The Verge

My face when I sniff gas...perfume. | Photo: Ford, Christopher Ison So you just dropped a cool $59,000 on a Ford Mustang Mach-E GT, your own sporty slice of our electric future, made by a company that only knows how to build them tough (Ford Tough, to be precise). What happens when you go to plug in your new car and you miss that telltale whiff of chemical-y gasoline smell wafting from its insides? According to Ford, you substitute it with a “premium fragrance” inspired by gasoline called “Mach-Eau.”Mach-Eau — the name does not get better the more I type it — was born from a survey conducted by Ford Europe that found that 1 in 5 drivers will miss the “smell of petrol most” when they switch to an electric car. Naturally, wanting to push more Mach-Es and F-150 Lightnings into the world, Ford settled on an... Continue reading…

Photo by Chaim Gartenberg Sometimes you want the text in your app to be smaller, so you can fit more content on a single screen. Sometimes you want it to be bigger, especially if you’ve been putting off buying those reading glasses. But until recently, if you had an iPhone, you had to pick a single text size as a standard for all your apps.Not anymore. In iOS 15, you can adjust the text size separately for each of your apps. So you can, for example, keep the text small for your email, but make it a bit larger in Twitter — or vice versa. (Thanks to @OmarShahine for the info.)

Image: Alex Castro / The Verge On Friday, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) announced that the state plans to invest $700 million in American Rescue Plan funding to reach universal broadband connectivity by 2024. This new investment shaves four years off of the governor’s original plan to connect every household to high-speed broadband.The pandemic dramatically affected the ways in which people work and attend school — pushing many office-holders to renew efforts to ensure citizens are able to get online. According to Northam, more than 233,000 homes and businesses in Virginia are without broadband access.“Not just a luxury for some, but an essential utility for all”“It’s time to close the digital divide in our Commonwealth and treat Internet service like the 21st... Continue reading…

Steam Deck multiplayer | Image: Valve Valve officially revealed its handheld PC gaming machine only a day ago, but that was apparently enough to spread the word — when the Steam Deck went up for preorder today at 1PM ET, the demand from gamers knocked Steam for a loop as the store produced error after error. Seemingly every step produced another pitfall: two-factor authentication if you weren’t signed in, some signed-in accounts had to sign in once again, credit card checks, even a wonky response from a system that pegged long-established Steam accounts as being “too new” to participate.Other parts of Steam got flaky during the crush of preorder interest, too. The entire Steam store, Steam’s community pages, and the age gate that lets you view mature-rated titles didn’t... Continue reading…

The headline feature for Apple’s fall updates (including iOS 15, iPadOS 15, tvOS 15, and macOS Monterey) is SharePlay. It’s a new software feature on top of FaceTime that allows you to watch and listen to movies, TV shows, music, podcasts, and more with friends and family while video chatting.Right now, the number of SharePlay-compatible apps is a pretty small list: the Apple TV app for movies and TV shows, the Apple Music app for music, and Apple’s Podcasts app for podcasts. The company is promising some bigger third-party partners when iOS 15 launches this fall, including HBO Max, Disney Plus, Paramount Plus, TikTok, and Twitch. Some big names seem to be skipping out for now, though: most notably, Netflix and YouTube.For now, if... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Rivian has delayed the first deliveries of its long-awaited electric pickup truck again, this time until September. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe broke the news to buyers in an email sent Friday morning.The Amazon and Ford-backed EV startup originally planned to start delivering its electric pickup, the R1T, and its SUV, the R1S, in 2020. But it scuttled those plans at the beginning of the pandemic and said at the time that it would start deliveries in 2021 instead. Rivian eventually settled on starting deliveries of the R1T in June of this year, only to push that back to July, and now to September.“We know you can’t wait to get behind the wheel of your vehicle,” Scaringe wrote in the email. “Earlier this summer, we announced that... Continue reading…

