The Verge

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge AT&T and Google have announced that all Android phones on the network will use Google’s Android Messages app for SMS and RCS services. T-Mobile made the exact same partnership deal with Google in March, which leaves Verizon as the only US carrier who hasn’t committed to switching its customers to Android Messages by default.Along with the switch to Messages comes another important shift: real interoperability with RCS on other networks. AT&T has supported RCS for awhile now, but that support has been as haphazard as it was half-hearted. The new deal also means that AT&T customers will benefit from the rollout of end-to-end encryption for RCS that Google is rolling out to all customers this year (that rollout has already begun, in... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called for an investigation of Google’s alleged manipulation of the marketplace for online ads, opening the door for a new federal regulator for digital advertising markets.Warren’s letter focuses on a program called “Project Bernanke,” revealed in April as part of a lawsuit against Google led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Under that program, Google allegedly used historical Google Ads data to boost clients’ chances of winning auctions. The practice allegedly resulted in $230 million in additional revenue for the company.“The market for digital advertising has become perhaps the most actively traded commodity exchange in... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge The auto industry is holding its fire — for now — over the new requirement to report crashes involving vehicles equipped with partially and fully autonomous driving systems. But automakers are also distancing themselves from the company that appears to be the primary target of the new rule: Tesla.The rule, issued yesterday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, requires companies like Tesla and Alphabet’s Waymo to report incidents involving driver assistance and autonomous systems within one day of learning of a crash, a major change that signals a tougher stance by regulators.car companies are taking a wait-and-see approachSo far, car companies are taking a wait-and-see approach, mostly lauding NHTSA’s commitment to... Continue reading…

J.J. Guest and G.C. Baccaris Does anybody else remember Excalibur? You know, Excalibur: the British TV show that ran for two seasons in the mid-1970s, mixing Arthurian legend with Aleister Crowley mysticism, interplanetary exploration, an undead (sorry, spoilers!) villain named Poseidon, and a deeply troubled production history? If so, that’s a little weird because it never existed — but if enough people remember it, maybe that could change.Excalibur is, in fact, an interactive fiction project made by J. J. Guest, G. C. Baccaris, and Duncan Bowsman. It’s a detailed “fan wiki” for the eponymous (and fictitious) BBC series, and clicking through it reveals layers of in-show plot summaries, behind-the-scenes cast and crew drama, and a running conflict between the... Continue reading…

Wing, the drone delivery arm of Google’s parent company Alphabet, has launched a free app in the US to help pilots fly their drones legally. OpenSky has been available in Australia since 2019 but is now available for both commercial and recreational pilots in the US to use for anything from conducting commercial surveys to filming and photography. It’s available now on both iOS and Android.OpenSky is based on Google Maps, Wing tells DroneLife, and it’s color-coded to show areas where pilots can and can’t fly. Green areas are a-okay, but pilots need to exercise caution in yellow areas, and shouldn’t fly at all in red areas. Perhaps its most useful feature is that it lets pilots submit requests to fly in controlled airspace and receive... Continue reading…

Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images Virgin Orbit is in the middle of its debut commercial mission from Southern California, five months after the company first reached orbit during a January test flight. Seven satellites from three different countries are loaded onto a rocket that blasted off in midair from Virgin Orbit’s modified Boeing 747 less than an hour after the plane departed the Mojave Air and Space Port.The carrier aircraft, a modified Boeing 747 named Cosmic Girl, took off at 9:53AM ET. Less than an hour later at 10:47AM, a 70-foot-long two-stage rocket called LauncherOne dropped from the plane’s left wing and ignited its single engine to zoom toward the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. The rocket is carrying the Netherlands’ first military satellite, four tiny... Continue reading…

This radical editing collective is unlearning what they know about film Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Microsoft’s first Windows 11 preview looks promising Continue reading…

