The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Moderna gave its omicron-specific COVID-19 vaccine to the first participant in a clinical trial, the company announced Wednesday. The report comes a few days after Pfizer / BioNTech launched a trial of its shot targeting the fast-spreading variant.The announcement coincides with the release of data showing that the two-dose series of Moderna’s original vaccine struggled to block the omicron variant of the virus, which has mutations that help it dodge those antibodies. A booster shot restored much of its ability to neutralize the virus — and while that protection weakened over time, it still stuck around for at least six months.Still, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement that the omicron variant is enough of a threat that... Continue reading…

Tear gas in Portland, Oregon during summer 2020. | Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images Proving tear gas directly causes menstrual changes is tricky Continue reading…

GeForce Now is exiting beta on LG TVs. | Image: Nvidia Nvidia’s GeForce Now app for LG TVs has exited beta, the graphics card manufacturer announced today. The cloud gaming service was released in beta last November for select LG televisions, and lets you stream games off Nvidia’s servers bought on stores like Steam and the Epic Games Store.If you’ve got a compatible 2021 LG TV, you can download the GeForce Now app from the LG Content Store. To celebrate the launch, Nvidia is offering six-months of GeForce Now’s Priority tier free with qualifying LG TV purchases between February 1st and March 27th.Although it’s previously been possible to access Nvidia’s streaming service on the Nvidia Shield, being able to access the service directly from a TV itself is a much more streamlined solution.... Continue reading…

Photo by Felix Zahn / Photothek via Getty Images When you’re in the middle of a Zoom video meeting at home and your cat suddenly decides to start bawling for its dinner, you’ll want to mute your audio in a hurry. In that case, you have a choice: you can either reach for your mouse or touchpad and start searching for the “Mute” button or you can use a quick keyboard shortcut to cut off that noise immediately.Zoom has a long list of keyboard shortcuts that you can use before or during a videoconference. By using these shortcuts, you can quickly join a meeting; mute and unmute the audio; start, pause, and stop recording; switch views from Speaker (a large image of the person speaking) to Gallery (several equally sized images, no matter who is speaking); and perform a variety of other... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Fans of inky blacks and bright highlights rejoice: Netflix now officially lists HDR support for Google’s Pixel 6, 6 Pro, and more affordable 5A. That’s according to one of the streaming giant’s support pages, spotted by 9to5Google, which appears to have been updated some time after January 14th. The update also appears to have listed the phones as supporting HD on the service.The update should mean owners of Google’s latest smartphones won’t have any problem watching HDR or HD content on Netflix. Although the streaming service often lists new devices as compatible on the day of their release, as with the Galaxy S21 series, there are occasionally times when it doesn’t list support until much later, like with the OnePlus 8.It’s not... Continue reading…

Google’s ambitions for gaming-focused Chromebooks might be close to reality. After years of teasing Steam for Chrome OS and even Nvidia demoing support for DLSS and ray tracing on Arm-based Chromebooks, references to new gaming Chromebooks have now been spotted in test versions of Chrome OS.Google revealed two years ago that it was working on Steam support for Chromebooks, but we’ve heard very little ever since.9to5Google reports that three codenames for potential gaming Chromebooks have been spotted, all with RGB keyboards. The publication speculates that both HP and Lenovo could be testing gaming Chromebooks, based on employee contributions to Chrome OS code. A third mysterious device, codenamed Ripple, appears to be a tablet with a... Continue reading…