Image: Apple Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.This week on the show, Nilay and Dieter bring back Verge managing editor Alex Cranz to discuss the announcement of Valve’s gaming handheld the Steam Deck, Netflix’s dive into gaming, Apple iPhone 13 rumors, the state of MagSafe, and, of course, the growing number of billionaires in space.You can listen to the full discussion here or in your preferred podcast player.Further reading:

Image: US Customs and Border Protection The number of counterfeit wireless earbuds seized by US border customs in 2021 has already surpassed last year’s total, according to a report from The Information. It’s a sign of how eager the makers of these knockoffs are to keep riding the sustained popularity of earbuds like Apple’s AirPods and those from Samsung, Jabra, Bose, Sony, and other companies.According to the report, “roughly 360,000 counterfeit wireless headphones” — valued at $62.2 million — were nabbed in the first nine months of fiscal 2021. That’s well above the 295,000 pairs that were confiscated during the whole of fiscal 2020. Just yesterday, US Customs and Border Protection announced a major confiscation in Cincinnati.Around 80 percent of fakes entering the US... Continue reading…

Residents at a cooling center during a heatwave in Portland, Oregon, U.S., on Monday, June 28, 2021. | Maranie Staab/Bloomberg via Getty Images The heatwave that scorched the Pacific Northwest in late June resulted in an enormous surge in emergency department (ED) visits in the region, according to a new analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were 1,038 heat-related visits to the emergency department during the peak of the heatwave on June 28th in “region 10” — which includes Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska. In shocking comparison, there were just nine similar ED visits in the region on the same day in 2019.The Northwest was home to a disproportionate number of emergency department visitsWhile much of the West was suffering through sweltering heat in June, the Northwest was home to a disproportionate number of emergency department visits.... Continue reading…

Kiana Madeira and Gillian Jacobs in Fear Street Part 3: 1666. | Image: Netflix In order to keep her roles straight, Fear Street star Kiana Madeira kept a big Five Star binder with her on set at most times. As part of the experimental slasher trilogy from Netflix, Madeira played two different roles across three movies, each set in a different time period. To make matters even more challenging, the schedule was incredibly compact: all three films were shot together over just a few months. So her binder served a crucial role. Inside were all three scripts, and she would write in it constantly.“Every time we finished a scene, I would make notes about how it went, how my character was feeling, how I was feeling, what I think we ended with in terms of the tone and the trajectory of the story,” she says. “My binder... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber has agreed to pay $9 million to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) after refusing to hand over data about riders and drivers who were sexually assaulted, and pay a separate $150,000 fine, according to a settlement agreement reached Thursday.The CPUC will give $5 million of that money to the California Victim Compensation Fund, and the remaining $4 million will “go to address physical and sexual violence in the passenger carrier industry,” according to The San Francisco Chronicle, which reported on the agreement Thursday. Uber will also now provide data about the assaults to the CPUC, though it will remove any potentially identifying information.The CPUC originally fined Uber $59 million in December 2020 and... Continue reading…

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge Whether you’d like to admit it or not, school is quickly approaching. And if you’re in need of a reliable laptop that won’t force you to completely deplete your savings, Chromebooks aren’t a bad way to go. The best Chromebooks deliver great value for the money, and many offer terrific performance for far less than you would pay for a more premium machine. Acer’s Chromebook Spin 713 is one such device, even if the high-end convertible is one of the more expensive Chromebooks on the market right now.Currently discounted at Best Buy to $619, the 2021 model packs in 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and an Intel 11th Gen Core i5, which is more than enough processing power for most people. Moreover, it boasts a great keyboard and a brilliant 3:2... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The United States surgeon general published a report this week calling for a whole-of-society response to health misinformation, calling it a “serious threat to public health.” It took a sweeping look at a wide range of misinformation, on everything from masks to unproven drugs.But the focus of Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s remarks circled back to vaccines. Daily vaccination rates have stalled out at around 500,000 shots per day, and in many pockets of the country, a majority of people aren’t getting immunized. The US is struggling to bump those numbers up.Misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines spreads fast, and so do the accompanying consequences. The rapid spread of the more transmissible Delta coronavirus variant makes them... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Shaquille O’Neal and Melissa McCarthy are the latest celebrities to lend their voices to Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, the company has announced. The two voices can provide weather reports, jokes, and personal stories when asked using the wake words “Hey Melissa” or “Hey Shaq.” Both voices cost $4.99 individually, and are rolling out in the US now.Amazon kicked off its celebrity Alexa voices initiative with Samuel L. Jackson in 2019, and says this Alexa voice skill was the top selling digital purchase on Amazon.com the day it was launched. In 2020, the company followed up with Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan. None of these celebrities replace Alexa’s default voice, but instead offer responses to specific requests.If you’re after a... Continue reading…

