The Verge

In November, Valve gave everyone some bad news, revealing a two-month delay for the Steam Deck, but it’s starting off 2022 on a better note. In its latest update, the company says it “looks like” Steam Deck shipments will start by the end of February. Of course, we’re in a pandemic, and things can always change, but the preorder windows for Verge staffers are holding steady with their original projections — you can check your status here.

Photo by Brent Stirton/Getty Images Congress has sent subpoenas demanding information from Meta (formerly Facebook), Twitter, Reddit, and Alphabet concerning the January 6th, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. The House of Representatives Select Committee that’s investigating the attack wants each company to disclose moderation policy details and other information that could illuminate how participants organized their efforts or spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.The committee requested records from dozens of companies on a voluntary basis last year, but it says the response from the aforementioned four has been “inadequate” so far. “Two key questions for the Select Committee are how the spread of misinformation and violent extremism contributed... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Phone companies could have to follow new rules about how they notify customers and the government following a data breach if a proposal from the Federal Communication Commission’s chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel passes. The notice of proposed rulemaking, released on Wednesday, cites the “increasing frequency and severity of security breaches involving customer information” as a risk to consumers.The current rules give telecommunication providers seven business days to notify the FBI and Secret Service of data breaches that leak customer proprietary network information, or CPNI. In most cases, the company cannot notify customers about the breach until seven business days after information has been relayed to federal law enforcement. The... Continue reading…

A recruiter works on a computer, 19 June 2007 at the cyber cafe “Le Milk” in Paris, during the Neo Job-Meeting (NJM) event, the first virtual job fair on the 3-D “Second Life” on-line game. | Photo credit should read STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images Throughout months of metaverse hype, with all the new names and virtual real estate speculation, I can’t count how many times I’ve thought, “Didn’t Second Life already do that?” Apparently, the people behind Second Life agree and are trying to pull our attention back to their virtual world that (rather helpfully) exists somewhere you can visit on your existing computer.

Silphwave / Dirt Funding a media outlet is a tricky business, and in recent years, some journalists have looked toward the cryptocurrency world to do it. That includes Dirt, an entertainment newsletter co-founded by Kyle Chayka and Daisy Alioto in late 2020. Dirt has raised money since launch by selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and earlier this week, it announced plans to work those NFTs into a decentralized autonomous organization or DAO — giving its audience input into where Dirt spends its money.Dirt isn’t the first blockchain-based media outfit. In 2017, for instance, a project called Civil funded a panoply of websites using its own cryptocurrency token. But Civil collapsed after a difficult launch and initial funding that quickly ran dry.... Continue reading…

Twitter is opening up the ability to record Spaces. | Image: Twitter Twitter is now letting all Android and iOS users record Twitter Spaces, the company announced Thursday. Users will be able to choose to record a Space when they’re setting one up and the recording will be available for public playback for 30 days after the Space has ended. If you’re in a Space that’s being recorded, you’ll see an icon at the top of the Space letting you know.You can see how it all works in this tweet from Twitter’s support account.

Activity data from a Fitbit can predict changes in blood sugar control for adults with prediabetes, a condition that affects around one in three adults in the United States, a new study shows. The findings point to a strategy that tech companies might use in their rumored efforts to build diabetes technology into wearable products.“It kind of makes sense intuitively — more movement, more physical activity leads to overall better health, and better health is one of the factors behind improved glycemic control,” says Jessilyn Dunn, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Duke University who wasn’t involved with this study but has also done work on wearables and glucose monitoring.People with prediabetes have elevated blood... Continue reading…

From bugs to halted releases, Android 12 has seen an unusually troubled launch. There are some unique complicating factors this year, but it’s the same old Android — the good and the bad Continue reading…

The PS5 will be available in select GameStop stores as a part of a bundle. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge GameStop PowerUp Rewards Pro members still on the hunt for the ever-elusive PlayStation 5 may have another shot at nabbing the console. Once again, GameStop is selling PlayStation 5 bundles tomorrow, January 14th.The retailer has announced its first special in-store PlayStation 5 sales event of this year will take place in select stores on Friday, January 14th. To participate, you must have a subscription to GameStop’s Pro membership, which sells for $14.99 per year.The standard PlayStation 5, which offers a disc drive, typically retails for $499.99. However, as GameStop will be selling pre-built bundles, you should expect to pay more than that. An image published by GameStop also suggests the less expensive $399.99 PS5 Digital Edition... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s becoming ever-so-slightly less of a maddening exercise to get your hands on a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X. Granted, it’s still harder than it should be, but recent retailer restocks have taken longer to sell out than they used to. So, here’s hoping that you’re able to purchase whichever console you want during today’s restock at Walmart, which is specifically for paid Walmart Plus subscribers and going on right now.Walmart is offering the $499.99 PS5 with a disc drive, the $399.99 PS5 console that can only play digital titles, as well as the $499.99 Xbox Series X. These consoles are available to non-trial Walmart Plus members, meaning you actually have to opt-in to pay Walmart for the service to get... Continue reading…

HBO Hot on the heels of Euphoria’s season 2 premiere, HBO and partner WildBrain have just greenlit a new Degrassi series from co-showrunners Lara Azzopardi (The Bold Type) and Julia Cohen (Riverdale) that the network is billing as “a reprise of the original teen drama.”Like the original Degrassi, which explored the tumultuous lives of Canadian youths, the new show will focus on a group of high schoolers from Toronto who are all on different journeys of self-discovery. Unlike its predecessors (there have been five Degrassi series to date), which all featured half-hour episodes, the newest series will see Degrassi become an hour-long drama, indicating that its approach to storytelling is going to be a bit different this time around.While D... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Following a summit on open-source security hosted at the White House Thursday, Google has called for increasing government involvement in identifying and securing critical open-source software projects.In a blog post published shortly after the summit, Kent Walker, president for global affairs and chief legal officer at Google and Alphabet, said that collaboration between government and the private sector was needed for open-source funding and management.“We need a public-private partnership to identify a list of critical open source projects — with criticality determined based on the influence and importance of a project — to help prioritize and allocate resources for the most essential security assessments and improvements,” Walker... Continue reading…

Image: Nicola Goode / Lucasfilm Ltd. The long-awaited Boba Fett spinoff, The Book of Boba Fett, is roughly halfway through its seven-episode season on Disney Plus, which follows the iconic bounty hunter as he attempts to reinvent himself as “literally anything other than a bounty hunter.”Yes, Boba Fett has a new job in The Book of Boba Fett. After killing off Jabba the Hutt’s former majordomo, Bib Fortuna (who, we’re told, stepped in to fill the Hutt-shaped space in Mos Espa’s criminal underworld), Boba is now the new “daimyo,” the lord and master of the desert planet’s seedier elements.As we noted in The Verge’s initial review, it’s not entirely clear why Boba Fett is chasing a sudden career change at this point in his life. And after a few more episodes, The Book of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Jose Batista, a retail investor, was awarded almost $30,000 from Robinhood after filing a complaint using the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s (or FINRA’s) arbitration service. His case may end up being an example for other retail traders who are still upset at the trading platform’s actions in January of 2021.On January 28th, Batista was planning on selling his stock in Koss and Express — but Robinhood had placed trading restrictions on them, limiting the amount of shares its users could buy. This meant that Batista had to watch helplessly as the prices of his stock fell to nearly half of what they were the day before the restrictions were put in place, according to MarketWatch. “Seeing it plummeting and plummeting, I felt... Continue reading…

I hope the future can do better Continue reading…

Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call Democrats and Republicans are getting behind a new bill, introduced Thursday, that would force tech companies to simplify the language in their terms of service agreements, making it easier for consumers to understand.The Terms-of-service Labeling, Design and Readability Act – or TLDR for short – would require websites to provide a “summary statement” for users before they opt in to a terms of service agreement. The statement would summarize the legal jargon into something more easily understood by the average user, along with disclosing any recent data breaches (from the three years) and the types of sensitive data the site may collect. The summary would also explain “whether a consumer can delete their data, and if so, provide... Continue reading…

Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images Did you struggle with Wordle today? I sure as hell did, racking up my second ever failure since I started playing the game at the beginning of the year. I was annoyed at myself more than the puzzle and eased that frustration by sharing my results on Twitter.As I did, I realized why the game’s auto-generated grids of emoji are so brilliant. It’s not just that they’re social (though that certainly helps), nor is it that they’re intriguing (there’s no link to the game and no explanation for the uninitiated as to what the emoji mean). No, it’s because each grid tells a story with wonderful concision. With just 30 squares and three colors, Wordle’s emoji results convey narratives of luck, frustration, perseverance, and failure; each grid a... Continue reading…

Marvel Studios Marvel’s Eternals from director Chloé Zhao was a film of many firsts for the studio, but it would be a bit inaccurate to say that it featured the MCU’s first sex scene, as a lot of people seem to think it did. Daredevil and the rest of the Netflix / Marvel gang spent seasons getting it in over in their neck of the cinematic universe, and those shows very much laid some groundwork for Eternals’ much-tamer take on superpowered sex. Eternals’ sex scene might not technically be Marvel’s first, or particularly “fun” to watch, but it’s one of the movie’s more clever ways of stating the obvious about how its story is going to end.This essay contains spoilers for Marvel’s Eternals.Throughout Eternals, an emotionally-inert foray into the cosmic... Continue reading…

Image: Gap Gap is selling NFTs, following other clothing retailers like Adidas, Nike, and Macy’s that in recent months have jumped into the NFT space. The NFTs are built on the Tezos blockchain, which touts itself as a more energy-efficient option.The NFTs come in the form of a series of digital hoodie art, with different levels of rarity at different price points. Common level pieces starting at roughly $8.30, or 2 tez, are on sale today. Rare, epic, and one-of-a-kind tiers will roll out over the next few weeks. Gap is partnering with artist Brandon Sines, creator of the Frank Ape cartoon character, on the designs.The gamified experience comes out to around $500.For shoppers who’d prefer to buy something wearable, look no further than the... Continue reading…

Photo taken on Aug. 12, 2021 shows burned bushes after a wildfire caused by high temperature in Siggiewi, Malta. Matla was hit by a heatwave which has swept across the Mediterranean Sea. | Photo by Jonathan Borg/Xinhua via Getty Images The last eight years have been the eight hottest years on record, NASA and the National Oceanic Administration (NOAA) confirmed today. 2021 ranks as the sixth hottest year on record, the agencies said, as global average temperatures trend upward. Rankings aside, there were plenty of red flags throughout 2021 to show us how remarkable the year was for temperature extremes.“The fact is that we’ve now kind of moved into a new regime ... this is likely the warmest decade in many, many hundreds, maybe 1000s of years,” says Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “There’s enough change that it’s having impacts locally.”In North America, those local impacts included epically bad summer heat, even for typically... Continue reading…

Fortnite is back on iOS today... sort of. The popular battle royale game isn’t back on the App Store (where it’s been missing since Apple pulled the app from its storefront in August 2020), but iPhone and iPad owners can now stream Fortnite to play on their phones and tablets through Nvidia’s GeForce Now service, which opened up a closed beta today to test the new streaming version of the game.Nvidia and Epic Games have been promising that Fortnite would come back to iOS through GeForce Now running through Safari’s web browser (the only way that Apple currently allows game streaming services like GeForce Now, Stadia, xCloud, or Luna to operate on iOS) as far back as November 2020, when the service first launched on Apple’s hardware.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The White House will meet with leaders of major tech companies including Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta, IBM, and Microsoft on Thursday to discuss the security of open-source software. The issue has become urgent in the wake of the extremely serious Log4j vulnerability, discovered in December 2021.The summit will also include the Apache Software Foundation — the owner and maintainer of the Log4j library — and Oracle, owner of the Java software platform on which the Log4j library runs. GitHub and the Linux Open Source Foundation will also be represented.Executives from the tech companies will meet with representatives of various federal agencies, including the departments of Commerce, Defense, Energy, and Homeland Security. Other agencies... Continue reading…

Magic Leap Magic Leap announced Tuesday that it was giving four healthcare partners early access to its next-gen augmented reality headset, including neurotechnology company SyncThink. With the new partnership, the company is interested in targeting vestibular disorders, which cause dizziness, SyncThink chief clinical officer Scott Anderson told The Verge.SyncThink has been collaborating with Magic Leap for a few years, Anderson says. Now, it’s expanding that relationship to bring Magic Leap 2 into the neurological health space and collaborate on clinical studies, he says. SyncThink already has FDA clearance for an eye-tracking VR device that helps diagnose concussions. Changes in eye movements are also linked to vestibular disorders.The upgrades... Continue reading…

Both the ad-free and ad-supported HBO Max plans are currently on sale. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Whether it’s exclusives like the new Harry Potter reunion special, Return to Hogwarts, or access to new films like The Matrix Resurrections, an HBO Max subscription means you can watch some of today’s most popular titles from the comfort and safety of your home. Unfortunately, we rarely see deals on the popular streaming service — that is, until today.Right now, HBO Max is offering 20 percent off both its ad-supported and ad-free monthly subscription plans, which throughout 2021 gave subscribers limited-time access to movies like Dune the same day they hit theaters. And while Warner Bros. has stated it doesn’t intend to keep simultaneously releasing movies in theaters and on HBO Max this year, it will release six exclusives on HBO Max... Continue reading…

Leica M11 in black | Image: Leica Leica has introduced the latest generation of its venerated M rangefinder camera, the new M11. The M11 is very similar in appearance to the M10 line it’s replacing, with much of the claimed 40 new improvements found on the inside. Leica says the M11 will be available starting today, January 13th, 2022, with a price tag of $8,995.The most significant upgrade is a new, 60-megapixel backside-illuminated full-frame CMOS sensor that captures 14 stops of dynamic range at its full resolution. Uniquely, the M11 also allows photographers to capture RAW files at 36 or 18 megapixels, which unlocks another stop of dynamic range, provides better low light performance, and allows for longer burst shooting at the expense of zoomed-in detail. (The... Continue reading…

The HP Elite Dragonfly G3 is one of thebiggest laptop releases from CES, bringing more consumer-friendly features to a traditional business laptop. | Image: HP HP had one of the most expansive laptop launches of this year’s CES. The headliners included two Elite Dragonfly models, a whole gaggle of Windows 11 Elitebooks, and a dump of gaming laptpos and desktops (as well as accessories). We saw the usual spec upgrades: better chips, smaller bezels, better battery life, bigger touchpads, etc.But a few newer themes ran through HP’s releases and through those of many other major laptop manufacturers as well. Less obtrusive, chic-er looks. Heavier duty chips in chassis that are thinner, lighter, and easier to take from place to place. AI features meant to prevent snooping in public places. Better conferencing technology — lines that have resisted adding webcams for years finally have them. These... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / Photo by Becca Farsace Back in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, people who wanted to get together while staying safe from infection discovered that they could meet with friends, families, and co-workers via videoconferencing software. Maybe because many of them were already using Zoom at work for videoconferencing, that app almost immediately became the flavor of the day.There were a few hiccups along the way — possibly because Zoom was meant to be primarily a business app. At first, while Zoom included some methods that could be used to safeguard meetings, those features could be hard to find, especially if you hadn’t used the app before. Meetings began to be interrupted by unwanted intruders who would purposely cause disruptions, often in extremely... Continue reading…

You should probably buy the Pixel 6 instead Continue reading…

Photo by Walid Berrazeg/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which supplies silicon for Apple, Qualcomm, and other tech giants, plans to spend as much as $44 billion to increase its manufacturing capacity in 2022, Reuters reports. In its latest earnings release, the Taiwanese firm said it expects capital spending to be between $40 and $44 billion in 2022, up from a previous record of $30 billion in 2021.It’s not an entirely unexpected increase, given the company’s previously announced plan to spend $100 billion on expanding its manufacturing capacity through 2023. But the record sum suggests it doesn’t expect demand for chips to slow down anytime soon, despite some analyst warnings of potentials slowdowns in areas like... Continue reading…

Xbox One S | Photo by Tyler Pina / The Verge Microsoft has stopped manufacturing all Xbox One consoles. The software giant originally discontinued the Xbox One X and digital Xbox One S ahead of the Xbox Series X launch, then quietly stopped manufacturing the Xbox One S at the end of 2020, leaving retailers to sell out their remaining stock.“To focus on production of Xbox Series X / S, we stopped production for all Xbox One consoles by the end of 2020,” says Cindy Walker, senior director of Xbox console product marketing, in a statement to The Verge.Microsoft’s confirmation comes just as a Bloomberg report suggested Sony had planned to end PS4 production at the end of 2021, but that the company will now manufacture around a million PS4 consoles in 2022. Sony has confirmed PS4... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Nigeria has lifted its ban on Twitter, first instated on June 5th, 2021. The Nigerian government says Twitter has agreed to meet all of its demands, according to a report from CNN. These include Twitter opening a local office in Nigeria, addressing concerns over its tax payments, and “managing prohibited publication in line with Nigerian law.”This last condition is particularly important, as the original ban was condemned by many international agencies as an act of censorship. The Nigerian government banned Twitter in 2021 just days after the company deleted a tweet by the country’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, that threatened secessionists in Nigeria’s southeast region. Some had interpreted the tweet as threatening genocide for its... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The PC market experienced its first big growth in a decade during 2020, when the pandemic began to force people to work and learn from home. Market research firms Gartner and IDC are now reporting that the worldwide PC market has grown again throughout 2021, as demand for traditional PCs continued during a global chip shortage.Nearly 340 million PCs were shipped in 2021, according to Gartner. That’s a nearly 10 percent increase over the already unprecedented numbers seen in 2020. IDC puts the figure at 348.8 million, up nearly 15 percent.“2021 has truly been a return to form for the PC,” said Jitesh Ubrani, a research manager at IDC. “Consumer need for PCs in emerging markets and global commercial demand remained strong during the... Continue reading…

Image: Dropbox Dropbox’s latest beta has added native support for Macs with M1 processors, 9to5Mac reports. The addition was confirmed by a Dropbox community manager on the company’s forums, and we’ve verified it by installing the latest beta of the macOS app. You can grab it yourselves from this Dropbox forum.The service has always worked on Apple’s M1 Macs, but until now it’s had to use Apple’s Rosetta 2 translation layer. This allowed the macOS app, which was originally designed for old Intel-based Macs, to run on machines with Apple’s new M1 processors. Offering native M1 support should result in Dropbox having better performance and consuming less power when used with Apple Silicon devices. That said, Rosetta translation is so fast you might not... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple has denied that last month’s iOS 15.2 update is behind the difficulty some iPhone owners have faced with using the iCloud Private Relay feature on cellular networks. Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile earlier this week said they weren’t blocking the VPN-like feature, but T-Mobile claimed to have identified that iOS 15.2 toggled it off by default.Now Apple says that’s not the case. After releasing an updated beta of iOS 15.3 that clarifies the language in iCloud settings, Apple issued a statement to 9to5Mac saying that iOS 15.2 wasn’t the problem. “No changes were made to iCloud Private Relay in iOS 15.2 that would have toggled the feature off,” the statement reads. “Users are encouraged to check their Settings to see if Private Relay is... Continue reading…

AmpMe isn’t a brand-new app that popped up just to scam unsuspecting users out of their money. See the photo atop this post? That’s from 2015, when we first covered the idea: an app that can sync up a room full of smartphones into a single gigantic speaker with no fees in sight. But as App Store scam hunter Kosta Eleftheriou points out, the app looks seriously shady more than six years later — if you downloaded it yesterday, it would immediately try to sell you on a $9.99 a week automatic recurring subscription. That’s $520 a year, an incredible sum if you pull it out as a party trick and then forget to cancel.AppFigures estimates the app has raked in $13 million since 2018.

Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge Apple is updating the wording for iCloud Private Relay issues in the latest iOS 15.3 beta, clarifying that problems with the service may be an inadvertently switched-off setting and not issues with a customer’s specific cell carrier, via MacRumors.The old message put the blame for iCloud Private Relay not working squarely on the shoulders of cell carriers.

It’s called CarBravo and is set to launch in the spring. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The used car market is red hot, and it seems General Motors wants to compete squarely with used vehicle sites like Carvana with a new website called CarBravo. GM is beginning to enroll dealers now to be a part of the site, which is set to launch in “spring 2022,” according to a press release.CarBravo will not only let shoppers look at inventories from both dealers and GM’s central stock of used vehicles, but it will also let people shop for non-GM used vehicles, Steve Carlisle, GM’s EVP and president of GM North America, said in a statement. That could help it better take on Carvana (which just announced it has sold one million cars) and other sites such as CarMax and Vroom, which let people shop across many different car brands.The... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Multipoint support on earbuds has long been one of Jabra’s hallmarks, but slowly we’re starting to see other brands add the convenience to their buds. The latest is OnePlus, which is adding “dual connection” to its flagship OnePlus Buds Pro with a new firmware update.Once that update is installed, the Buds Pro will be able to connect to two devices at once, letting you seamlessly switch between, say, listening to music on your laptop and taking a call on your mobile phone.This functionality is common in a lot of premium wireless headphones but has been much slower to make its way to earbuds. For a long time multipoint was a big selling point for Jabra’s Elite 65t, 75t, and 85t earbuds. But other companies like Anker and JBL have... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In a public report issued earlier this week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommends that the IRS and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) be given more information about the location of the kiosks where people can turn cash into crypto or vice versa. In its report, GAO cites crypto’s potential use in sex trafficking and drug dealing as the reason why the government should have more insight into one of the ways people obtain crypto outside of the more tightly regulated exchanges.While kiosk operators already have to comply with several regulations (they have to register with FinCEN, keep transaction records, and collect extra information for transfers over $3,000), GAO argues that it’s still hard for government... Continue reading…

Unfortunately, us reviewers also tend to snap photos exclusively on the left wrist. | Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge Good news for Wear OS southpaws: Google is adding the ability to rotate the screen on Wear OS watches 180 degrees. There is, however, a catch — you might have to upgrade to get the feature.The news was initially spotted on Reddit by journalist Mishaal Rahman and picked up by Android Central. In a Google IssueTracker thread requesting customizable screen orientation, a developer wrote, “Our development team has implemented the feature you have requested and will be available on future new devices.” That prompted some mixed responses. On the one hand, the feature exists. On the other, it’s implied the feature may not make its way to all Wear OS smartwatches.Should this be the case, it’s understandable why Wear OS users are cheesed. It’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Wednesday, Apple released the 15.2.1 version of iOS, a minor update to the mobile operating system that fixes bugs, including a denial-of-service vulnerability previously reported by The Verge.The 15.2.1 patch addresses a vulnerability triggered through HomeKit, the software API for connecting smart home devices to iOS applications. If the vulnerability was exploited, HomeKit devices labeled with a very long name would cause iPhones and iPads to endlessly freeze, crash, and reboot.Since HomeKit device names are backed up to iCloud, signing in to the same iCloud account with a restored device would trigger the crash again.Apple’s security notification for the 15.2.1 update lists only one change, a fix for the HomeKit vulnerability.... Continue reading…

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images On Wednesday, a senior White House adviser said that a government-run website to order COVID-19 rapid tests “should be online by this weekend,” according to new reporting from PBS NewsHour. Tests should start arriving this month.The promise comes weeks after President Joe Biden announced that Americans would soon be able to order 500 million free COVID tests directly from the government. “We’ll have websites where you can get them delivered to your home,” Biden said in a speech on December 21st as the Omicron variant surged across the country. In prior remarks from White House press secretary Jen Psaki, the website would go live “as soon as these tests are available.”The website would go live “as soon as these tests are available”S... Continue reading…

Developer Zach Shakked — the creator of one of several controversial copycat versions of Josh Wardle’s popular free word-guessing game — has responded to Apple removing his app from the App Store after an internet backlash that followed his boasting about the money-making potential of his clone.“I realize I crossed a line. And I surely, surely will never do anything remotely close to this again. I fucked up,” tweeted Shakked. He goes on to explain that “Wordle” itself wasn’t trademarked and that Wardle’s game was similar to Lingo, an older TV game show with a similar word-guessing mechanic. Shakked also says that he planned to expand on Wordle with more functionality and change the overall design of the app to less resemble Wardle’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The California Department of Motor Vehicles is “revisiting” its opinion to not regulate Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta software. The news comes after numerous safety advocates and regulators have expressed concern about the company’s willingness to allow its customers to test its Level 2 driving feature in public. (The news was first reported by the Los Angeles Times.)The state’s DMV oversees the largest autonomous vehicle testing program in the country, with over 60 companies permitted to operate test vehicles on public roads. Only a handful are approved to operate fully autonomous vehicles without safety drivers at the wheel, and even fewer have been approved to deploy vehicles for commercial purposes.Unlike other companies... Continue reading…

It has taken nearly 10 years, but Windows is finally getting a new modern volume indicator. Originally introduced in Windows 8 in 2012, the black bar that pops up when you adjust the system volume using a keyboard or other device is finally going away. Microsoft is replacing it with a volume indicator that matches the overall Windows 11 design.Indicators for volume, brightness, camera privacy, camera on / off, and airplane mode are all being updated soon with a more modern design. “These new flyouts will appear when you press the volume or brightness keys on your laptop and will honor light/dark mode to give you a more coherent Windows experience,” explains Microsoft’s Windows Insider chief Amanda Langowski. “Brightness and volume... Continue reading…

Magic Leap Augmented reality headset maker Magic Leap has announced early partners for its Magic Leap 2 headset — a signal that the once consumer-focused company is still moving ahead with its enterprise-focused business.In a press release today, Magic Leap named four healthcare partners that are getting access to the device: clinical data visualization company SentiAR, neurotechnology company SyncThink, diagnostics company Heru, and surgical software tool Brainlab. The Magic Leap 2 is slated for more general release in mid-2022. It’s a smaller, lighter follow-up to the Magic Leap headset that debuted in 2018; in an interview with Bloomberg, Magic Leap CEO Peggy Johnson said it would be “slightly” pricier than its predecessor, which starts at... Continue reading…

The seemingly indefatigable Nvidia Shield is getting another major Android update, with the new Shield Software Experience Upgrade 9.0 that adds Android 11 and a host of other upgrades.The new update is rolling out to all Shield set-top boxes, including the original model from 2015 — which originally ran Android 5.0 Lollipop when it first launched. The latest upgrade to Android 11 gives the popular set-top box the honor of being one of the most upgraded Android devices ever released. To put that in perspective, a comparable Android phone from 2015 would be the Galaxy S6, which never got past Android Nougat (Android 7.0). In addition to updating the OS to Android 11, the latest Shield software is also bringing some other... Continue reading…

ps4 playstation 4 stock While many of us fall somewhere between trying to find a new-generation gaming console like the Xbox Series X / S and PlayStation 5 or trying to find worthwhile gaming experiences once we have them, Sony tells Bloomberg it’s still manufacturing new PlayStation 4s. According to the report, an internal plan had projected an end to the production of the system in 2021, but the ongoing shortages will cause the company to build about a million PS4s in 2022, according to sources.If you really need one, Sony will still sell you a PS4 Slim for $300Sony confirmed that PS4 production is still ongoing, providing a quote to Bloomberg saying the system “is one of the best-selling consoles ever, and there is always crossover between generations.”... Continue reading…