Looking through a microscope, doctoral candidate Simón(e) Sun takes a tiny glass pipette and gently attaches it to a neuron in a petri dish. She’s taking recordings of synaptic activity, the electrochemical signals neurons use to communicate with each other. The data Sun gathers will be used to understand microprocesses in the brain.It will also be turned into music.Bridging science and art, Sun wrote a computer program that takes her data and converts it into song. And the ethereal MIDI sounds aren’t just nice to listen to — they can actually teach us a lot about how the brain works.Sun is studying something called “homeostatic plasticity,” which is how neurons regulate their activity. Her research has broad implications for the... Continue reading…

Photo by Urbanandsport/NurPhoto via Getty Images Sports streaming service DAZN announced today that it has acquired exclusive rights to stream the UEFA Women’s Champions League. As part of the deal, an overwhelming majority of the matches it streams over the next four seasons will be available for free on its YouTube channel.DAZN — best known in the US as a hub for boxing events — expanded to over 200 countries in December. It’s backed by billionaire Len Blavatnik who aspires to make DAZN the “Netflix of sport.” Former Disney exec Kevin Mayer joined DAZN as chairman in March to help make that happen, after Mayer abruptly quit TikTok due to Trump’s meddling. While at Disney, Mayer led the development of the wildly successful Disney Plus service and was widely believed to be Bob Iger’s... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge There’s a fantastic discount happening on the previous generation Sony WH-1000XM3 wireless, noise-canceling headphones at Best Buy. Originally $350 (but usually around $250 or so these days), you can get them for $190 new. While these lack some niceties found in the newer XM4 model (concurrent Bluetooth connections, auto play / pause when you remove them or put them on), the package is overall similar in terms of nailing the fundamentals. These have great battery life, USB-C charging, among the best noise cancellation effect around, and sound quality that’s tough to beat at this price. In addition, these come with a zip-up case that makes them easy to stow. I bought these in 2018 and am still patting myself on the back for that decision.... Continue reading…

LG’s Mini LED use an array of thousands of tiny LEDs as a backlight. | Image: LG LG’s new range of Mini LED TVs, which it’s branding “QNED,” are releasing worldwide starting next month, the company has announced. The lineup consists of three sets, the 8K QNED99 and QNED95, and the 4K QNED90, ranging in size from 65- to 86-inches. LG says the TVs will launch first in North America, with additional regions following “in the weeks ahead.”Mini LED is a relatively new kind of display technology which uses an array of thousands of tiny LEDs as a screen’s backlight. Because there are so many (up to 30,000 in the case of the 86-inch QNED99), they can create a sharper contrast between light and dark areas of an image. LG says the technology, which has previously been used on some TVs from TCL as well as Apple’s latest... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple isn’t backing down from its hybrid work model that will require most employees to return to the office three days a week starting in early September. Fully remote positions will be extremely limited.“We believe that in-person collaboration is essential to our culture and our future,” said Deirdre O’Brien, senior vice president of retail and people, in a video recording viewed by The Verge. “If we take a moment to reflect on our unbelievable product launches this past year, the products and the launch execution were built upon the base of years of work that we did when we were all together in-person.”The news comes nearly a month after Apple CEO Tim Cook sent out an email telling employees the company was rolling out a new work... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Zoom has announced that it’s acquiring a company known as Kites (short for Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions), which has worked on creating real-time translation and transcription software. Zoom says the acquisition is a move to help it make communicating with people who speak different languages easier, and that it’s looking to add translation capabilities to its video conferencing app.According to its site, Kites began at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and its technology was originally developed to act as in-classroom translation for students who needed help understanding the English or German their professors were lecturing in.Zoom already has real-time transcriptions, but it’s limited to people who are talking in... Continue reading…