The NT68 is designed to sit on top of your laptop’s existing keyboard. | Image: Epomaker If you can’t stand to type on a Macbook’s scissor switch keyboard, let alone a butterfly model, and you don’t fancy lugging around one of the small number of laptops with a full-on mechanical keyboard built in, then Epomaker’s new wireless keyboard might be one for you. The NT68 is designed to sit on top of a MacBook or other laptop’s existing keyboard so your fingers don’t have to put up with their rubbery key switches for a single second longer than they need to.It’s not an entirely new idea (Nuphy’s NuType F1 keyboard is another recent example) but the quality and specs of Epomaker’s previous keyboards make the NT68 worthy of attention. It can be hardwired over USB-C, connected via Bluetooth to up to three devices, and its switches... Continue reading…

A phone repair store at a technology market in Shenzhen, China. | Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge Xiaomi is now the second largest smartphone vendor based on worldwide shipments in the second quarter of 2021, according to a new report from Canalys. The Chinese company captured 17 percent of global market share, according to the research firm, just behind Samsung’s 19 percent but ahead of Apple’s 14 percent.BBK’s Oppo and Vivo rounded out the list of top five vendors at 10 percent apiece. All five companies grew their shipments year on year, but what’s notable is just how much Xiaomi has managed to increase its volume — it shipped 83 percent more phones than in Q2 2020, whereas Samsung grew shipments 15 percent and Apple by just one percent.

Captions on a voice tweet. | Image: Twitter Twitter is now rolling out captions for voice tweets, the company announced Thursday. Twitter first launched voice tweets in June 2020, but they were quickly criticized at the time by accessibility advocates for not having captions.Now, when you make a voice tweet (something you can only do on the iOS app right now), captions will be automatically generated in supported languages, which are English, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Arabic, Hindi, French, Indonesian, Korean, and Italian.To see the captions on a tweet, you can click or tap the CC icon in the top-right corner of the voice tweet window. Captions only appear on new voice tweets, Twitter tells The Verge, so you won’t see them on older ones.Below is a screenshot of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In 2008, chipmakers Intel and AMD took two distinct paths: Intel kept manufacturing its own chips to maintain full control, while AMD decided to spin off its semiconductor business as GlobalFoundries, relying on it and other manufacturers to provide the actual silicon. Now, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Intel is looking to snap up AMD’s former fabs as well, in a deal that could value them at $30 billion.It’s clear from the WSJ story that the deal isn’t a sure thing, and GlobalFoundries outright denied that it was in talks with Intel. But it’s possible Intel’s negotiating with the investment firm that owns GlobalFoundries instead, as the WSJ points out. It’s also intriguing that the Journal doesn’t have a “no comment” from... Continue reading…

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images Jack Dorsey, CEO of both Twitter and Square, is enough of a fan of cryptocurrency that Square’s push into the area won’t stop at releasing a hardware wallet. Instead, the company is creating a new business, to go with existing units like Tidal and Cash App, which is “focused on building an open developer platform with the sole goal of making it easy to create non-custodial, permissionless, and decentralized financial services.”