Image: Studio Ghibli A theme park based around the work of legendary Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli will open on November 1st in Nagakute, Japan, the company’s official Twitter account has announced. Plans for the park, which shouldn’t be confused with the existing Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, were initially announced in 2017.Ghibli Park will be located on the site of the 2005 World’s Fair in the city of Nagakute, around 90 miles east of Kyoto and 150 miles west of Tokyo. A recreation of Satsuki and Mei’s house from My Neighbor Totoro was already built on this site for the fair, but the new park will expand on this with new attractions based on other Ghibli films.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon has shuttered a controversial influence campaign in which it paid workers to tweet about how much they love working at Amazon, reports The Financial Times. Employees at the retailer’s warehouses (which it calls fulfillment centers) were paid to share positive impressions about the company and to deny widely-reported workplace failings — like employees being forced to urinate in bottles in order to meet performance targets.According to internal documents shared by The Intercept in 2021, the scheme launched in 2018 in response to waves of criticism of Amazon’s safety standards and working conditions. Workers were selected for their “great sense of humor” and told to respond “in a polite — but blunt — way” to the company’s critics,... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Hawkins Lamborghini is accelerating into the world of the blockchain with the release of its first NFT (non-fungible token) next month. The Italian automaker, which is in the midst of an ambitious shift to hybrid and electric sports cars, announced that it would auction off a series of NFTs that it produced in collaboration with Swiss artist Fabian Oefner, as well as NFT Pro and Sotheby’s.Oefner’s image depicts a Lamborghini breaking down into its core components as it rockets through the inky blackness of space. It’s less amateurish in its design than many of the more popular NFTs, like the Bored Ape series, which raises questions as to how it will be received by the crypto community.Lamborghini is fully embracing the astronomical themeL... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is announcing 135 creators who will take part in the #YouTubeBlack Voices Fund, including a slate of 40 in the US and Canada. The fund provides one year of support, including seed funding for channels, development programs, workshops, and networking opportunities.“Black creators have played an important role in shaping the culture on YouTube. From fashion and comedy to politics, learning and wellness, Black creators have propelled our platform forward,” the company said in the announcement.The grantees of the fund, now in its second year, include creators from a variety of backgrounds like lawyers, athletes, lifestyle vloggers, comedians, dermatologists, and pop culture commentators.YouTube announced the fund in 2020,... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Small businesses will soon be able to use iPhones to accept payments without the need for Square-style extra hardware, according to a Bloomberg report. The feature has been anticipated since Apple bought contactless payment startup Mobeewave in 2020, and Bloomberg now says it could be coming via a software update “in the coming months.”Mobeewave previously worked with Samsung on similar NFC functionality, trialling a system called Samsung POS in the startup’s home country of Canada in 2019 before launching it worldwide. Samsung POS enabled Samsung phones to accept payments directly from contactless cards and NFC payment services like Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay.Bloomberg’s report says it’s unclear if Mobeewave’s technology... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Samsung Electronics broke both its quarterly and annual records for revenue in the fourth quarter of 2021, making 13.87 trillion won (~$11.5 billion) in operating profit off 76.57 trillion won (~$63.6 billion) in revenue in the three-month period. The full-year numbers were 51.63 trillion won ($42.9 billion) in operating profit and 279.6 trillion won (~$232.4 billion) in revenue.Samsung attributes the 24-percent year-on-year revenue growth to increased sales of consumer products like premium smartphones, TVs, and appliances. The more profitable semiconductor business drove operating profit growth of 52 percent year on year, despite supply chain issues limiting production of RAM and flash storage.Looking to 2022, Samsung expects... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) is moving forward with unionization efforts at Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse after having “reached a sufficient showing of interest” to hold an election, according to National Labor Relations Board spokesperson Kayla Blado. The NLRB says that it’s scheduled a hearing for February 16th, after which the specifics and date for the election will be decided. This is only the second time Amazon’s warehouse workers have made it to this point in the unionization process, as Vice reporter Lauren Kaori Gurley pointed out on Twitter.On Wednesday, the ALU tweeted that its petition had been accepted and that “the fight is just beginning.” It’s been working to unionize Amazon workers in New York for a while: in October 2021, it... Continue reading…

The Cowboy 4 e-bike which just launched in the US. | Image: Cowboy Brussels-based electric bike maker Cowboy now has an additional $80 million in funding to help fuel its expansion into the US and beyond. The company has raised over $120 million since its founding in 2017, putting it on track to “reach over 100,000 riders by 2023,” according to a press release announcing the new funding round.The capital injection propels Cowboy into the ranks of a select few boutique e-bike companies like Seattle-based Rad Power and Amsterdam-based VanMoof, who are riding a tidal wave of investment after interest in e-bikes exploded globally during pandemic lockdowns. In September, VanMoof announced that it was the “most funded e-bike company in the world” with a $128 million investment round that brought its total... Continue reading…