The Demi Lovato Show will debut July 30th. | Image: Roku The first of a dozen-plus Roku Originals to premiere on the Roku Channel will kick off July 30th with The Demi Lovato Show, a series that had originally been slated for a debut on Quibi.The show will now launch as Roku’s first “original” to land on the Roku Channel, the platform’s free and ad-supported streaming offering. While originally intended for Quibi, the show will be brand new to audiences when it arrives on the Roku Channel this week. Each episode will be 10 minutes long, feature a celebrity guest, and will cover topics as wide-ranging as UFOs, activism, mental health, gender identity, and police reform.In a statement, Lovato said that they have “never been one to shy away from speaking candidly about things.” The show had... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge WhatsApp’s Spanish language content moderators and customer service representatives are pushing the company for equal pay, according to an internal letter obtained by The Verge. They say they’ve been excluded from a $2 per hour premium paid to other bilingual contractors. The workers are employed by Accenture, a third-party contracting firm, in Austin, Texas.“For several years now, Accenture, Facebook, and Whatsapp have denied equal treatment and pay to Spanish language Contingent Workers,” employees say in the letter. “It is an insult for companies like Facebook and Accenture to publicly champion diversity, but yet fail to deliver this to its own workers.” Accenture classifies much of its workforce as contingent, meaning employees are... Continue reading…

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) speaks with reporters on her way to a lunch with Senate Democrats at the U.S. Capitol on June 22, 2021 in Washington, DC. | Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images Senator Elizabeth Warren is calling on the Federal Trade Commission for a thorough review of Amazon’s bid to acquire MGM, arguing that the deal could harm consumers and may have anticompetitive effects in the streaming space and beyond.In a letter addressed to newly sworn-in FTC chair Lina Khan and shared exclusively with The Verge, Warren urged the FTC to specifically and closely examine “the possible anticompetitive effects this deal will have on streaming services and entertainment products in addition to the broader impacts that this transaction may have on workers, small businesses, and competition overall as Amazon—which already dominates numerous markets—accelerates its aggressive monopolistic behavior.”The FTC is said to be r... Continue reading…

Image: United United Airlines is adding a long-awaited feature to the in-flight entertainment seatback screens of its new Boeing 737 Max 8 jets — support for Bluetooth headphones. The company is making the upgrade as part of “United Next”, a new plan to expand and modernize its fleet with what it says are larger, fuel-efficient jets and a more comfortable in-flight experience.I haven’t flown in the last two years — for reasons that are hopefully obvious — but the thing that grinds most of my past flying experience to a halt is dealing with the bizarre two-pronged audio jacks airplanes use for inflight audio. Having headphones with a 3.5mm audio jack isn’t hard, but it doesn’t reflect the Bluetooth audio lifestyle, Apple, and plenty of other tech... Continue reading…

Our friend, for whom we feared the worst today. Twitter has fixed a bug that left some of us horrified when we opened the site (as is often the case, but for different reasons) — those viewing the social network in a web browser found that they no longer had the option to switch between the algorithmic view and the reverse-chronological one. The algorithmic view, which shows tweets out of order, has been much maligned since it first appeared, and the bug on Tuesday had people worried that Twitter was finally starting to force it on everyone.Twitter’s support account says that web users should be able to change their timeline order again, and a few of us at The Verge have confirmed that the button is back on our timelines. Twitter product lead Kayvon Beykpour called the toggle’s... Continue reading…

Last week, a pair of YouTube’s most popular creators was set to spar in the marketplace of ideas in a debate over the government’s simple, common sense advice to wear masks during a global pandemic to stop the persistent spread of COVID-19.The spat grew from a series of videos between right-wing provocateur Steven Crowder and the host of the H3 Podcast, Ethan Klein, calling one another out for their purported bad takes on mask-wearing. In March, Crowder called out Klein for saying that “you shouldn’t think about” what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells you and just wear the mask, rather than criticizing the agency and its scientists.Crowder, who is widely known as the face of the “change my mind” meme, has challenged... Continue reading…

Photo by Joan Cros / Corbis via Getty Images SpaceX’s satellite internet network, Starlink, should have roughly 500,000 users within the next 12 months, Elon Musk said at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) conference on Tuesday. SpaceX’s current goal, Musk said, is to beam broadband internet to most of the planet by August.The internet network, in the midst of an open beta phase, has launched more than 1,700 satellites to low-Earth orbit since 2018 and recently surpassed a “strategically significant” benchmark of 69,420 active users, Musk told MWC. He said Starlink is already running in 12 countries and expanding. “We’re I think on our way to having a few hundred thousand users, possibly over 500,000 users within 12 months,” he added.Reaching half a million users in the next year... Continue reading…

Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has revealed near-total lack of accountability from federal agencies using facial recognition built by private companies, like Clearview AI.Of the 14 federal agencies that said they used privately built facial recognition for criminal investigations, only Immigration and Customs Enforcement was in the process of implementing a list of approved facial recognition vendors and a log sheet for the technology’s use.The rest of the agencies, including Customs and Border Protection, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, had no process in place to track the use of private facial recognition.This GAO report greatly expands the public’s... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Bloomberg’s Lauren Etter on the rise and decline of an e-cigarette upstart Continue reading…

There’s a crowd for a mini Xbox controller, but this one doesn’t get everything right Continue reading…

The WD My Book Live and My Book Live Duo | Image: WD It looks like there may have been more than one exploit used to cause the mass deletion of data from WD My Book Live NASes last week, according to a report from Ars Technica. When news broke that people were finding that their data was missing, some (including WD itself), pointed to a known exploit from 2018, which allowed for root access of the device. However, it appears as though there’s more going on than was initially suspected.If you have one of these devices, you should unplug it from the internet before reading any further — it’s clear at this point that your data is at risk if the device is online.The second exploit, reported by Ars Technica, doesn’t give an attacker full control over the device like the other exploit. It... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Consumer Reports is restoring its “Top Pick” recommendation to the Tesla Model 3 after the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) released a new evaluation of the car’s camera-based advanced driver assist system.The IIHS was able to show that the Model 3 with Tesla Vision cameras featured effective automatic emergency breaking (AEB) and forward collision warning systems (FCW), two criteria for Consumer Reports’ Top Pick decision-making. Combined with the IIHS awarding the Model 3 its own “Top Safety Pick” title, Consumer Reports decided to once again recommend the EV.The publication maintains a contemptuous relationship with Tesla. It last revoked its recommendation earlier this May when Tesla began shipping the Model 3 and Y... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge HBO Max is launching in 39 territories in Latin America and the Caribbean today, expanding the service outside the US and US territories for the first time.A key difference for the launch in Latin America is that there won’t be an ad-supported plan as there is in US, a spokesperson told The Verge. Instead, subscribers in Latin America will have the option to subscribe to a mobile-only plan that supports SD streaming and up to five title downloads, or they can choose a standard plan that supports five personalized profiles, up to three simultaneous users, up to 30 title downloads, and high-definition streams in HD and 4K where available. Pricing will vary based on the region.“With today’s launch, we are introducing our global platform... Continue reading…

Developer Remedy Entertainment announced that it’s making a new game, codenamed “Condor,” a multiplayer spinoff of Control. No release date, price, or story beats have been shared for Project Condor, but all we know so far is that Remedy’s press release says it will be a four-player cooperative PvE (player vs. environment) game. It’ll be built with Northlight, the same engine used for Control. It will release on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X / S consoles.The game will be published by 505 Games. “As a multiplayer game, Project Condor has the potential to engage the gaming community in the long run, contributing to 505 Games’ product revenue stream longer than traditional games,” shared the co-CEOs of Digital Bros Group, the... Continue reading…