A mural in support of England footballers Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka was unveiled in Manchester. The three were targeted with racist abuse online after the Euro 2020 final. | Photo by Charlotte Tattersall/Getty Images Bukayo Saka, a player on England’s national football team said in an Instagram post Thursday that social media platforms did not do enough to prevent the racist abuse he and his teammates were subjected to after the team’s loss to Italy.“To the social media platforms @instagram @twitter @facebook I don’t want any child or adult to have to receive the hateful and hurtful messages that me Marcus and Jadon have received this week,” Saka wrote. “I knew instantly the kind of hate that I was about to receive and that is a sad reality that your powerful platforms are not doing enough to stop these messages.”Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Saka, who are Black, were among England’s players to participate in a penalty shootout to decide the... Continue reading…

Images: Valve Valve’s surprising new Steam Deck has been officially announced, promising to let players take their whole Steam library of games on the go. But how does the handheld compare to other major consoles on the market, like the Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X / S, and the PlayStation 5?First off, let’s look at the Steam Deck’s specs. It’s powered by an AMD APU with a quad-core / eight-thread Zen 2 CPU and an AMD RDNA 2 GPU with 8 compute units, alongside 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM.There are three models available: one with 64GB of eMMC storage for $399, one with a 256GB NVMe SSD for $529, and a top-of-the-line model with 512GB of high-speed NVMe SSD storage for $649. While the base eMMC storage configuration could potentially mean slower game... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple employees say it’s harder than ever to get remote work requests approved after the company rolled out a new hybrid model that will require people to return to the office three days a week starting in early September. Some employees say they will quit if Apple doesn’t change its stance.While Apple historically discouraged employees from working from home, there were one-off exceptions to the rule, and some teams were more lenient than others. Now, employees say that even those exceptions are being denied. In a company Slack channel where employees advocate for remote work, roughly 10 people said they were resigning due to the hybrid work policy or knew others who’d been forced to quit. The Slack channel currently has more than... Continue reading…

Elgato’s new Stream Deck, which is different from Valve’s Steam Deck. | Image: Elgato Elgato’s Stream Deck is a popular tool for live-streamers, letting them set shortcuts and controls they can access with the push of a button, and the company announced a new model on Thursday, the Stream Deck MK. 2. This version brings a host of welcome improvements, including a detachable stand, interchangeable faceplates, and a removable USB-C cable. You can order it right now on Elgato’s website for $149.99.While the Stream Deck MK. 2 does seem like a nice upgrade, it was announced on perhaps the worst possible day. Just a few hours ago, Valve made a huge splash by revealing its new handheld gaming console called the Steam Deck.While they’re entirely different products, there’s sure to be some confusion about the names “Stream... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is launching a new privacy feature for search that lets you instantly delete your last 15 minutes of search history on mobile, the company announced on Thursday. The new option was first revealed alongside several other search and Chrome improvements at I/O 2021 and is now rolling out to everyone.The option to delete your last 15 minutes of search history is currently only available in Google’s iOS app and is headed to Android later this year. On desktop, your options for deleting searches are limited to setting your history to auto-delete every three, 18, or 36 months (18 months is the default for new accounts), or deleting searches by hand. You can see what the new option looks like in the iOS app below: I... Continue reading…

One of the photos from this Cannes photo shoot has been widely memed. Please make it stop. | Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage Twitter said Thursday it was hearing from users who were seeing too many topic suggestions in their home timelines and was moving to remedy the situation. “We’re fixing that now, and will continue to improve Topics and find ways to show you the very best of Twitter. Things you want to see, that is,” its Support account tweeted. To its credit, Twitter has seemed more responsive to users’ complaints — or their lack of interest — of late; in addition to Thursday’s topics announcement, Twitter said this week it would kill off Fleets, its ephemeral disappearing tweets that apparently no one was using.But instead of showing us more things we want to see, I think Twitter should lean into taking away things we don’t want. I have a suggestion... Continue reading…