Dev Pramanik/Titan Comics Though director Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth from 1976 was itself an adaptation of Walter Tevis’ sci-fi novel of the same name, David Bowie’s performance in the cinematic adaptation has become so iconic that Titan Comics plans to lead with it in its upcoming graphic novelization from writer Dan Watters and artist Dev Pramanik.Like the film before it, Titan’s The Man Who Fell to Earth will tell the story of Thomas Jerome Newton, a humanoid alien with Bowie’s signature heterochromatic eyes who comes to Earth on a desperate mission in search of water that his home planet desperately needs. In a press release about the new book, Watters reflected on how the original story was always a rumination on humanity’s relationship with... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has identified and is rolling out a fix for the bug that intermittently prevented third-party apps from syncing in iCloud (via 9to5Mac). In a response to a developer on Apple’s community forum, Apple says it has “investigated this issue on the CloudKit backend, and have implemented a fix.”The company still didn’t specify exactly what went wrong — it said the errors “resemble request-throttling that may be affecting a specific user, or the container as a whole,” and vaguely blamed “an underlying issue” for causing the widespread syncing problems.Some users received a “Request failed with HTTP status code 503” error codeAs 9to5Mac reports, developers have been dealing with this issue since November, which hasn’t been publicly... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix keeps getting more expensive — and HBO seems to think that’s great news for its own business. During the earnings call for HBO Max parent AT&T on Wednesday, the company’s chief executive John Stankey said the higher price of competitors will help HBO grow in the US.“We said the market was going to come to us on pricing, and lo and behold, we are no longer the high-priced offer in the market,” Stankey said. “The nice part about that is we think it’ll allow us to have domestic growth as we move forward.”While he didn’t specifically cite Netflix, the company recently raised its prices across all of its plans, bumping its popular standard plan to $15.50 from $14 per month. Its 4K plan, meanwhile, now costs $20 per month. That means... Continue reading…

You’ll have to wait even longer now. | Image: Tesla Tesla’s Cybertruck and Roadster will be delayed to “hopefully next year,” the company’s CEO Elon Musk said in an earnings call Wednesday. The announcement confirms earlier reports that the electric pickup truck would miss its earlier production date of late 2022.“If we were to introduce new vehicles, our total vehicle output will decrease,” Musk said. “We will not be introducing new vehicle models this year.”When asked about what else is holding back the Cybertruck besides battery production, Musk said that the pricing and what people are willing to pay for the included tech is the main issue “How do we make the Cybertruck affordable?” he said. The Cybertruck originally had a starting price of $39,900 at its unveiling event in 2019.M... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge ID.me, a facial recognition company that has been contracted by the IRS to verify taxpayers’ identity, uses a powerful facial recognition technique to match faces against a larger database, despite earlier claims to the contrary.According to a LinkedIn post made by CEO Blake Hall Wednesday and spotted by reporters at CyberScoop, the company does use a technique known as one-to-many face matching in which a target face is compared against a database of other known faces to find possible matches.This contradicts previous public statements made by the company, including a press release issued just days ago, where comments attributed to Blake Hall said the company used only a less powerful form of facial recognition known as one-to-one... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Discord experienced a widespread outage Wednesday afternoon, preventing many users from connecting to the communications app. The outage started at around 2:45PM ET and prevented users from joining calls or participating in text chats. “We are currently investigating a widespread API outage and are working to resolve this ASAP,” said the official Discord Twitter account. However, now the issue has been resolved, as the account tweeted “connection should be fully restored now” at 5:19PM ET.Discord is used widely by the gaming community and currently has 150 million monthly active users. This latest outage appeared to affect most users, with widespread reports of issues even connecting to the service.In a message in the Discord client,... Continue reading…

Photo by Gary Miller/Getty Images This week, Neil Young published an open letter demanding Spotify remove his music because he didn’t want to share the platform with podcaster Joe Rogan. It appears Young is getting his wish, as Spotify is now removing his music, according to The Wall Street Journal.“I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” he said in the now-deleted letter, reports Rolling Stone. “They can have [Joe] Rogan or Young. Not both.”Young didn’t mince words in the letter, which he addressed to his manager and his record label, Warner Records. “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by... Continue reading…

