The Verge

Image: CBS In the final season of Star Trek: Picard a lot of long-loved characters are expected to make their big returns (and possibly goodbyes) to the Star Trek universe. Earlier this year it was announced that almost the entire original cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation was going to be showing up in season 3. Now showrunner Terry Matalas is teasing even more characters from TNG showing up.As first noticed by TrekCore, Matalas recently appeared on the Inglorious Treksperts podcast and had a lot to say about the final season of the show. Including teases about some as-yet-unannounced returns:

Last week, NASA revealed that one of JWST’s primary mirror segments, shown here, was damaged by a larger than expected micrometeoroid. | Image: NASA On June 8th, NASA revealed that its new powerful space observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, is now sporting a small dimple in one of its primary mirrors after getting pelted by a larger-than-expected micrometeoroid out in deep space. The news came as a bit of a shock since the impact happened just five months into the telescope’s space tenure — but such strikes are simply an inevitable aspect of space travel, and more thwacks are certainly on their way.Despite what its name implies, space isn’t exactly empty. Within our Solar System, tiny bits of space dust are zooming through the regions between our planets at whopping speeds that can reach up to tens of thousands of miles per hour. These micrometeoroids, no larger than a grain... Continue reading…

Photo by Amanda Stronza/Getty Images for SXSW Frances Haugen, the whistleblower who released a trove of internal documents and data from Facebook and testified in front of lawmakers about the social network’s behavior, is now looking to start a non-profit focused on holding companies like Meta accountable, according to a report from Politico.The organization, which Haugen wants to call Beyond the Screen, plans to focus on three main goals: educating lawyers who could potentially be going up against social media companies, incentivizing investors to look into how socially responsible a tech company is before giving it money, and giving regulators and researchers an inside look into how platforms work. Politico reports that Haugen is currently working with two other people on the... Continue reading…

Mark Zuckerberg tries on the Holocake 2 prototype. | Meta Reality Labs And none of them are shipping Continue reading…

Sewing patterns are meant to be trashed — or not Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After announcing Telegram Premium earlier this month, the messaging app has finally rolled out the paid tier, which gives users access to extra features for $4.99 / month (via TechCrunch). All the features are outlined in a post on Telegram’s blog, with some of its bigger draws including faster downloads and a larger maximum file upload size of 4GB (rather than the standard 2GB).Premium subscribers will also get double the limits imposed on standard users. Instead of joining up to 500 channels, subscribers are capped at 1,000 channels. The same goes for other features on Telegram — subscribers can create 20 chat folders with 200 chats each, save up to 10 stickers, pin up to 10 chats, and add a total of four accounts to Telegram instead... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Friday, TikTok announced that it had started routing American users’ data to US-based servers owned by Oracle. But a timely report from BuzzFeed News calls into question what TikTok’s promise really delivers, claiming TikTok employees based in China have “repeatedly” accessed US users’ data over the course of at least several months.In recordings of internal staff meetings and presentations obtained by BuzzFeed News, TikTok employees reportedly mentioned having to ask their colleagues in China to access US user data, as they weren’t able to access this data themselves. One member of TikTok’s trust and safety department team allegedly stated that “Everything is seen in China,” while another employee said a China-based engineer “had... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is known for its close-knit — and sometimes secretive — company culture, but one wouldn’t suspect an actual cult running things behind the scenes. Well, one Google contractor claims that’s exactly the case, as detailed in this unusual report from The New York Times.Kevin Lloyd, a contractor hired to work as a video producer for Google Developer Studio (GDS), alleges at least 12 members of an obscure religious sect work for GDS and hold an inappropriate level of influence over the work environment. Lloyd claims he was wrongly fired for calling out the group’s behavior and has filed a lawsuit against Google and his contracting agency ASG for wrongful termination, retaliation, emotional distress, and failure to protect him against... Continue reading…

From left to right: pastel dream, purple camo, cotton candy blue, pink lemonade, and lavender swirl. When it comes to colorful controller designs, Xbox’s game has been on point for years. Ever since the Xbox One generation, Microsoft has released many fun variations of its controllers — including limited editions and the Xbox Design Lab — and this momentum has not slowed with the Xbox Series X / S consoles. Meanwhile, the third-party range of Xbox controllers is more expansive than ever, and brands like PowerA are hitting budget-friendly prices with slick new colorways of its own, like the recently released pastel range of the $37.99 PowerA Enhanced Wired Controller for Xbox and PC. Marshmallowy vibes for days. The controllers have smooth, satin finishes on the front, lightly textured backs, and glossy accents on the... Continue reading…