Steam Deck. | Photo: Valve When the beloved PlayStation Vita eventually died out, many blamed the rise of mobile gaming. “I think the PS Vita, while ahead of its time in many ways ... launched at exactly the wrong time in terms of market opportunity,” former Sony vice president of marketing John Koller told The Verge about going up against smartphones. But despite the Vita’s demise, dedicated gaming handhelds didn’t die out — in fact, the space is arguably as vibrant as ever.Valve just announced the Steam Deck, a chunky portable PC that looks like a Sega Game Gear from a parallel universe. It’s designed to let players take their Steam library of PC games on the go. Just a few hours later, preorders opened for the latest iteration of the Nintendo Switch, one that... Continue reading…

Self-driving technology startup Aurora, which was founded by the former head of Google’s autonomous vehicle program, is the latest company to announce that it’s going public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC). The deal will give Aurora about $2 billion in new cash when it closes, which will help the startup in its quest to become a provider of self-driving hardware and software to companies in the trucking and ride-hailing industries.Aurora is merging with a SPAC called Reinvent Technology Partners Y that’s already listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, and is run by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Zynga founder Mark Pincus, and investor Michael Thompson). That trio is also in the process of taking electric... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Online shoppers will eventually see another option listed next to the usual payment methods, now that Facebook Pay will expand beyond the company’s own platforms. Not long after credit card companies dropped out of its Libra cryptocurrency project, Facebook launched its payments system for use across the main site, as well as WhatsApp and Instagram. Image: Facebook Facebook Pay is coming to online shopping. Now, just like Google’s stored cards, PayPal integrations, Amazon Pay, and others, Facebook Pay is opening itself up for use in transactions with participating retailers. Shopify merchants are first in line to add the system on their sites, with others to follow after it launches in August. Interested... Continue reading…

The Facecam includes a monitor mount, but you can also mount it to a tripod with its quarter-inch thread. | Photo: Elgato Elgato has attempted to be the brand of choice for streamers and content creators who need gear to get started — even if it’s rarely the most affordable option. It makes its own LED lighting rig, multiple kinds of mounts for lights and mics, app-controlled adhesive light strips for your monitor or desk, sound-dampening pads for podcasting, a mouse pad that doubles as a green screen, and a lot more. Now, it has a $199.99 webcam to sell you.The Elgato Facecam is a 1080p webcam that can record at up to 60 frames per second. It has a Sony Starvis CMOS sensor, with an eight-element prime fixed focus lens with an f/2.4 aperture, 24mm full-frame equivalent focal length, and up to an 82-degree field of view. The company says it’s great for... Continue reading…

Photo: CNN In a new documentary, Roadrunner, about the life and tragic death of Anthony Bourdain, there are a few lines of dialogue in Bourdain’s voice that he might not have ever said out loud.Filmmaker Morgan Neville used AI technology to digitally re-create Anthony Bourdain’s voice and have the software synthesize the audio of three quotes from the late chef and television host, Neville told the New Yorker.The deepfaked voice was discovered when the New Yorker’s Helen Rosner asked how the filmmaker got a clip of Bourdain’s voice reading an email he had sent to a friend. Neville said he had contacted an AI company and supplied it with a dozen hours of Bourdain speaking.“ ... and my life is sort of shit now. You are successful, and I am... Continue reading…

Valve’s new Steam Deck. | Image: Valve Valve just announced its new handheld Steam Deck, powered by a custom Linux operating system. The 7-inch device will play the latest AAA games, and because it’s a PC, you’ll even be able to install Windows on it. That means the Steam Deck could be the perfect Xbox portable, given Microsoft’s investment in shipping all of its future Xbox Game Studios titles on PC.“Steam Deck is a PC so you can install third-party software and operating systems,” says Valve, which means this hardware isn’t locked down in the way we’re used to seeing from tech companies.The Steam Deck itself will ship with SteamOS, a custom Linux operating system that loads into the familiar Steam interface you’re used to on PC. While Linux support for gaming has been... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A facial recognition algorithm used by a local roller skating rink in Detroit wouldn’t let teen Lamya Robinson onto the premises, and accused her of previously getting into a fight at the establishment.But Robinson had never even been to the rink.The facial recognition system had incorrectly matched her to another patron, she told Fox 2 Detroit. The rink removed her from the building and put her outside alone, her family says.“To me, it’s basically racial profiling,” Juliea Robinson, her mother, told the TV station. “You’re just saying every young Black, brown girl with glasses fits the profile and that’s not right.”The harms of facial recognition systems deployed in businesses and by police have been slowly coming to light as the... Continue reading…