Image: Tesla Tesla’s fourth quarter brought in a record windfall, as the company announced Wednesday that it turned a $2.3 billion profit.It was the company’s second year finishing in the black, but it significantly improved over last year’s fourth-quarter profit of just $270 million. The company ended this year with $5.5 billion in net income, compared to $721 million in 2020. Tesla turned that profit on just over $17.7 billion in revenue and did it while its average sales price continued to drop due to the increasing popularity of the more affordable Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV.Tesla produced 305,840 vehicles in the fourth quarter, a 70 percent increase over the previous year. For the entire year, the company delivered 936,172 vehicles, just... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Intel is still feeling the burn from the chip shortage. It’s struggling to fully capitalize on tremendous pandemic-fueled demand for new PCs, because you can’t make a laptop with Intel chips alone. And yet that didn’t stop Intel from having its best financial year ever — in today’s Q4 2021 earnings, it’s reporting its highest quarterly and highest yearly revenue ever, at $19.5 billion and $74.7 billion, respectively — and four other revenue records as well. Profits weren’t nearly as rosy: net income went down 21 percent in the quarter and 5 percent year over year to $4.6 billion and $19.9 billion, respectively.CEO Pat Gelsinger warned about other suppliers’ chips constraining the company’s growth during Intel’s Q3 2021 earnings in... Continue reading…

No “hey Google” required. | Photo: Dan Seifert / The Verge If your Google Assistant-powered smart home display or speaker is rambling on and on after you asked it for the weather, you can now tell it to “stop” without having to say “Hey Google” first. It’s a small, but welcome, change and one that makes interacting with a digital assistant just a little more natural.Google’s smart home devices have had a version of this feature for years, where you could silence an alarm without saying “Hey Google.” It’s nice to see it expanding to silence the Assistant, too — saying “stop” when you want something to... well, stop happening is just so instinctive, like batting at an insect buzzing around your ear.

Image: Kia The pricing for Kia’s EV6, the company’s first all-electric model, has finally been revealed, and it ranges from $42,115 to $57,115 (including the mandatory destination fee), depending on the trim level, the company said in a statement. The EV6 lineup will include rear-wheel drive (RWD) and all-wheel drive (AWD) options.Compared to Kia’s Niro EV, the EV6 is important for Kia because it’s the first EV built with the all-electric design in mind, using parent company Hyundai’s E-GMP platform. Its release also marks Kia having something to show for its space in the EV market — something that’s been plagued with delayed shipping.Before adding the $1,215 destination fee, the EV6 Light model is available with RWD for $40,900. The EV6 Wind... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge On Tuesday, Apple quietly launched a Personal Safety User Guide to help “anyone who is concerned about or experience technology-enabled abuse, stalking or harassment.” The guide is a resource hub to help people figure out what their options are if they wish to remove someone’s access to shared information, as well as personal safety features available across the Apple ecosystem. Most notably, it includes a “Stay safe with AirTag and other Find My accessories” page at a time when an increasing number of people have come forward about being stalked with the devices.As pointed out by 9to5Mac, the hub is mostly repackaging a data privacy guide that was first published about a year ago. Overall, it’s a good thing to create an easily... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In the first half of 2021, Twitter received fewer user information requests from governments and law enforcement agencies than in the six months before — but increased its compliance to a level that meant more user information was released overall.That’s according to data published by the social media platform Tuesday as part of its latest transparency report. The Information Requests report lists the number of requests as 12,369 globally between January and June 2021, with an overall compliance rate of 36.2 percent. In the previous reporting period for the last six months of 2020, Twitter received 14,561 requests and complied with 30 percent.Overall, Twitter said that the volume of user information requests had decreased by 15... Continue reading…

