with portability, you still need to have at-home service first, and it warns users they’ll be de-prioritized while away from home. But if you’re a vanlifer or RV enthusiast who is willing to buy a dish without having a “home” address with prioritized service, now Starlink for RVs will let you sign up and grab a dish for access right now. There’s no waiting required,... Continue reading…

Klarna lost about one-third of its valuation since last year. | Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images Klarna, the Swedish “buy now, pay later” service (BNPL), announced that it’s laying off 10 percent of its global workforce in a prerecorded video message, according to reports from Protocol and TechCrunch. The company currently has about 7,000 employees, and a 10 percent cutback puts the number of affected workers somewhere around 700.BNPL services like Klarna, Affirm, and Afterpay allows users to purchase a product for nothing or a small fraction of its full price. Customers can then make incremental payments over a set period of time but will face a typically interest-free fee for any late payments. BNPL businesses soared at the height of the pandemic when many people were strapped for cash and had nothing else better to do than shop... Continue reading…

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell sent a company-wide email last week responding to a report of allegations of sexual assault against CEO Elon Musk, claiming she doesn’t believe the allegations to be true. The email, first reported by CNBC and reviewed by The Verge, also reiterated that SpaceX has a “ZERO tolerance” policy for harassment.“Personally, I believe the allegations to be false; not because I work for Elon, but because I have worked closely with him for 20 years and never seen nor heard anything resembling these allegations,” Shotwell wrote in the email. “Anyone who knows Elon like I do, knows he would never conduct or condone this alleged inappropriate behavior.”Last week, Business Insider published a report alleging that... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok has announced a program that lets viewers pay to subscribe to specific live streamers they want to support. Dubbed Live Subscription, it gives fans access to perks like a subscriber-only chat, creator-specific emotes, and badges that differentiate them from non-subscribers (via TechCrunch). It’s launching in beta on May 26th, according to an announcement video posted on the TikTok Live Creator page.That page has also posted videos from several creators announcing that they’re part of the program and announcing the potential benefits to their followers. While custom stickers for livestream chats and the opportunity to take part in subscriber-only chats are likely the biggest draw for viewers, a few creators have noted that they’re... Continue reading…

Google TV profiles are now available to all users — including kids | Image: Google TV After being delayed for months, Google is finally rolling out its personalized profiles for Google TV “over the next few weeks.”Announced in October, Google TV profiles will make it simpler for multi-watcher households to navigate content by giving people access to individualized recommendations, watchlists, and Google Assistant responses.Google has been expanding Google TV to make it less of a single-storefront experience for household members who prefer different content. Just last year, Google TV launched kids profiles, where parents can pick which apps are available and set watch time limits. Earlier this month, the team began rolling out an ambient mode screensaver with personalized cards that will show things like weather,... Continue reading…

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel told employees Monday that the company would significantly slow hiring for the rest of the year after warning investors that its revenue wouldn’t grow as fast as expected.“Like many companies, we continue to face rising inflation and interest rates, supply chain shortages and labor disruptions, platform policy changes, the impact of the war in Ukraine, and more,” Spiegel wrote in a memo to employees obtained by The Verge. He went on to say that Snap expects to report revenue below the low-end of the guidance it gave investors for the current quarter. That news was also disclosed in a filing with the SEC that sent Snap’s stock price cratering to a low it hasn’t seen since mid-2020.Like its larger competitor in... Continue reading…

Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images A US appeals court says Florida’s ban on much social media moderation likely violates the First Amendment, setting up a legal showdown over social networks’ speech rights. Today, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld most of an earlier court order blocking Florida’s SB 7072 while a lawsuit proceeds. It directly contradicts a recent ruling over Texas’ similar moderation ban, setting up a split that the Supreme Court could step in to resolve.The Eleventh Circuit ruling focuses on whether Florida’s law — which heavily restricts suspensions, fact-checking, and content removal involving political candidates and media enterprises — plausibly violates the First Amendment. Florida’s defense of the law characterizes web platforms as... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The University of Oregon is doing a study on the effect phones have on mental health, using Google’s Health Studies app. The goal of the study is to see how people are actually using their phones and how that affects their well-being. A post on the company blog written by one of the lead researchers on the project says that the aim of the research will ultimately be able to help companies design better products and even shape policy and education in the future.According to the blog post, researchers are using the app because it can help them get a better picture of how people actually use their phones, as opposed to other studies when people are asked to track and report their own usage of apps — a method that can be less accurate than... Continue reading…

The LG C1 pairs 4K resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate with FreeSync and G-Sync for an amazing gaming experience. | Image: LG Our inaugural deals post this week is full of amazing deals, many of which are currently matching their best prices to date. Both the 65-inch and 77-inch models of LG’s C1 OLED are on sale for their lowest prices ever at Amazon, for instance, with the 65-inch panel going for $1,596.99 instead of $2,499.99. Other sizes are available for a discount as well, but you’ll want to direct your attention to either the 65- or 77-inch models for the best value.While we’ve never reviewed the C1, several staff members own the 2021 model and can’t seem to shut up about it — not just because it offers excellent visual fidelity but also because of its list of excellent, gamer-centric features. In addition to 4K resolution and support for Dolby Vision —... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images The Game Workers Alliance, the union of quality assurance workers at Activision subsidiary studio Raven Software, has won their union vote. The votes were tallied today and the union passed with 19 out of 22 votes with two challenged ballots. The election makes the Game Workers Alliance (GWA) the first union for Activision Blizzard and only the second formal union in US video game industry.

AT&T subscribers can try a cloud-streamed version of Control Ultimate Edition. | Image: AT&T AT&T customers can now play a cloud-streamed version of Control Ultimate Edition in their browser that uses the white-label version of Google’s Stadia technology. Customers on an AT&T postpaid plan can check out the game by visiting this link on a computer or mobile device and entering their phone number and billing zip code to jump in.Control is the second experience AT&T offers using Stadia’s tech, which Google offers under the brand Immersive Stream for Games. The first was a demo of Batman: Arkham Knight, which launched for AT&T subscribers last year, though that works only on a computer. But AT&T’s Control offering isn’t a demo — it’s the full game, the company confirmed to The Verge. And since it’s the Ultimate Edition, that means... Continue reading…

Speak to Chat works with many of Sony’s high-end headphones and earbuds. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Sony’s best headphones and earbuds come with a wide mix of software features. Aside from helpful tricks like adaptive sound control and EQ customization, a more recent addition has been Speak to Chat. It first debuted with the W-1000XM4 in 2020 and has since come to newer Sony products as well.Since it’s turned off by default, there’s a good chance you haven’t yet tried Speak to Chat. But it’s a very convenient feature that can help you communicate with others without having to fully disconnect from your music.What is Speak to Chat?Speak to Chat is a software feature that’s designed to help you talk to people and have brief interactions without worrying about finding and pressing buttons to activate ambient / transparency sound mode.... Continue reading…

Need to fix your Valve Steam Deck handheld gaming PC? iFixit is selling official parts for practically every piece of the console — and after accidentally putting those components up for sale on Friday, it’s now pushed most of the collection (and a large collection of repair guides) live for everyone.Unfortunately, it looks like you won’t be able to buy some of the most desirable items if you click right now. The motherboard and daughterboards are MIA (if you were hoping to build a FrankenDeck), the fan and screens are out of stock (sorry, upgraders), there aren’t any thumbsticks left, and iFixit only has a literal armful of the Steam Deck’s plastic case halves last we checked.iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens tells The Verge says that won’t be... Continue reading…

Photo by Kimberly White/Bloomberg via Getty Images Heatsinks are the default when it comes to keeping components cool on your PC and practically every other electronic device, but researchers may have found a way to chill your components without the use of these slotted hunks of metal. A report from Science Daily (via Tom’s Hardware) highlights a new, sleeker approach to cooling that involves coating the entirety of the device with poly and copper.If you aren’t familiar with heatsinks, they’re typically made of copper or aluminum, two metals that serve as thermal conductors. They often come with several metal fins that pull and spread heat away from the essential components on your device to help prevent them from overheating. The heat then gets pushed out of the system with a nearby... Continue reading…

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine has sued Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal. The suit alleges that Zuckerberg was “directly responsible” for creating the lax privacy rules that allowed the consulting firm to harvest user data without consent, then failing to promptly inform users and ensure the data was deleted. It follows a failed attempt to name Zuckerberg in a similar suit against Facebook itself.Racine’s fundamental accusations haven’t changed since the earlier filing last year. The suit covers an incident in which University of Cambridge professor Aleksandr Kogan collected personal information from around 270,000 Facebook users plus data from friends who hadn’t consented to the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram now has auto-generated captions, which means it can automatically transcribe any videos you watch on the app. But before you start seeing captions appear in the app, you’ll probably have to enable the feature first, and the same goes if you want to post videos with captions.Before we get started, it’s worth noting that auto-generated captions are available in 17 languages at the time of writing: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic, Vietnamese, Italian, German, Turkish, Russian, Thai, Tagalog, Urdu, Malay, Hindi, Indonesian, and Japanese. Instagram plans on adding support for more languages in the future.Here’s how to turn captions on and off on Instagram for iPhone and Android, whether you just want to watch videos... Continue reading…

Reebok’s adaptive footwear collection is called Fit to Fit. | Image: Reebok Nike isn’t the only sneaker company thinking about accessible shoe design. Reebok announced it’s partnering with Zappos to launch its first adaptive footwear collection, called Fit to Fit. The collection features two sneakers that are designed for easy entry and exit for people with disabilities.The shoes were designed in collaboration with Zappos Adaptive — the e-commerce site’s vertical that acts as a shopping hub for accessible shoes, clothing, and accessories. The $90 Nanoflex Parafit TR are trainers that feature a mesh upper, side zipper, and heel pull tab. Meanwhile, the $65 Club MEMT Parafit are lifestyle sneakers with an extra 4E wide fit, side zipper, and leather upper. Both shoes feature high-abrasion rubber outsoles for... Continue reading…

Drew Anthony Smith The latest self-driving startup to allow its vehicles to roam the streets without a human minder is Argo AI, the startup backed by Ford and Volkswagen. Last week, the company announced that it is testing its fully driverless vehicles in Miami, Florida, and Austin, Texas. Argo employees will ride in the passenger seat of the vehicles to test out the company’s robotaxi service before it opens to the public.The announcement comes after a period of consolidation in the AV industry, leaving only a handful of well-funded companies left to push their vision of robotic cars as a solution to the auto safety crisis that has gripped the nation for decades.Argo has been testing its fourth-generation vehicles in Miami, Austin, and Washington, DC,... Continue reading…

Ethan Hunt and his allies on a boat together. | Image: Paramount Pictures After leaking online over the weekend, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One’s first trailer has unexpectedly arrived in a blaze of hype and death-defying stunt work.Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is a man on the run in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning’s new trailer that finds the infamous Impossible Missions Force agent being pulled into another job whose outcome will shape the arc of human history. It isn’t clear what sort of MacGuffin former IMF director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) is describing to Hunt as the target of this particular mission. But its ability to “control the truth” makes it a powerful enough object that Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), and Alanna... Continue reading…

The popular wedding planning website Zola, known for its online gift registries, guest list management, and wedding websites, confirmed Monday that hackers had managed to access the accounts of a number of its users and tried to initiate fraudulent cash transfers.Over the weekend, some Zola users posted on social media that linked bank accounts had been used to purchase gift cards. One tweet flagged by a Reddit user claimed to show cracked Zola accounts being resold on the black market and used to buy gift vouchers.Zola’s director of communications, Emily Forrest, told The Verge that the unauthorized account access took place through a “credential stuffing” attack, where hackers test out email and password combinations stolen from... Continue reading…

Take-Two has officially completed its $12.7 billion deal for social game developer Zynga, the two companies announced Monday. With the acquisition, Take-Two not only takes ownership of big Zynga franchises like FarmVille but also gets access to Zynga’s expertise building hugely popular free-to-play mobile games.Many notable game studios have invested heavily into mobile, and some of the biggest titles have proven to be absolutely massive revenue drivers. For example, Activision’s Call of Duty: Mobile, which launched in October 2019, recently surpassed $1.5 billion in lifetime revenue, according to Sensor Tower. And in November, Sensor Tower said Krafton’s PUBG Mobile surpassed an eye-popping $7 billion in lifetime revenue. (Tencent is... Continue reading…

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge Good news for Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 owners: the wait is over. Google Assistant is finally available for download starting today.Google Assistant for Wear OS 3 is available for download in the Google Play Store and can be launched from the Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic’s app menu. However, you can also use voice commands to open Google Assistant or reprogram the watches’ home button as a shortcut.This update has been a long time coming. When Google and Samsung first announced Wear OS 3, the companies promised that the unified platform would give Samsung smartwatch users more choice in apps. Previously, Samsung’s Tizen-based smartwatches could only offer Bixby as a digital assistant. The idea was that Wear OS 3 would let consumers... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge ‘We need politics. We need public policy. We need social movements’ Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A Food and Drug Administration committee will meet in mid-June to review data on COVID-19 vaccines for children six months through five years old, the agency announced Monday. If all goes as expected, it could sign off on the shots for that age group within days of that meeting.The announcement came just after Pfizer / BioNTech said in a Monday morning press release that three doses of their COVID-19 vaccine produced a strong immune response in children between six months and five years old. They plan to submit the data to the Food and Drug Administration this week.A preliminary analysis of data from the clinical trial of 1,678 children also showed that the shots were around 80 percent effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19... Continue reading…

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images GameStop has launched a beta for its very own Ethereum wallet that will let users store, send, and receive both cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) through their web browsers. The wallet is currently available as an extension for Google Chrome and Brave, but GameStop’s wallet website indicates it will also be available as an iPhone app in the future.After GameStop reached meme stock status last year, the company’s fan base has become largely split between two groups: gamers and investors. Those dedicated to “hodling” the stock may be in favor of GameStop’s foray into Web3, but many gamers dislike having the concept wedged into their pastime as much or more than they used to hate GameStop’s preorder policies or its insulting... Continue reading…

Instagram Sans is the new typeface you’ll see all over the app. | Image: Instagram Instagram rolled out a big “brand refresh” today, which is mostly a fancy term for freshening up some marketing materials and making big hand-wavy statements about logos. And there’s plenty of that here, too. (Can I interest you in a long digression about illuminated gradients?) But there’s also one much bigger change: Instagram created its own typeface, called Instagram Sans, that it plans to use broadly going forward both in marketing and in the app itself.Instagram Sans was inspired by Instagram’s logo, the company said, and “reflects the shape of the glyph and our commitment to simplicity and craft.” (Like I said, hand-wavy.) It’s inspired in large part by the combination of squares and circles, or as Instagram lovingly calls them,... Continue reading…

The Odyssey Neo G8 in action. | Image: Samsung Samsung’s latest high-end gaming monitor — the curved 32-inch Odyssey Neo G8 — is now available to preorder for $1,500 and will be available to purchase on June 6th, the company has announced. The news follows its reveal back at CES in January.The Odyssey Neo G8 is notable for having a 240Hz refresh rate, making it one of, if not the, fastest-refreshing 4K monitors on the market. Other features include a claimed peak brightness of 2,000 nits, support for Adaptive-Sync (which means it’ll do variable refresh rates with both Nvidia and AMD GPUs), and a curvature of 1000R. Image: Samsung Its curved display makes the monitor deep. Image: Samsung Its looks make it clear this is meant as a... Continue reading…

Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven. The Upside Down is back and more brutal than ever Continue reading…

Finally, some feathered dinos are ready for their close-up Continue reading…

Controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI has been ordered to delete all data belonging to UK residents by the country’s privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO also fined Clearview £7.5 million ($9.4 million) for failing to follow the UK’s data protection laws.It’s the fourth time Clearview has been ordered to delete national data in this way, following similar orders and fines issued in Australia, France, and Italy.Clearview claims to have scraped 20 billion images from sources like Facebook and InstagramClearview claims its facial recognition database contains some 20 billion images scraped from public sources like Facebook and Instagram. It previously sold its software to an array of... Continue reading…

Corsair, after having been a leader in the desktop space for decades, is releasing its first-ever gaming laptop. The new Voyager a1600 is an AMD powerhouse, equipped with both Ryzen 6000-series processors and AMD Radeon RX 6000 series. The device is Corsair’s first venture into mobile hardware after acquiring the enthusiast PC builder Origin in 2019.We don’t know with complete certainty what this device will look like yet since the pictures Corsair has provided us with are only renders, and we only got a brief peek during AMD’s Computex keynote. Still, take a look and one feature will likely jump out at you: there’s a touch bar. Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge A closer look at an actual Corsair Voyager.... Continue reading…

Just a few years ago, you could barely find a laptop with an AMD chip. Then, they started sprouting up in a few of the best notebooks you could buy. Now, AMD says its chips will feature in 200 different laptop models in 2022 — and with the just revealed “Mendocino,” announced at Computex 2022, it’s trying to “redefine the everyday laptop” as a budget machine with decent battery life.We’ve no idea whether it’ll deliver on that notion, but what it’s promising sounds like a good start: a new series of Ryzen laptop chips that combine four last-gen Zen 2 CPU cores with the latest RDNA 2 graphics on TSMC’s 6nm process to deliver over 10 hours of battery life on a charge — all for a price between $399 and $699. That includes both Windows... Continue reading…

Yes, the lid actually looks like that. | Image: AMD This fall, AMD is planning a clean break with the past, and it thinks your need for speed might convince you to do the same. Today at Computex 2022, the company revealed the key facets of its next-generation Ryzen 7000 desktop CPUs, their Zen 4 architecture, and — for the first time in five years — a brand-new kind of motherboard you’ll need to buy. While even some of the company’s oldest AM4 motherboards can be updated to support its latest Ryzen 5000-series desktop CPUs, the upcoming Ryzen 7000 requires AM5.As the company told us in January, the Ryzen 7000 are the first PC chips based on a 5nm process, and the AM5 motherboard platform is designed to support DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 out of the box.AM5 = 5nm + DDR5 + PCIe 5.0 + 5GHzBut... Continue reading…

Computex is set to begin in a matter of hours. | Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images Computex is just hours away and will feature keynotes from some of the biggest names in tech, including AMD, Nvidia, and Microsoft. There will almost certainly be some exciting announcements from each brand, but since Computex takes place in Taipei, Taiwan, the keynotes don’t occur at the most convenient times (at least for those of us in North America).Microsoft and AMD’s keynotes will have you staying up into the wee hours of the morning tonight, while Nvidia’s keynote doesn’t take place until late tomorrow evening. Here’s how and when to tune into each keynote:How to watch AMD’s keynoteAMD CEO Lisa Su is set to speak in a keynote titled “AMD Advancing the High-Performance Computing Experience,” which is set to highlight AMD’s... Continue reading…

Hyundai is building facilities dedicated to manufacturing electric vehicles (EVs) and batteries in Savannah, Georgia, marking Hyundai’s first EV-only plant in the US (via CNBC). The South Korean automaker will spend $5.5 billion on the new facilities and will receive an additional $1 billion investment from its suppliers.Hyundai expects production at the 2,923-acre site to begin in the first half of 2025, with construction starting in early 2023. The EV factory is set to make 300,000 vehicles per year and will add around 8,100 new jobs. Hyundai doesn’t specify which EV models will be manufactured at the plant — it only hints at a “wide range” of models hitting Georgia’s assembly lines. The company doesn’t reveal much about its... Continue reading…