Image: Emojipedia The draft list for the next round of new emoji was announced today, two days ahead of World Emoji Day on July 17th. Contenders include a melting smiley face, a low battery, a disco ball, and several new hand shapes — like heart hands and index finger pointing at viewer — for courting your sweeties or taunting your enemies.The release of new emoji was delayed this year because of the pandemic, and proposal submissions were on pause until April. This list won’t be finalized by the Unicode Consortium until September, but in general, most candidates shown in the draft make it through. The final versions should roll out to different devices and platforms starting in late 2021 through 2022. Image: Emojipedia Drafts... Continue reading…

Image: Samsung Samsung’s new entry-level Chrome OS laptop, the $299 Galaxy Chromebook Go, is available to purchase now at Samsung’s website and other retailers. While only the Wi-Fi model is available Thursday, Samsung plans to offer an LTE model in the coming weeks, which should be a nice extra perk for web browsing on the go.The Galaxy Chromebook Go’s modest price seems to be reflected in its features. It’s got a 14-inch 1366 x 768 HD display, a definite step down from the 4K OLED panel that shipped on the $549 Galaxy Chromebook 2. It’s also working with an Intel Celeron N4500 processor and 4GB of RAM, which probably won’t set the world on fire, but should be enough for casual Chrome use. Image: Samsung The Galaxy... Continue reading…

Image: Valve Valve just announced the Steam Deck, its long-rumored Switch-like handheld gaming device. It will begin shipping in December and reservations open July 16th at 1PM ET. It starts at $399, and you can buy it in $529 and $649 models as well.The device has an AMD APU containing a quad-core Zen 2 CPU with eight threads and eight compute units’ worth of AMD RDNA 2 graphics, alongside 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM. There are three different storage tiers: 64GB eMMC storage for $399, 256GB NVMe SSD storage for $529, and 512GB of high-speed NVME SSD storage for $649, according to Valve. You can also expand the available storage using the high-speed microSD card slot. Image: Valve The Steam Deck. The Steam Deck has a huge number... Continue reading…

A walkway at the Tidal Basin leads to a flooded sidewalk from the rising high tide on July 2nd, 2019, in Washington, DC. The Tidal Basin’s crumbling seawall and sidewalks are routinely under water due to the rising sea levels high tides and threatening some Cherry Blossom Trees. | Photo by Mark Wilson / Getty Images High tide flooding hit record levels in the US last year and is only expected to get worse, according to a new report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Coastal communities experienced twice as many days with high tide flooding last year than they did 20 years ago. Records were either matched or broken in 14 places across the Southeast Atlantic and Gulf coastlines.Nationally, coastal communities were hit with a median of four days of high tide flooding in the past year — although some places suffered through more than quadruple that number. NOAA’s outlook for the rest of the year until April 2022 rises to three to seven days of flooding. But because of sea-level rise tied to climate change, the long-term... Continue reading…

googleglass,glassenterprise,google glass enterprise Google Meet videoconferencing is adding fuller support for Google Glass, the company’s frequently overlooked augmented reality headset. Yesterday, Google announced an open beta of “Meet on Glass” for the Glass Enterprise Edition 2. Users with Google Workspace can sign up to test the service following a closed beta announced last year.As The Verge’s Sean Hollister laid out last year, Meet on Glass works differently from normal online videoconferencing. When a Google Glass wearer connects, other participants get a first-person view from the headset camera. Google pitches it as a collaborative remote troubleshooting tool for the business-focused Glass Enterprise Edition, replacing less hands-free options like capturing a video with your... Continue reading…