Image: Fanhouse After pushing back against Apple’s App Store fees last year, creator platform Fanhouse is introducing in-app purchases to its iOS app — now with a 50 percent surcharge — to let users subscribe to their favorite creators. The app’s co-founder, Rosie Nguyen, announced the changes today on Twitter. The company wrote that the changes are being made “as a result of apple’s b.s.”On Fanhouse, creators charge a subscription fee that allows fans to access exclusive (SFW) content like updates, photos, and videos. Followers can also tip creators or purchase “locked” content. The app promises its creators will receive 90 percent of payments, with the remaining going to the app.Fanhouse was initially able to slip a “subscribe” button into its app... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge If you’re hunting for an Xbox Series X, you might want to check your email inbox. As we noted last fall, Microsoft has occasionally been contacting Microsoft Store customers, offering a “limited supply of Xbox Series X bundles” that are available to “valued Microsoft customers” in the US. Image: The Verge Xbox Series X bundles now available The emails are addressed to Microsoft Store customers, and bundles are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Microsoft is limiting orders to one bundle per order or two bundles per 30-day period. The links to order a bundle are unique and tied to a Microsoft Account and don’t always guarantee that stock is available for purchase.

Verizon owned TracFone said attackers gained access to customer accounts | Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Customers of Verizon-owned TracFone saw their numbers transferred to different carriers without their consent in recent weeks, as part of what the company characterized as the work of external attackers, according to a notice on its website (via the Wall Street Journal). Its Straight Talk and Total Wireless brands were affected as well.“We were recently made aware of bad actors gaining access to a limited number of customer accounts and, in some cases, fraudulently transferring, or porting out, mobile telephone numbers to other carriers,” TracFone said in the notice. The company did not reply to numerous requests for comment from The Verge, but the WSJ reported that some 6,000 customers were affected. Some saw their lines had been... Continue reading…

Uber faces a negligence lawsuit from a Massachusetts man left paralyzed in a crash | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A Massachusetts man is suing Uber for $63 million, claiming the ride-hailing company hired a driver with a dangerous record who was at the wheel in an accident that left him paralyzed. Will Good was in an Uber last April 30th on his way home from work when the driver swerved sharply and hit a parked car, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in Suffolk Superior Court. The lawsuit says Good struck his head on the passenger side seat and immediately knew he was paralyzed.The lawsuit states that the driver has a driving history dating back to 1996 that includes more than 20 driving citations, including several for failure to stop and failure to yield. According to the suit, the driver was previously required by Massachusetts to undergo a... Continue reading…

The Appalachian Electric Power coal-fired Big Sandy Power Plant is seen June 3, 2014 in Cattletsburg, Kentucky. | Photo by Luke Sharrett/Getty Images Major tech companies are weighing in on a high-profile climate case in support of EPA greenhouse gas regulations. Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Netflix, Tesla, Paypal, and Salesforce are among the companies that filed a brief yesterday asking the Supreme Court to uphold the agency’s authority to regulate the pollution causing climate change.“Both corporate action and EPA regulation are needed to reduce emissions at the rate necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change,” the brief says. The companies say they are “united in their efforts to combat this threat.”The case the companies are weighing in on, West Virginia v. EPA, concerns whether or not the EPA has the regulatory authority to limit greenhouse gas... Continue reading…

Image: Valve Valve announced that the Steam Deck will go on sale starting February 25th. According to the company’s blog, customers who have reservations will get an email on that day and have three days to place an order. Valve also says that it’ll release new batches on a weekly basis, so if you’ve got a reservation, March will be the time to keep an eye on your email.Here’s some more info from Valve’s announcement:

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple is releasing iOS 15.3 and iPadOS 15.3 for compatible devices today. It’s a fairly minor update, but it does come with an essential security fix to patch a nasty Safari browser flaw. Security researchers revealed earlier this month that websites could exploit a flaw in Apple’s Safari browser to access URLs visited recently by an iOS user and even obtain a Google user ID.9to5Mac tested the iOS 15.3 release candidate that was released a few days ago and found it fixes this particular security problem. Apple’s quick fix will be useful for iOS and iPadOS users, as, unlike macOS, you can’t simply switch to another browser on iOS to avoid the security flaw. Apple allows third-party browsers on iOS, but they all have to use the same... Continue reading…

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge HBO Max reached 73.8 million subscribers at the end of 2021, 46.8 million of which are located in the US, marking a 5.3 million increase over a full year. The numbers were shared as part of AT&T’s (HBO Max’s parent company) fourth-quarter earnings for 2021.