If you own a compatible iPhone, you can try out T-Mobile just by downloading an app. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile is offering a new, low-stakes way to try out its network for free for 30 days with no additional equipment required. Identified by Light Reading, T-Mobile’s existing Test Drive program now works over eSIM with compatible iPhones. All you need to do is download an app, follow the instructions to start the trial with eSIM, and you’re up and running — no billing information required. There’s no change to your current carrier plan or phone number, but you’ll be using T-Mobile data on your device.The Test Drive program has been around in one form or another since 2014. With the most recent iteration — which is still available to those who can’t use the eSIM feature — T-Mobile will send you a free Wi-Fi hotspot you can connect to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook is getting into the subscription newsletter game. It’s launching a new service today, called Bulletin, that allows writers to publish free and paid newsletters that can be posted to the web, sent to subscribers’ inboxes, and shared across Facebook. Perhaps the biggest perk for now: Facebook says it won’t take a fee from writers “at launch,” and writers retain full ownership of their work and subscriber list.Malcolm Gladwell, Tan France, and Erin Andrews are among the debut writersThe new platform is “focused on empowering independent writers, helping them reach new audiences and power their businesses,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a live audio call discussing the launch. At launch, Facebook has signed up Malcolm... Continue reading…

Photo By Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images Joanna Masel is quick to recognize that the contact tracing apps built to track cases of COVID-19 aren’t as good as they could be. The apps, built on a framework offered by Apple and Google, aren’t used by many people in the United States and didn’t seem to make a big difference in the spread of the virus.But Masel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona and advisor to the team behind the Arizona exposure notification app, thinks there are ways to make the apps more useful. In a paper published last week with colleagues, she outlined one possible improvement: adjust the apps so that they could better recognize situations where people who are exposed to the virus have a lower risk of catching COVID-19. Then, they may not... Continue reading…

Photo: GitHub GitHub and OpenAI have launched a technical preview of a new AI tool called Copilot, which lives inside the Visual Studio Code editor and autocompletes code snippets.Copilot does more than just parrot back code it’s seen before, according to GitHub. It instead analyzes the code you’ve already written and generates new matching code, including specific functions that were previously called. Examples on the project’s website include automatically writing the code to import tweets, draw a scatterplot, or grab a Goodreads rating.It works best with Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, and Go, according to a blog post from GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.A descendant of GPT-3GitHub sees this as an evolution of pair programming, where two coders... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Monday, Microsoft finally delivered two long-in-the-works updates for its Xbox Cloud Gaming Service (xCloud) that could mark a sea change for the future of cloud gaming.One is that xCloud games are now powered by custom Xbox Series X hardware, a major upgrade from the Xbox One S consoles that have powered the service since its launch in September. This means xCloud now has faster load times, less latency, and higher-resolution 1080p streaming. But perhaps more importantly, xCloud is expanding from Android to iOS and PC via the web for anyone in 22 countries with an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription.Taken together, the two updates mean that nearly anyone who has access to the service can play some of the biggest games on Xbox,... Continue reading…

Good Omens is returning for a second season on Amazon Prime Video, the company announced today, with stars Michael Sheen and David Tennant returning to reprise their roles as the odd-couple angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley.Also back for season 2 is Neil Gaiman, who co-wrote the original novel together with Terry Pratchett and will be returning as showrunner alongside Douglas Mackinnon (who directed the first season). Gaiman will also be writing the second season together with John Finnemore.The six-episode first season was originally conceived as a standalone miniseries, and already covered the entirety of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s original novel. So much so that both Gaiman and Rhianna Pratchett, Terry’s daughter, shot... Continue reading…

Photo: Marvel Studios Natasha Romanoff finally gets her standalone film Continue reading…

Photo by Matt Doughtery / KPRC2 Houston Car companies will be required to report crashes involving advanced driver assistance systems under new rules proposed by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).The general order will apply to manufacturers of vehicles equipped with Level 2 driver assist systems through fully autonomous Level 5 systems, according to the Society of Automotive Engineers’ taxonomy for autonomous vehicles.At Level 2, the vehicle can control both steering and acceleration and deceleration, but it falls short of self-driving because a human sits in the driver’s seat and can take control of the car at any time. Level 5 refers to a fully autonomous vehicle that can travel anywhere, under any conditions. Notably, there are not Level 5... Continue reading…

The ZenFone 8 delivers flagship-level build quality and performance in a small package Continue reading…