Facebook is adding emoji with sound to Facebook Messenger. The name for them, of course, is Soundmojis.To access Soundmojis, tap the emoji button while you’re in a Messenger conversation, tap on the sound icon on the far right, and then scroll through the list of available options. Just tap on an emoji to preview the accompanying sound and then hit the “send” button to drop it into your conversation.There are expected sound effects and some surprising onesSome of the sounds are expected: the goat emoji utters a bleat, while the clapping hands emoji plays an applause sound effect, for example. But some are musical, such as the hourglass, which plays Drake’s “you only live once, that’s the motto” lyric, and the sun, which plays a clip... Continue reading…

Crossclip’s interface. | Image: Streamlabs Logitech-owned Streamlabs, maker of the popular livestreaming app Streamlabs OBS, is releasing a new tool today called Crossclip that lets you take your favorite Twitch clips and turn them into social videos formatted for platforms like TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram.The tool is free for anyone to use on the Crossclip website. It has some smart features that let you quickly generate a shareable video that highlights both the streamer and the game they’re playing. A video for TikTok, for example, might show the streamer on top and their game cropped beneath them in a vertical format.I’ve been playing around with Crossclip for a couple of days, and I’ve found it really easy to use. It could be a very useful tool that lets streamers... Continue reading…

Climb The Giant Man Obby. Creators are putting their own spin on the virtual realm Continue reading…

Photo by Matthew Busch for The Washington Post via Getty Images The Tennessee Department of Health is suspending outreach for all types of childhood and adolescent vaccinations, the Tennessean reported this week. Along with stopping COVID-19 vaccine events at schools, the department will no longer do outreach for the HPV vaccine, isn’t planning for flu shot clinics at schools, and is taking the department’s logo off of back-to-school vaccination information sheets. The shift in policy came after Republican lawmakers in the state got upset that the department was promoting COVID-19 shots for teenagers.It’s a strong signal that the politicization and backlash around the COVID-19 shots, driven by conservative politicians and right-wing commentators, is spilling over to other types of vaccinations. It’s... Continue reading…

Images: Aston Martin Two years after Aston Martin debuted the striking but clumsily titled AM-RB 003 concept, the final production version has arrived with a much simpler name: Valhalla.The automaker revealed the hybrid supercar on Thursday ahead of this weekend’s British Grand Prix, where Aston Martin will compete as a manufacturer for the first time in over 60 years. Aston Martin returned to F1 this year with a team that’s co-sponsored by Cognizant, the professional services firm at the center of Casey Newton’s multipart investigation into Facebook’s content moderation problem. In 2020, the company was taken over by Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, the de facto villain from the third season of Netflix’s Drive to Survive series.Stroll walked away... Continue reading…

Don’t kill me, please. | Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge SoftBank’s Pepper robot is dead, and The Wall Street Journal is dancing upon its grave with a thorough account of how the “emotional robot” failed to live up to the hype. Expectations were so inflated back in 2014 that the first batch of 1,000 robots sold out in a minute, despite being priced close to $2,000.The entire article is well worth a read as a reminder that tech is hard, and predicting its impact on society is even harder.Although SoftBank certainly overhyped Pepper, saying its launch would be remembered “100, 200, or 300 years” into the future, humans are also to blame for getting sucked in by the bot’s doe-eyed demeanor, despite The Verge’s article titled “I met an emotional robot and felt nothing.”The WSJ report does... Continue reading…

Microsoft announced its new Windows 365 service yesterday, but the company said it wouldn’t discuss pricing options until the Cloud PCs launch on August 2nd. Now, Microsoft has inadvertently revealed one pricing option, allowing businesses to use a virtual Windows PC in the cloud for $31 per user, per month.The pricing option was revealed during a Microsoft Inspire session yesterday, as the company demonstrated how businesses can sign up to the service. For the $31 monthly subscription, Microsoft offers two CPUs, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. This is part of the Windows 365 Business option, designed for businesses with fewer than 300 overall users.“This is pricing for just one SKU. Microsoft will have many more options, both in... Continue reading…

The fourth passenger set to ride with Jeff Bezos on his space company’s suborbital rocket next Tuesday is a Dutch teen named Oliver Daemen, Blue Origin revealed Thursday. Daemen, the son of a Dutch private equity executive, will fill in for the winner of last month’s $28 million auction, who remains anonymous and “has chosen to fly on a future New Shepard mission due to scheduling conflicts,” a brief news release said.Blue Origin’s launch, scheduled for July 20th, marks the company’s first crewed mission to the edge of space. Four people will launch aboard the company’s suborbital New Shepard rocket from a remote desert site in Van Horn, Texas, for a few minutes in microgravity. Blue Origin founder Bezos, his brother Mark, aviation icon... Continue reading…

Photo by Caroline Brehman-Pool / Getty Images On Thursday, the surgeon general published a new report calling on social media platforms to make new investments in combating online coronavirus misinformation.The report calls for an all of society push to address vaccine and coronavirus misinformation, including sweeping policy recommendations for companies like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy specifically calls on companies to redesign their algorithms to “avoid amplifying misinformation.” He also suggests that they build more “friction” into sharing functions that urge users to rethink whether to share a post containing false information.Murthy also recommends that platforms put out “clear consequences for accounts that repeatedly violate platform... Continue reading…

PREMIUM SILICONE! | Image: Elago Apple’s new Siri Remote arrived without a built-in locator chip, so Elago has created the next best thing: the R5 silicone case with a slot for Apple’s new AirTag tracker. According to Elago, it features a “THICK LAYER OF PREMIUM SILICONE,” which is so dense it can only be expressed in caps.The $14.99 price doesn’t include the cost of the $29 AirTag, but it does promise to put an end to lost Siri remotes, especially if you own an iPhone fitted with UWB to enable precision tracking. It costs a lot more than comparable AirTag cases available on AliExpress that list for just a few dollars, but well, this one can be found on Amazon for whatever that’s worth. Alternatively, you could always just 3D-print your own case if you’re in more of a... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo Preorders for Nintendo’s new OLED Switch model will start today, July 15th, at 3PM ET / 12PM PT, the company announced today. The console is set to be released on October 8th for $350, a $50 price increase over the standard Switch model. Nintendo isn’t offering any specific details, directing customers to check with stores directly for how they’ll be handling preorders.The Verge will have a complete guide to preordering an OLED Switch soon, so check back later today to find out how Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart, and more are handling preorders for the popular new console.

Lyft is bringing back shared rides | Lyft Lyft will once again allow passengers to share their rides with strangers starting next week after suspending the service over a year ago in response to the pandemic, the company announced today. Shared rides will be available in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Denver starting on Monday, July 19th, followed by additional markets “in the coming months.” It’s good news for anyone who wants a cheaper or more environmentally friendly way of making a journey in a private hire car.Although shared rides are returning, they’re doing so with some social distancing restrictions. Drivers and passengers will still be required to wear masks at all times, and eating or drinking is banned during journeys. Shared rides will also be limited to two riders... Continue reading…

Getty Images Chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has reiterated that it expects chip shortages to continue into next year, Bloomberg reports. The warning came as the company reported its latest financial results, which saw its net sales rise almost 20 percent to NT$372 billion (around $13.3 billion) compared to the same quarter the previous year. However, automakers should see the shortage gradually easing this quarter.As the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer, a lot of attention has been paid to TSMC amid the global chip shortage, which has impacted the manufacturing of everything from cars to game consoles. TSMC is a leading manufacturer of semiconductors and is responsible for producing the majority of... Continue reading…