AppleCORE filed a petition to hold the vote in May. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Workers at Apple’s Towson Town Center store in Maryland have voted to unionize, with 65 yeses and 33 nos. Around 110 employees were eligible to vote in the election.The store is the first Apple retail location in the US to hold a union election, after organizers in Atlanta withdrew their petition to hold a union vote, which had been scheduled to take place in early May.Organizing at the Towson store has been done by a group of employees that called themselves AppleCORE (an acronym for Coalition of Organized Retail Employees). The workers have said they want to expand their rights, specifically asking for a say when it came to pay, hours, and safety. AppleCORE is associated with a larger, established union, the International... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge WhatsApp has rolled out several new features this past week, including the ability to mute people during group calls (via Android Central). This sanity-saving feature seems helpful not just for muting people who forget to do it themselves, but also if you’re in the same room as someone who’s also on the call and don’t want to hear an echo of what they say.While some conferencing apps, like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, let hosts mute all participants (or specific ones), they typically don’t offer a way for individual users to mute whoever they want during a call. This feature offers a new level of control that’s probably best saved for chaotic meetings that involve up to the maximum of eight people on video calls — or up to 32 on voice... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A group of US lawmakers has signed off on a letter to Google that urges the company to reevaluate its treatment of search results that direct users to anti-abortion crisis centers rather than legitimate clinics, as first reported by Reuters. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) and Representative Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) are leading the initiative, while several other Democratic lawmakers have signed the letter in support.The letter cites research published by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which focuses on Google search results in “trigger law states” — or the 13 states where abortion will become illegal if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. Research indicates that 11 percent of Google searches in trigger law states for... Continue reading…

The 1979 classic returns with retractable landing gear Continue reading…

And this time, the ladies are in charge Continue reading…

The 2019 hack exposed the information of over 100 million Capital One Customers. | Photo Illustration by Alex Tai/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images A former Amazon Web Services (AWS) engineer has been found guilty of hacking into customers’ cloud storage systems and stealing data linked to the massive 2019 Capital One breach. A US District Court in Seattle convicted Paige Thompson of seven counts of computer and wire fraud on Friday, a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison.Thompson, who also went by the name “Erratic” online, was arrested for carrying out the Capital One hack in July 2019. The breach was one of the largest ever recorded, exposing the names, birth dates, social security numbers, email addresses, and phone numbers of over 100 million people in the US and Canada. Capital One has since been fined $80 million for allegedly failing to secure users’ data and s... Continue reading…

Buzz Lightyear gazing at something in space. | Image: Pixar / Disney Lightyear’s a visual stunner with a predictable story Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Kick off the weekend with a steep discount on the latest, fastest iteration of the Apple TV 4K. The 32GB model normally retails for $179.99 (it’s usually one of the pricier streaming devices out there), but you can grab one for a much more reasonable $129.99. This deal debuted earlier this week, and we can’t get enough of it. If you want to double the internal storage to 64GB, that model is just $20 more at $149.99 instead of $199.99.This Father’s Day-timed deal ends on June 20th, and it might be a good idea to take advantage of if you want a speedy, feature-packed streaming box for your TV. The Apple TV 4K supports all of the major streaming services, plus support for games, along with Apple’s core services. Compared to the previous... Continue reading…

Frederic Gemus still remembers the first time he played the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game. There was something about the experience, with its big expressive characters and approachable gameplay, that sucked him right in. “Playing that game was so mind blowing because it was just like playing the cartoon,” he tells me over Zoom (with a huge collection of retro games behind him). “It was so different from the Nintendo back in the days.” So, when Gemus, now a designer at Montreal-based studio Tribute Games, had a chance to work on a modern take on TMNT, it was pretty much a dream project. “That was pretty awesome to learn about,” he says of being put on the project.Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is out... Continue reading…

Microsoft’s Surface Duo 2 has come a long way from where it was at launch last year. At least nine software updates and a sizable price cut have transformed Microsoft’s dual-screen phone Continue reading…