You can now auto-upload your PS5 captures from your console to your phone | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony seems to be close to making it a lot easier to share PS5 screenshots outside of your console. The company had appeared to be rolling out a way to have screenshots and videos captured on your PS5 auto-upload to the PlayStation app but now it’s gone. Sony began testing the feature in Canada and Japan in October, and it became available for me in the US on Tuesday night, but less than 24 hours later I am unable to use it.When the feature was first available for me, to get it to work, I had to do a couple of things. First, I had to open up the Media Gallery on my PS5, which you can find by going to the Games menu, scrolling all the way to Game Library icon, clicking that, and navigating to the Media Gallery. (If you’ve accessed the... Continue reading…

It’s a major international expansion. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Disney is planning to launch Disney Plus in 42 countries and 11 territories this summer, according to The Hollywood Reporter. It’s a significant expansion that could keep the pressure on other streaming services like Netflix and HBO Max.Here is the list of new countries getting Disney Plus, per The Hollywood Reporter:

Araya Doheny/Getty Images Isabelle Fuhrman’s performance as Esther in Paramount Pictures’ first Orphan film stunned audiences in no small part because of what the movie’s disturbing twist revealed about its titular child murderer. Twelve years later, Fuhrman is set to reprise her role in Paramount’s upcoming prequel Orphan: First Kill from director William Brent Bell, and the 24-year-old actress is certain that she’s about to shock everyone once again.In the original Orphan’s final acts, it’s revealed that nine-year-old “Esther” is actually a 33-year-old Estonian serial killer with proportional dwarfism caused by hypopituitarism, which she’s used to pretend to be a child for years as she bounces from one adoptive family to the next. Fuhrman, who was 12 when O... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The White House released a new cybersecurity strategy Wednesday aimed at reducing the risk of cyberattacks against government infrastructure.The strategy outlines the administration’s vision for moving government agencies towards a “zero trust” architecture — a cybersecurity model where users and devices are only given permissions to access network resources necessary for the task at hand and are authenticated on a case-by-case basis.The key document was published as a memorandum from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the administration’s policy arm, and addressed to the heads of all executive departments and agencies.According to the memorandum, shifting towards a zero trust architecture will require the implementation of... Continue reading…

Substack’s video feature is now in a private beta. | Screenshot: Andrew Zimmern via Substack Substack, the platform where creators can share free or paid newsletters, has announced a new video feature that’s currently in a private beta (via TechCrunch). The feature will let users upload or record videos directly in Substack and then publish them within their posts.The videos will be directly playable when viewed from a browserSubstack explains the videos will be directly playable when viewed from a browser. When included in an email, however, users won’t be able to click and play it from within the email itself — videos will instead show up as “clickable images” that redirect users to a web version in their browser. The platform’s support page says users can record and upload videos from their smartphone or desktop computer.... Continue reading…

Akili Interactive’s first product is a video game for ADHD. | Akili Interactive Akili Interactive, the company behind the first video game to get approved as a medical treatment, announced today that it will go public through a merger with Social Capital Suvretta Holdings Corp, which is run by former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya. The deal values the company at $1 billion.The Food and Drug Administration approved Aikili Interactive’s first product, a video game called EndeavorRX used to treat ADHD in children, in 2020. The company is still working towards full commercialization of the game but said in fillings today that around 1,000 doctors have written prescriptions for the game so far.The company has a slate of other projects in the pipeline, as well. In filings, it said it’s working on expanding... Continue reading…

Boston Dynamics is synonymous with four-legged robots, particularly its consumer model Spot. But in the past few years, the company has been expanding into logistics — one of the most challenging and potentially lucrative sectors in modern robotics.Today, Boston Dynamics announced the first commercial purchase of its pallet-stacking machine Stretch, which will be starting try-outs in DHL warehouses. The logistics giant will invest $15 million in Boston Dynamics as part of the deal, and Boston Dynamics will deliver a “fleet” of robots (exact numbers unknown) “to multiple DHL warehouses throughout North America over the next three years” where they will start with the work of truck unloading.“Deployment of the first Stretch units in... Continue reading…