Logitech announced its new G335 wired gaming headset that’s available for preorder now at $69.99. It’s expected to ship in July. The G335 borrows several design elements from the $129.99 G733 wireless model released in 2020, including its expressive color options (as well as a new mint colorway), the comfortable bungee headband, breathable ear pads, a volume dial built into the right ear cup, and a flip-to-mute microphone.This more affordable model is compatible with the G733’s replaceable headband straps and mic covers sold through Logitech’s site, but it does away with most of that headset’s fancier features, like USB-C charging and the strip of RGB lighting on the front side of the ear cups. Logitech says this wired model has a... Continue reading…

At their best, Super Mario sports titles move beyond the game they’re trying to mimic. You don’t have to care about cars or racing to enjoy Mario Kart, just as you don’t need to know who Pep Guardiola is to have fun with Super Mario Strikers. The sport is just a starting point. From there, Nintendo’s designers expand on it with all kinds of interesting and new ideas. Mario Golf: Super Rush, which is out now on the Nintendo Switch, does some of this. There are familiar characters with superpowers, courses with strange obstacles, and a new mode that’s supposed to emphasize speed over all else. Ultimately, though, Super Rush ends up feeling a little too much like, well, golf.Super Rush at least gets the basics right. Swinging a club feels... Continue reading…

Hyundai has officially completed its acquisition of Boston Dynamics, the creator of the internet’s favorite dancing Spot and Atlas robots (which only occasionally look like dystopian nightmare machines). And to celebrate, the company is collaborating with K-pop sensation BTS on a new video that shows seven Spot robots grooving to the band’s 2020 song “IONIQ: I’m On It.”And while Spot’s smooth dance moves might bring a frisson of worry to any K-pop fans thinking that K-pop boy-bands might be the next industry that Boston Dynamics is targeting for its robots to replace human workers in, right now it seems that BTS isn’t too worried about the competition. A second video shows off the band celebrating the Hyundai acquisition alongside a... Continue reading…

The Asus ZenFone 8. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge The Zenfone 8, Asus’ well-specced and compact competitor to the iPhone 12 mini, has launched in the US. The company is currently selling two versions of the phone on its website. There’s a model with 128GB of storage which will eventually sell for $629 once its early bird pricing of $599 expires on July 13th, while the other has 256GB of storage and costs $699. Both are equipped with 8GB of RAM and are compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile’s networks, but not Verizon.We liked the Zenfone 8 when we reviewed it last month. Its 5.9-inch display makes it a relatively compact device in comparison to the rest of the Android market, and its 120Hz refresh rate and Snapdragon 888 processor mean it feels snappy and responsive to use. Its smaller size... Continue reading…

Instagram Instagram has always limited who can post swipe-up links to their stories, but today, the company is starting a new test that could widen that ability. In this case, however, it isn’t a swipe up that people will be able to offer, but instead a linking sticker. These stickers will operate the same way a swipe-up link does, except with a tap instead of a swipe. People will also be able to respond to stories that include a sticker, which they can’t currently do with stories that have a swipe up.For now, the test is small, and Vishal Shah, Instagram’s head of product, tells The Verge it’s mostly to learn how people might take advantage of links. They’ll be watching for the types of links people post while keeping a particular eye on... Continue reading…

An Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Amazon has announced a new feature for its Kids Plus service on Fire tablets and Echo smart speakers called Reading Sidekick. Designed to help kids improve their reading skills and ability, the Reading Sidekick allows kids to read either physical or digital books along with Alexa by taking turns at reading the books aloud with the digital assistant. The Reading Assistant is included in the Kids Plus service that comes with the Kids edition Fire tablets and Echo speakers or as a $2.99 per month ($4.99 without Amazon Prime) or $69 per year ($99 without Prime) subscription plan and is available starting June 29th.The Reading Sidekick works with most Alexa-enabled devices, including the Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Dot Kids, Echo Plus, and Echo... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Best Buy is offering an attractive deal on Razer’s Basilisk Ultimate wireless gaming mouse that includes a charging dock. The current price is $40 off, and you’ll get a $50 gift card to Steam for no extra cost. Amazon is selling this mouse for a similar price, but the Steam gift card bundle is exclusive to Best Buy. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Steam is looped into this deal since its big Summer Sale is happening, bringing discounts to many digital PC games through July 8th. This $50 could get you several games or pay for all of Mass Effect Legendary Edition, as an example.Compared to other mice in Razer’s lineup, this one has perhaps the most features. The scrollwheel can tilt for extra inputs, the DPI clutch for your thumb is... Continue reading…

The original Palm Pre. Physical home buttons are all but extinct on modern smartphones, and the Palm Pre ended them.It’s not hard to notice that smartphones have steadily shed their buttons throughout the years: keyboards, numpads, call and hang up buttons, directional navigation keys, and more have all fallen to the wayside in favor of more versatile touchscreens.In 2007, the iPhone — with its then-revolutionary 3.5-inch multitouch display — helped to push that trend along by reducing navigation down to a single home button. But even as touchscreen sizes grew and buttons fell away, the humble home button stubbornly stuck around. (Apple wouldn’t ditch the button for over a decade, when the iPhone X arrived in 2017.)But it was the Palm Pre, and its largely... Continue reading…

Here’s the HP Pavilion Aero 13. | HP HP has announced the Pavilion Aero 13, the lightest consumer laptop yet. It has a maximum weight of 2.18 pounds (0.987 kg), making it one of the most portable laptops you can buy of any type or size. It’s also powered by AMD’s Ryzen 5000 mobile processors, up to a Ryzen 7 5800U.On the outside, the Aero is available in four colors: pale rose gold, warm gold, ceramic white, and natural silver. Weight isn’t the only thing getting slimmed down, as this is the first Pavilion with a 90 percent screen-to-body ratio. The Pavilion has traditionally been HP’s budget line, with a bigger and clunkier design than the company’s pricier lines, but HP has been shrinking the bezels and chassis footprints on a number of its models this year. ... Continue reading…

Sony has acquired Housemarque, the Finnish studio behind recent PS5 exclusive Returnal, the company announced today. It was announced with a tweet which suggests Sony might also be about to acquire Bluepoint Games, the studio behind the recent Demon’s Souls remaster.In a blog post announcing the acquisition, PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst said that the studio “is one with incredible vision, capable of creating memorable new games that resonate with our community.” Although Housemarque has produced games across multiple platforms including PC, iOS, and the Xbox 360, the majority of its recent titles have been exclusive to Sony’s platforms. Prior to Returnal it was best known for the Super Stardust games, which have appeared on... Continue reading…

The UltraSharp shown on its two included mounts. | Image: Dell Dell has launched the high-end UltraSharp webcam that costs $199.99 and is available now worldwide. Its cylindrical design is reminiscent of Apple’s old but iconic iSight external webcam, but its features are aimed to compete with Logitech’s Brio and other modern 4K-ready webcams. In addition, it aims to serve as a more affordable and easier-to-set up alternative to mounting a DSLR camera behind your monitor.The UltraSharp is a USB-C webcam that houses a Sony STARVIS CMOS 8.3-megapixel sensor. It’s capable of recording or streaming in 4K at 30 or 24 frames per second and in 1080p or 720p at 24, 30, or 60 frames per second. You can tweak the field of view (FOV) between 65 degrees for a close crop, 78 degrees, or 90 degrees for the... Continue reading…

Image: Nothing Tech startup Nothing will announce its debut pair of true wireless earbuds, the Nothing Ear (1), at 9AM ET on July 27th, the company’s founder Carl Pei announced today. The launch comes around a month later than the June launch window Nothing previously announced, after Pei tweeted that the company was delaying the launch because it had “a few things left to finalize.” Carl Pei is best known as one of the co-founders of OnePlus, a company he parted ways with last year.Details about the Nothing Ear (1) are thin, but the company has teased several details about them over the past few months. We know they’ll have a “stripped-down aesthetic” featuring transparent materials in their construction, and that they’ve been designed in... Continue reading…