Buy something without taking your eyes off the TV. | Image: Roku Walmart and Roku are partnering to introduce what they call “shoppable ads,” which will let you buy something directly from an ad on your TV. It seems like the new ad format is intended to streamline the shopping experience so you don’t have to switch to your phone or computer if you see an ad for something you might actually want to buy.Here’s how it works, according to a press release:

If you’ve ever thought, “I would like my digital avatar to wear poorly rendered designer clothing,” I have excellent news for you.Meta is launching an online store where Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger users can purchase digital clothing for their avatar. The first brands on the store are Prada, Balenciaga, and Thom Browne, and clothes include a motocross outfit, a logo hoodie, and suits.In a Facebook post, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said more brands would be added soon.“Digital goods will be an important way to express yourself in the metaverse and a big driver of the creative economy,” he says. Luxury fashion houses are increasingly partnering with technology companies to create branded digital garments. Last... Continue reading…

SpaceX headquarters in January 2021. | Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images It took less than a day and a half for more than 400 SpaceX employees to sign onto an open letter criticizing CEO Elon Musk after it was posted and shared by some of their co-workers in an internal chat. Just 32 hours after it was shared, the internal landing page for the document was taken offline, around the same time that a group of employees was fired for their involvement in crafting and sharing the letter, a move that may have been a violation of labor law.The open letter first went live on an internal landing page at noon Eastern, and then it was shared by a handful of employees to roughly 10 chat rooms in Microsoft Teams as well as one email list. The contents were bold: the employees asserted that Musk’s behavior in recent... Continue reading…

You can do it in just a couple minutes. Puget Systems offers a number of different benchmarks to test out your PC using automated real-world tasks in the Adobe Creative Cloud. Some of them (such as the one for Premiere Pro) are somewhat complicated and can take a while to get up and running. But one of them — PugetBench for Photoshop — is very simple.PugetBench for Photoshop measures how fast your computer can perform various tasks, including mask refinement and gradients as well as filter tasks like lens correction and noise reduction. Unlike some of Puget’s other benchmarks, the Photoshop benchmark only requires one quick plug-in to set up.Note: this benchmark is not yet supported for the M1-native version of Photoshop.

Photo by Avery White for The Verge Shopping for a phone plan doesn’t have to be painful Continue reading…

Image: Umar Shakir / The Verge Readdle, best known for its PDF and document productivity apps for iOS, also makes a comprehensive Calendars app that combines tasks, to-dos, and reminders — and, today, that app is now available for Mac (via 9to5Mac). Officially titled Calendars by Readdle, it joins the Ukraine-based company’s collection of Mac apps like PDF Expert and Spark email.Fans of the Calendars by Readdle app will be excited to know that the Mac app syncs up with the iPhone / iPad versions and that cross-device use will not cost extra on top of the $19.99 per year Pro subscription plan. You can use the main calendar part of the app for free, although you will miss out on the integration features with apps like Google Tasks and Apple’s Reminders as well as the... Continue reading…

Sony’s 2022 lineup is ending up on Netflix. | Image: Columbia Pictures Uncharted, the movie where Tom Holland recreated some of the PlayStation series’ iconic scenes, will be coming to Netflix on July 15th for US customers, according to What’s on Netflix. While apparently many people have already seen the film (it reportedly made over $400 million during its theater run), this will be its streaming debut.If you’re trying to decide whether to add it to your summer watchlist, I recommend reading my colleague’s excellent review to see how it holds up as a movie (spoiler: about as well as those ancient buildings Nathan Drake is always destroying). I’ll also add that, as a longtime Uncharted fan, it definitely didn’t feel essential for the series, but my wife and friend who’ve never played any of the games... Continue reading…

Combating cheats is costly business, but more costly if you make them. | Image: Bungie In a rather spectacular conclusion to a lawsuit filed by Bungie in August of last year, the owners of the Destiny 2 cheat domains, Veterancheats, LaviCheats, and Elite Boss Tech, will have to pay a settlement totaling roughly $13.5 million in damages. The math of this settlement comes from a fine of $2,000 per violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provisions — 17 US Code Section 1201 a and b — multiplied by the roughly 6,765 unique downloads of the program in question.According to a report by Andy Maxwell on TorrentFreak, Bungie accused the defendants of breaching copyright law in addition to racketeering, fraud, money laundering, and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.Cheating in games like... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA, says it expects AT&T and Verizon to be able to more or less fully roll out their 5G C-band networks by July 2023, after multiple delays due to concerns about the radio waves affecting vital safety equipment on planes. The plan, which the FAA says is the result of collaboration between regulators, carriers, and the aviation industry, will allow carriers to turn on their equipment in “carefully considered phases” as airlines work to retrofit their planes with equipment that will mitigate any potential interference from cellular signals.As AT&T and Verizon were turning on their next-gen networks in January, the FAA protested and the carriers agreed to create buffer zones around dozens of... Continue reading…

Everest base camp. | Photo by TASHI LAKPA SHERPA/AFP via Getty Images Nepal is moving the Everest base camp off of the melting Khumbu glacier, the BBC reported.Research shows that the Khumbu glacier is rapidly thinning as a result of the changing climate. “We see increased rock falls and movement of melt-water on the surface of the glaciers that can be hazardous,” Scott Watson, a researcher at the University of Leeds who studies glaciers, told the BBC.The current base camp location is becoming destabilized by the ice melt and is no longer safe. Climbers say cracks appear in the ground overnight, and guides say they expect more avalanches and ice falls at the current location going forward. The new base camp will be around 200 to 400 meters lower in altitude — and in a spot where there isn’t year-round... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge This week has revealed to the average investor just how interconnected cryptocurrency firms are. Two firms have frozen withdrawals, and a cryptocurrency hedge fund is in trouble. Celsius Network, Babel Finance, and Three Arrows Capital are floundering, and it’s not yet clear how extensive the damage may be.All three firms managed other peoples’ moneyThis week started with a Sunday night announcement from the Celsius Network, a gigantic crypto lending company, that it would pause withdrawals and transfers. After that, the value of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, already weeks into a slide that some have termed a “crypto winter,” plunged even further, and five days later, the news hasn’t improved much.All three firms managed other... Continue reading…

The new 13-inch MacBook Pro uses Apple’s M2 CPU, and you can preorder it now. | Image: Apple Perhaps one of the more unexpected announcements from Apple’s WWDC event last week was the unveiling of a new 13-inch MacBook Pro that will be equipped with Apple’s new M2 processor. While it was initially hinted by Apple that the new MacBook would become available in July, preorder pages are currently live at multiple retailers, with deliveries and in-store availability beginning on June 24th.Currently, you can only preorder configurations of the new 13-inch MacBook through the Apple storefront or through a small handful of authorized resellers that we’ll list on this page as more retailers make preorders available.AmazonAmazon has preorders available for the 256GB and 512GB configurations of the M2 MacBook, with orders shipping on... Continue reading…

The 2022 TCL 5-Series has Google TV built-in, as an alternative to the usual Roku TV. | Image: TCL With the recent announcement of Amazon Prime Day returning on July 12th and 13th, you may think the best deals on things like TVs are yet to come. While there’s sure to be some great discounts to take advantage of, we’ve got some ready for you in the here and now.Today, you can get the best price to date on the 65-inch TCL 5-Series TV, which is marked down to $549.99 at Amazon and Best Buy. This model comes equipped with Google TV for all your streaming needs, slightly bucking the trend of TCL sets shipping with Roku’s software — though that version is also discounted the same $150 off if you prefer. Normally priced at $699.99, the TCL 5-Series offers a lot of value at its full price, including Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision support.... Continue reading…

Common pied oystercatchers / Eurasian oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus) pair on dry stone wall, Shetland Islands, Scotland, UK. | Photo by: Arterra/Universal Images Group via Getty Images The hunt is on for a bird tracking device that, instead of logging the bird’s movements, is likely tracking the travels of an unwitting tourist. Researchers are asking for the public’s help to retrieve the tracker so that it can be used to study birds again.An oystercatcher, a black and white bird with a long, red-orange beak for breaking through shellfish, initially brought the tracker from Dublin, Ireland, to Orkney, an archipelago of islands north of Scotland.The bird seemed to have lost the tracker at the beach on one of the islands, Sanday, on April 7th. It stayed there until late May, when the device started tracking unusual movements for a bird.“It’s gone on a bit of a Tiki tour”“It’s gone on a bit of a Tiki tour,” Steph... Continue reading…

The Sonos Roam, a small speaker with plenty of sound, is on sale for $143.20 at Best Buy. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Panicking because Father’s Day is just around the corner and you have yet to pick up your dad something special? Fret not because we’ve got your back. We did a bit of digging and found a variety of excellent gadgets Dad will love, all of which you can still order today and receive in time for Father’s Day. You don’t necessarily need to be an Amazon Prime member to receive some of these in time for the holiday either, nor do you need to pay extra for expedited shipping at places like Best Buy, Target, or Walmart.Also, if you still can’t decide what to buy after looking through our list, be sure to check out our Father’s Day 2022 gift guide. And if you really can’t make up your mind and end up leaving things until the last minute, we’ve... Continue reading…

Image: Dami Lee Elon Musk may want out of his deal with Twitter, but he has some ideas about how to run the bird app, and they involve layoffs, subscriptions, and… a sarcasm button. Musk turned up on Thursday for a video chat with Twitter employees, and the employees promptly leaked its contents to reporters — including my Verge colleague Alex Heath and The New York Times’ Mike Isaac, who ran a liveblog of the event while it was happening. An apparent digression about aliens notwithstanding, the meeting’s results were fairly predictable but illuminating for anybody who’s spent too much time obsessing over ominous phrases like “authenticate all humans” in the past few months.In Thursday’s meeting, Musk had the energy of a rich MMORPG fan who buys a... Continue reading…

Image: Crunchyroll I’m confused. I’m playing Final Fantasy VII, and my partner is playing Resident Evil 4. My ears perk up as I hear the familiar and unmistakable heavy metal guitar chords of this song as Trigun appears on the TV.I have no idea what year it is.Late last night, Crunchyroll announced that a new Trigun anime series is in the works, and it seems like 2023 will be the year of maximum millennial nostalgia bait.

An inexpensive budget phone that could offer more Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge According to a report from Electrek, a wave of layoffs at Tesla may affect hourly workers, despite a company-wide email from Elon Musk on June 3rd saying “Tesla will be reducing salaried headcount by 10% as we have become overstaffed in many areas.” On June 4th, Musk tweeted that “[t]otal headcount will increase, but salaried should be fairly flat,” in response to a statement about Tesla’s staffing over the next twelve months.The email went out clarifying the situation after initial reports of Musk telling company execs it would need to reduce headcount by 10 percent overall and pause hiring worldwide due to his “super bad feeling” about the economy. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment; the company disbanded its public... Continue reading…

Photo by Rasid Necati Aslim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images UK Home Secretary Priti Patel has approved an American request to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Patel signed the order on June 17th, bringing Assange one step closer to facing espionage charges in the US.Assange’s legal counsel plans to appeal the decision before the UK’s High Court. “This is a dark day for press freedom and for British democracy,” WikiLeaks said in a statement. “Julian did nothing wrong.”“A dark day for press freedom” says WikiLeaksPatel’s approval follows a series of legal losses for Assange. In December, the UK’s High Court approved Assange’s extradition, concluding that US authorities had credibly promised humane treatment in the American prison system. He was later refused an appeal by the UK... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk appeared at a virtual town hall for Twitter employees on Thursday to answer their questions, and by the end of the session one question loomed larger than most: can you really run Twitter off the top of your head?Over 60 or so freewheeling minutes, the world’s richest man fielded queries over remote work, layoffs, content moderation, and other questions of pressing interest to Twitter’s roughly 8,000 employees. Time and again, he offered workers hungry for concrete answers a jumble of sentence fragments.Will Twitter’s mostly remote workforce be able to continue working from home? Maybe, if they’re “excellent,” Musk said, according to Bloomberg’s live blog. But it’s “much better if you are on location physically,” he said, a... Continue reading…

Flagship features for a more palatable price Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Food and Drug Administration has authorized COVID-19 vaccines for children under five — the last age group in the United States to get clearance to receive the shots. The agency authorized both Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines for this age group.It’s been a long, long wait for young children to get these vaccines, full of delays and frustrating setbacks. The Biden administration has plans in place for the first vaccinations for this age group, which includes kids between six months and five years old, to start the week of June 20th.The FDA also authorized the Moderna vaccine for adolescents and teenagers six through 17 years old. It had previously only been available to people over 18.Pfizer / BioNTech’s under-five... Continue reading…

It’s hard to put into words how cute the little creatures in Peridot are. The virtual pets, which star in the next release from Pokémon Go developer Niantic, seem scientifically designed to make you say “awww.” They have big eyes and colorful bodies, and they really react when you give them some attention. I was only able to play a short amount of a pre-release version of the game, but I’m already smitten.I had the chance to try a hands-on demo of Peridot with senior producer Ziah Fogel at Summer Game Fest last week in Los Angeles. The game is essentially a cross between Pokémon Go and Nintendogs, with all of the augmented reality and location-based gameplay you’d expect from Niantic but with a greater focus on taking care of your... Continue reading…

A group of Senate Democrats is calling on the US Commerce Department to follow Europe’s lead in forcing all smartphone manufacturers to build devices that adhere to a universal charging standard.In a Thursday letter addressed to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) — along with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — demanded that the department develop a strategy to require a common charging port across all mobile devices.The letter comes a week after European Union lawmakers reached a deal on new legislation forcing all smartphones and tablets to be equipped with USB-C ports by fall 2024.“The EU has wisely acted in the public interest by taking on powerful technology companies over this... Continue reading…

Last year’s Fairphone 4. | Photo by Jon Porter / The Verge Sustainable smartphone manufacturer Fairphone has announced a new subscription service that offers its latest phone, the Fairphone 4, for as little as €21 a month. Fairphone Easy is only available for customers in the company’s home market of the Netherlands for now, who’ll be able to rent the phone for anywhere between 3 and 60 months, but Fairphone spokesperson Ioiana Luncheon says the service could be expanded to more countries in Europe in 2023 depending on the results of this initial pilot.The subscription service is the sustainable manufacturer’s latest attempt to cut down on the environmental impact of smartphone production, and it’s designed to encourage users to hold onto their existing phones for as long as possible. The... Continue reading…

The full headset taken from the recently-published Valve patent. Valve’s most recent VR headset was 2019’s high-powered, high-priced Valve Index. But rumors have long been swirling that the company is working on another device — a standalone headset code-named “Deckard.” Well, here to give that rumor-pot a fresh stir is a recently-published patent application from the company that could reveal Deckard itself.Of course, the usual caveats apply: patents are patents, not product roadmaps. And the language used within applications likes this are so purposefully broad as to resist much close-reading.But the images — ah, the images — they do tell a story. Or at least, they give your imagination enough leeway to tell a story of its own, about the perfect standalone VR headset built by Valve itself.... Continue reading…

The notch found on last year’s MacBook Pros. | Photo by Phil Esposito / The Verge Most people have more or less gotten over the iPhone’s display notch, the once-controversial design element introduced with the iPhone X in 2017. But feelings are more raw when it comes to the MacBook Pro’s cutout, which only got a notch of its own last year. At least until you see how useful it can be thanks to an app under development by Ian Keen, who’s trying to turn the chunk of missing screen into a feature that makes AirDropping files easier.In a video posted on Twitter, the developer shows how the app causes the notch to flash when the user is dragging AirDrop-compatible files. The idea is that these can then be dragged and dropped onto the notch itself, at which point a traditional AirDrop share window opens up showing in-range... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As titans of the social media world, Facebook and TikTok often invite comparison. But while Facebook is currently retooling its app to be more like its new rival, TikTok says it has no plans to become more like big blue.Speaking to CNBC, TikTok’s president of global business solutions Blake Chandlee made the differences between the two companies clear: “Facebook is a social platform. They’ve built all their algorithms based on the social graph. That is their core competency. Ours is not.” He added: “We are an entertainment platform ... The difference is significant. It’s a massive difference.”(By “social graph,” Chandlee is referring to the data that tracks connections between individuals that companies like Facebook generate to map... Continue reading…

One customer received around 30 shipments as a result of the glitch. Sonos has confirmed that customers who received extra, unordered devices as a result of a recent software glitch don’t need to return the speakers. “Sonos does not require the return of extra equipment and respects the decision of each impacted customer,” said spokesperson Madeline Krebs. “We have and will continue to be in full compliance with FTC requirements.”A summary of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) requirements are outlined on the US agency’s website. “You never have to pay for things you get but didn’t order,” the website reads. “You also don’t have to return unordered merchandise. You’re legally entitled to keep it as a free gift.”“We have and will continue to be in full compliance with FTC requirements”The software... Continue reading…