A moon set can make for dramatic photos of the night sky. I always thought that taking a photo of the night sky meant mounting expensive cameras onto heavy telescopes and having extensive knowledge of the stars. But for the latest episode of my YouTube video series Full Frame, I flew 2,000 miles away from the big city lights of NYC to meet Bettymaya Foott, astrophotographer and director of engagement for the International Dark-Sky Association, who taught me how to capture incredible photos of the stars using cameras I already owned. What once seemed like a monumental task, involving deep knowledge of the cosmos, quickly turned into an incredibly peaceful but also incredibly cold night under the stars.Here is everything I learned about capturing a great photo of the night sky:Dark Place,... Continue reading…

Rows of composting grape pomace are covered for the winter in Sonoma County’s Alexander Valley on December 13, 2015, near Geyserville, California. | Photo by George Rose/Getty Images Scaling up composting, tree-planting, and other sustainable agricultural practices in California could trap about a quarter of the state’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, according to a new report. These strategies for drawing down greenhouse gases are cheaper and easier to ramp up than technological alternatives, like devices that suck planet-heating CO2 out of the air, and should play a key role in the state’s efforts to address climate change, the report authors argue.Although it often leads the nation in setting aggressive climate goals, California is also a state with one of the biggest carbon footprints, making it imperative that the state consider a wide range of strategies for reducing emissions. That could include... Continue reading…

Microsoft is planning to launch a public preview of its Android apps for Windows 11 next month, alongside some taskbar improvements and redesigned Notepad and Media Player apps. Windows chief Panos Panay outlined the upcoming changes to Windows 11 in a blog post today, and they appear to be part of Windows 11’s first big update.The taskbar improvements include a mute and unmute feature and likely the ability to show a clock on secondary monitors. Both were missing at the launch of Windows 11, but Microsoft is still working on improving the taskbar further to bring back missing functionality like drag and drop.The upcoming Windows 11 next month will also include the weather widget returning to the taskbar, something Microsoft started... Continue reading…

The Chaparral and its cargo pod in front. | Image: Elroy Air Elroy Air, a startup that wants to make cargo deliveries using autonomous hybrid-electric aircraft, has unveiled its pre-production craft: the Chapparral.Described by Elroy Air’s co-founder Clint Cope as “a hybrid between a rough-and-ready helicopter and a battle-hardened bush plane,” the Chaparral is a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) craft that transitions between hovering using eight vertical fans and forward flight using four swiveling propellers. A hybrid-electric powertrain gives it a range of up to 300 miles (482km) and a cargo capacity of 300 to 500lbs (136 to 226kg). Goods are loaded into an underslung pod that can autonomously be picked up and dropped off.“The Chaparral will be a vital logistics link for people around... Continue reading…

By going back in time, the game moves the series forward Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge In case you were looking for a deal on the Oculus Quest 2, Amazon has you covered. Its “Renewed Store,” where refurbished and used products are sold, will begin selling an appealing VR headset bundle on Tuesday, February 1st, although you can preorder it now for $249 (via Slickdeals). The kit contains a “like-new” Oculus Quest 2 128GB headset (normally $299 by itself), along with controllers, a silicon facial interface, a rugged, customizable head strap, and a hard case for the headset. The accessories aren’t official, as in, made by Oculus, but it’s enough to get you started. Read our review of the headset.This kit is sold and shipped from Amazon, which offers a one-year limited manufacturer’s warranty on the product. We’ve seen... Continue reading…

Xiaomi has announced the Redmi Note 11 series, continuing its popular line of budget-friendly handsets that sell in huge numbers in India and various other markets.There are four phones in total, but they only differentiate themselves in a few specific areas. All of them have what Xiaomi describes as a “trendy flat-edge body” — in other words, yes, it looks like an iPhone — and most of the specs are shared across at least two models. Here’s how it all breaks down: