The Verge

Cyberpunk 2077. | Image: CD Projekt Red Just over a week after Cyberpunk 2077’s disastrous December launch, Microsoft began offering full refunds for people who bought the game through the Microsoft Store. At the time, the company said this expanded policy would be in place “until further notice.” But on Tuesday, Microsoft announced it plans to end those generous refunds, saying that Cyberpunk 2077 would once again fall under Microsoft’s standard refund policy for digital games starting July 6th.“The team at CD PROJEKT RED continues to work hard to improve the experience of Cyberpunk 2077 for Xbox players and has made a number of updates,” Microsoft said in a statement on its support page for game refunds. (Click on the link in the “Update on Cyberpunk 2077” box to see the... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge To take part in Amazon’s two-day Prime Day 2021 sales event, you need a Prime membership. That’s easy enough to sign up for, and the company even offers a 30-day free trial for first-time subscribers who don’t want to commit. But whether you’re anti-Amazon, or just want to mix up where you shop, there’s nothing but good news: plenty of retailers are offering competing deals to go up against Prime Day. Stores like Walmart and Target are responding with price cuts of their own, slashing prices on AirPods, Nintendo Switch games, and webcams, along with plenty of other tech.Here, we’ve corralled all of the best anti-Prime Day deals in one place. Like our main guide to the best Prime Day deals, we’ll be adding to this list over the next day... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Peloton, connected exercise equipment company and all-around fitness media powerhouse, appears to be working on a new wearable, Bloomberg reports. The device is described as a heart rate monitoring armband and according to Bloomberg, is referenced deep within the code of the company’s iPad and iPhone apps.The new wearable will reportedly connect to Peloton devices like the company’s bikes and treadmills, and Peloton's apps, which are available on iOS, iPadOS, smart TV platforms, and Android. The armband is said to feature a small screen for displaying battery and whether the device is currently paired, and it will also come in small and large sizes. We’ve reached out to Peloton for comment on the details in the report.Based on what B... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Peloton says that it’s working on an update to make its Tread Plus treadmill usable without a subscription, after news broke today that a $40 a month membership would be required after a software update. In a support email sent to at least one customer, the company said that its “Just Run” feature, which previously allowed users to use the $4,300 Tread Plus as a normal treadmill sans subscription, is currently inaccessible without a membership.The Just Run feature now requires the Tread Lock feature, which secures the treadmill with a four-digit passcode and is available only to those with a subscription. The company told The Verge that “due to current technical limitations, Tread Lock is not yet available without a Peloton Membership.”... Continue reading…

Photo: Acer Although the pandemic crisis seems (hopefully!) to be slowly receding, it looks like our work habits may be permanently changed. Many people who have been effectively working from home are reluctant to switch back to commuting, and many companies, recognizing this, are adjusting to having their employees work from home some, or all, of the time.But to have the best work-from-home experience, it helps to have good equipment and supplies, and today, the second day of Amazon’s Prime Day deals, is a good time to stock up. Here are some of today’s deals that can help you save money and make your job more pleasant and efficient to handle.Laptop dealsIt goes without saying that a good workplace needs a good laptop, and there is a range... Continue reading…

Zee5 officially launched in the U.S. on June 22nd. | Zee5 Zee5, a streaming service for South Asian content, is now widely available to all users in the US.The service will bring 130,000 hours of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi programming to US audiences, including originals, music, Bollywood films, and health and lifestyle content, as well as more than two decades of popular TV shows. Zee5’s arrival in the US, which follows a beta test, will make it the premier destination for South Asian programming, with titles available in 18-plus languages.While most content on the service will be available with English subtitles and some content is currently dubbed, Zee5 Global’s chief business officer Archana Anand told The Verge Tuesday that the service will likely dub more titles in English in... Continue reading…

Image: Blizzard Overwatch’s first foray into cross-play is now live — starting today, players across PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch devices will be able to group up together, instead of being limited to only playing with friends on the same platform.Players from all four platforms will be able to play together in Quick Play, Arcade, and Custom game modes; for Overwatch’s ranked Competitive mode, though, only console players will be able to play together. PC players, on the other hand, will still be limited to the same PC player pool — presumably for balance, given the advantages that mouse and keyboard players traditionally have in shooters.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Twitter is opening applications for a limited test of its Super Follows and Ticketed Spaces features. US-based users can apply separately for each program through Twitter’s mobile app; Super Follows are restricted to iOS, while Ticketed Spaces are available on iOS and Android.Twitter will select a “small group” of users to test its new monetization features, both of which were announced earlier this year. The Super Follows feature lets users charge $2.99, $4.99, or $9.99 per month for access to exclusive content. Ticketed Spaces lets them charge between $1 and $999 for access to one of Twitter’s social audio rooms, and it offers extra features like setting a room size cap. Users can see if they’re eligible to apply by checking a new... Continue reading…

Iron Man in Marvel’s Avengers. | Image: Square Enix Marvel’s Avengers got a big new patch on Tuesday, but alongside a number of updates, it has added a pretty bad bug on PS5. The game will now show a string of floating text on-screen while you’re playing — and notably, that string includes your IP address, according to Forbes. That means if you want to stream or show any sort of gameplay on Marvel’s Avengers’ current patch, somebody could use your IP address to learn a lot about you, such as a general idea of your location.The developers have acknowledged the bug via the game’s Twitter account, and in tweets posted after we first published this story, specified that this bug is affecting PS5 players and shared when you expect to see a fix.“We are currently testing a solution to the... Continue reading…

Myst | Cyan Worlds Last fall, Cyan Worlds, the original developer of Myst, released a built-for-VR remake of its game exclusively for Facebook’s Oculus Quest platform. Now, it has announced a timeframe for the game’s availability elsewhere: a version for PC and Mac that you can play in a compatible VR headset or on any regular 2D monitor will debut in the third quarter of this year, promising that players can explore “in a whole new dimension.”When the Myst remaster was revealed last year, Cyan Worlds said other platforms would follow the Oculus and eventual PC releases. There’s no word yet on other new versions to extend the reach of a game that has already spanned three decades.Reviews of the $30 Oculus Quest version by UploadVR and PC Gamer noted its... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge AMD’s new FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) has started rolling out today, available initially in a handful of titles. Much like Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), AMD’s answer with FSR aims to upscale games from a lower resolution to provide smoother frame rates without a noticeable compromise in image quality.AMD is launching FSR in seven games today — Anno 1800, Evil Genius 2, Godfall, Kingshunt, 22 Racing Series, Terminator: Resistance, and The Riftbreaker. It’s not an impressive lineup given Nvidia’s DLSS support across a number of top games, but the company is promising support for DOTA 2, Resident Evil Village, Far Cry 6, and more soon.What’s more important is how well FSR works right now. AMD is enabling FSR on a... Continue reading…

Photo credit should read STR/AFP via Getty Images Dota 2’s The International tournament, one of the biggest esports competitions in the world, may no longer take place in Sweden as originally planned.“Over the course of the past year, Stockholm Live and Visit Stockholm continued to reassure us in our regular and constant communications with them that The International - Dota 2 Championships qualified for the same exemptions other elite sporting events there received,” Valve said in a blog post. “However, despite previous reassurances, we were informed two weeks ago that the Swedish Sports Federation had just voted not to accept esports into the sports federation.”Valve also tried to reclassify The International as an “elite sporting event” with the minister of the Interior, but was... Continue reading…

Photo: Faze Clan The ongoing confluence of fashion and games continues with a collaboration between Takashi Murakami and Faze Clan. The celebrated pop artist has designed a new line of merchandise for Faze, including an esports jersey and mouse pads, featuring his iconic smiling flowers.While it may largely look like two brands collaborating on limited-edition merchandise, Murakami sees it as something a little more... ambitious. In fact, in a statement, the artist compared working with Faze to the relationship between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat:

Image: Dell Prime Day 2021 has proven itself to be a great time to buy a new set of headphones, a new TV, a phone, and lots of other things. It’s also a stellar opportunity for PC builders to score discounts on memory, storage, power supplies, desktop cases, monitors, processors, and more. The only things you won’t find discounts on (in 2021, at least) are graphics cards, which are still very much in demand and hard to find.Whether you’re building an all-new PC piece by piece (for gaming or general use), upgrading one or two parts this year, or hoping to grab some discounted accessories, we’ve got a few categories below containing the best deals we’ve found.Prime Day deals on monitors

Photo by Victoria Jones/PA Images via Getty Images The biggest electronic health record company in the United States, Epic Systems, claims it can solve a major problem for hospitals: identifying signs of sepsis, an often deadly complication from infections that can lead to organ failure. It’s a leading cause of death in hospitals.But the algorithm doesn’t work as well as advertised, according to a new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday. Epic says its alert system can correctly differentiate patients who do and don’t have sepsis 76 percent of the time. The new study found it was only right 63 percent of the time.An Epic spokesperson disputed the findings in a statement to Stat News, saying that other research showed the algorithm was accurate.Sepsis is hard to spot... Continue reading…

Image: Fisker Inc. On May 21st, vehicle designer Henrik Fisker said he had a “private audience” with Pope Francis and that his company, Fisker Inc., would make a custom electric SUV to be used for official papal transport in late 2022. What he didn’t share was that the meeting took on a much different character than described, and that the proposal was something of a surprise.An electric popemobile is the latest bold claim from Fisker, who raised nearly $1 billion for his company last year after previously touting a revolutionary solid-state battery and a manufacturing partnership with Volkswagen — each half-baked ideas that didn’t come to pass. And it comes at a time when a number of well-funded EV startups are facing intense scrutiny of the promises... Continue reading…

Zoox released the second version of its safety report today, containing new details about the vehicle that the Amazon-owned company is building from the ground up to be completely autonomous. The vehicle, which looks like an oversized toaster on wheels, lacks typical controls like a steering wheel and pedals and is designed to be bidirectional, meaning it can travel in either direction. And while that could in theory increase the chances of passengers getting sick, Zoox says its specialized design will make it one of the smoothest rides around.Zoox is one of the few companies that is building its own autonomous vehicle rather than retrofitting a car designed for human drivers to then drive itself. This gives the company more leeway to... Continue reading…

LAKE ISABELLA, CA - JUNE 14: In an aerial view, cattle graze on June 14, 2021 near Lake Isabella, California. Authorities are bracing for a predicted driest year on record for the Kern River, carrying only about a quarter of its average Sierra snowmelt water to Lake Isabella. The water level of the lake continues to dip below 16 percent capacity and large portion of the west are now in the most extreme drought category, with fire officials warning of another devastating wildfire season in California. | Photo by David McNew/Getty Images Seen from space, California’s drought is horrifying. To get some perspective on the dire situation, the European Space Agency took a satellite image of Angeles National Forest and the San Gabriel Reservoir in Southern California this month and compared that to an image taken around the same time last year.In 2020, the landscape looks lush and green and the San Gabriel Reservoir is bright blue. Fast forward to this year, and the same location is so dry it looks like a scene out of a Mars movie. The forest is scarred red, and the San Gabriel Reservoir is almost empty.While 2020 was awful for plenty of other reasons, it did give California a brief break from drought. The Golden State’s longest drought persisted from 2011 to 2019. The... Continue reading…

Microsoft is expanding its Designed for Xbox program to include monitors and displays. Some gaming monitors will now include a new “Gaming Features for Xbox” badge that will indicate they support the latest and greatest HDMI 2.1 technology, with variable refresh rates, HDR, and 4K at 120Hz support all for the Xbox Series X / S consoles.At least three HDMI 2.1 displays will get this new badge, including the new 55-inch Philips Momentum display. The Momentum supports 4K resolution at 120Hz with AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, a dedicated Xbox picture mode, and DisplayHDR 1000 support. Microsoft says it has worked with Philips to validate the display for Xbox Series X / S, and it will launch worldwide for $1,599.99 this summer. ... Continue reading…

Blink Outdoor security camera | Image: Amazon Amazon Prime Day is always a good opportunity to smarten up your abode, whether it’s an apartment or a multi-room, multi-level house. Compared to other product categories, there are usually some pretty aggressive smart home deals happening during Amazon’s annual shopping extravaganza. Most come from companies under the Amazon umbrella like Ring and Blink, however, like last year, companies such as Ecobee, SimpliSafe, and Google have also discounted a selection of smart home products.Whether you’re looking for smart speakers, thermostats, cameras, or smart locks, we’ve got all of the best Prime Day 2021 smart home deals you need below. And if you’re looking for discounts in other categories, we’ve rounded up the best Prime Day deals to... Continue reading…

Animation by Caleb Worcester A man carries a heavy backpack through a war-ravaged city. A medic pushes a zombified corpse on a stretcher toward an ambulance, as an ominous building with a logo for “Harvest Corp” sits in the background. Then we’re on a bright, vibrantly colored alien world whose surface is a shallow liquid, where an astronaut pulls on a wire dragging a vehicle behind them.That’s just the first 30 seconds of nearly 11 minutes of strange, beautiful, and imaginative worlds all created based on the same original animation. The video was assembled by Clinton Jones, aka pwnisher, who challenged animators to create their own 3D animated scene based on a bare-bones animation he created. The video rounds up his 100 favorite clips.The premise behind the... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge One of the standout deals of Amazon Prime Day 2021 is a huge discount on Bose’s flagship headphones, the Noise Cancelling Headphones 700. Normally priced at $379, today they’re dropping all the way down to $229. If you’re in the market for a pair of wireless headphones that are up there with the very best at quieting the world around you, you might not find a better moment than this to buy.The steep discount only applies to the white / rose gold model of the headphones, but the black and silver headphones are also on sale for $299 — and that’s still a solid deal.The Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 have a sleek design that stays comfortable no matter how long you wear them. They also have much better voice call performance than their... Continue reading…

Image: Apple When you open Patreon’s iPhone app and subscribe to a creator, Apple doesn’t step in the way and take a cut. It turns out, that’s not because of some behind-the-scenes arrangement between the two companies — Apple’s App Store team just decided to give Patreon a pass.“I wish we had some special contract with Apple. We don’t,” Patreon CEO Jack Conte said on Decoder, a podcast from The Verge. “We have to deal with the App Store policies and review process like anybody else.”“It’s just not the primary behavior that’s happening on Patreon.”On iOS, Apple takes up to a 30 percent cut of in-app payments for digital goods. That means creators on platforms like Twitch, Twitter, and Facebook can expect to lose 30 percent of whatever a fan is... Continue reading…

Image: Epic Games Epic Games is launching free voice chat and anti-cheat services that developers can implement in their games, the company announced on Tuesday. They’ll be offered as part the studio’s Epic Online Services suite, which is available to use with any game engine and supports Windows, Mac, Linux, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android.The new voice chat service is cross platform and supports both one-on-one and party chat in lobbies and during in-game matches. When using the service, voice data is relayed through Epic’s back-end servers, and the technology handles all scaling and quality of service features. Epic says the technology has already been “integrated and battle-tested in Fortnite,” which provides some assurance that... Continue reading…

Image: Tinder Tinder’s making some big updates to its app this week, mostly in the name of giving people more context about a person they might want to date. The app’s getting an explore tab, similarly to Instagram, that’ll let people find different ways to interact with and meet potential matches.In the explore tab, you’ll find activities like Swipe Night, Tinder’s interactive video game, and a new feature called Hot Takes. In that mode, which occurs nightly from 6PM to midnight local time, daters will answer questions like, “Which of these is the most pretentious?” and then they’ll volley in a chat with it disappearing if no one responds for 30 seconds. Participants can like each other and match from this screen.This is the first time daters will... Continue reading…

A Zoom call with pronouns displayed. | Image: Zoom Zoom is adding a new field for pronouns today, along with options to manage when they’re displayed. Pronouns will appear in parentheses next to people’s names in calls, essentially the same as how they’ve looked up until now when people have manually entered them. They’ll also be visible under people’s names on their profile cards.Pronouns will be visible by default on the profile pages for accounts on the free Basic Zoom plan, as well as for accounts with a single licensed user. The field will be off by default for accounts with multiple users, though administrators can turn it on in their account settings. Image: Zoom You can set Zoom to ask if you’d like to share your pronouns. People can also decide... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Amazon Prime Day 2021 features a lot of great deals — and many of them on Amazon’s own products. If you’ve been thinking about picking up an Alexa-powered Echo Dot or Show to make your home smarter, or if you want to make yourself smarter with a new Kindle tablet, now is the time to do it.We’ve listed the best Prime Day deals for Amazon’s devices below. For most of these, all you need to do is sign up for Amazon Prime to take advantage of the deals, if any promotions come with additional caveats, we’ll let you know. We’ve also put together a comprehensive guide to the best Prime Day deals, if you’re looking for more than just the best Amazon Echo deals, best Kindle deals, and discounts on Amazon devices.The best Amazon Echo deals for... Continue reading…

Image: Samsung If you’ve had a monitor upgrade on your wishlist, Prime Day has a few contributions when it comes to stellar deals that you might want to know about. Given how much monitors can vary in shape, size, panel type, and features, the deals probably won’t please everyone. But we’re adding every compelling deal that we find — at Amazon and beyond — to the list below to help get you set up with a great monitor.Also, if you’re looking for additional discounts, we’ve rounded up the best Prime Day deals happening across multiple categories, including gaming and computing.The best 1080p monitor deals for Prime Day

Illustration by Alex Castro The European Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation into Google over whether the search giant unfairly favors its own online display advertising technology over competitors, the EU announced today. The investigation will also explore whether Google is unfairly limiting access to user data to its competitors.It’s an important investigation because it covers Google’s core online advertising business, which Reuters notes generated $147 billion in revenue for the company last year. Bloomberg reports it’s the first time the EU has investigated Google’s online display advertising business, where it serves as an intermediary between advertisers and publishers to fill ad space on web pages and apps.“Google collects data to be... Continue reading…

Image: TfL By the end of 2024, passengers on the London Underground will have mobile reception across the entire network of stations and tunnels, London’s mayor Sadiq Khan has announced. Popular stations, including Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road, Bank, Euston, and Camden Town will be hooked up by the end of 2022, with coverage expanding in phases over the ensuing months.The announcement comes just over a year after 4G coverage was introduced on the eastern half of the Jubilee line, between Westminster and Canning Town, in March 2020. Transport for London (TfL), the city’s transport authority, says the upcoming infrastructure will support 5G networks as well as 4G, but that it will be up to mobile operators themselves to offer support for the... Continue reading…

After months of speculation and rumors, Amazon Prime Day 2021 has finally arrived, kicking off the summer season with a great batch of tech deals. The retail behemoth’s two-day event starts today and concludes Wednesday morning at 3:00AM ET, meaning you have two days to take advantage of your Amazon Prime membership and capitalize on exclusive discounts on headphones, 4K TVs, gaming accessories, and a host of other technology that rarely sees a discount outside of holiday shopping season.Below, we’ve highlighted the best Prime Day deals happening now, many of which are receiving a more sizable discount than they typically do. We’ve also rounded up the best anti-Prime Day deals, if you’re looking for the best deals at competing retailers... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Last Wednesday, Facebook announced that it would begin testing ads inside of Oculus Quest apps and said that the paid title Blaston from Resolution Games and apps from “a couple other developers” would be the first to include them. For many fans of Blaston, that wasn’t welcome news, leading to a wave of negative reviews criticizing Resolution Games for planning to test ads in a game that they paid money for. Now, following the blowback, the studio has reversed course, saying that it actually won’t test ads inside of Blaston (via UploadVR).“We appreciate all of the feedback and thoughts on the Oculus ad test for Blaston and other games that was announced last week,” Resolution Games CEO Tommy Palm said in a statement shared with The... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge In the push to be as well-known for services as it is for hardware and software, Apple has been generous with free trials, offering a year of Apple TV Plus for free and extending the offer multiple times. But soon that’s changing — starting July 1st, 2021, people who buy new Apple devices will only be offered three months of free video streaming rather than a year. After the trial is over, Apple TV Plus’ $4.99 per month subscription cost kicks in.Apple’s not particularly forthcoming about this change, but it is listed in the fine print on the new Apple TV 4K product page (via The Loop’s executive editor Dave Mark) and in Apple’s official terms and conditions for the promotion. Specifically, the text reads:

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Samsung and Google’s new upcoming smartwatch platform — which will merge Wear OS and Tizen together — might get its first preview at MWC 2021 at Samsung’s virtual presentation, which the company announced will focus on the Galaxy ecosystem, its new watch experience, and mobile security. The event will be streamed on June 28th from 1:15 – 2 pm ET.The official MWC event page explains that Samsung is “reimagining smartwatches, creating new opportunities for both developers and consumers,” which seems to indicate at least some sort of first look at the future of Samsung’s smartwatches. Announced at Google I/O earlier this year, the new smartwatch operating system is a big moment for the two companies. Samsung’s smartwatches... Continue reading…

Amazon owns a robotaxi company, is experimenting with delivery robots that drive on the sidewalk, and now is considering acquiring a big stake in a robot trucking startup.According to Bloomberg, the e-commerce giant recently placed an order for 1,000 autonomous driving systems from Plus.ai, a California-based company working on driverless trucking technology. Amazon is also considering buying a 20 percent stake in Plus — a move that could have serious implications for how the company moves its products around the world.Amazon is thinking about buying as much as 20 percent of PlusAmazon is thinking about buying as much as 20 percent of Plus, which recently announced plans to go public via a reverse merger with a special purpose... Continue reading…

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A sign is posted in front of the Univision building. | Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images Univision will launch a Spanish-language streaming service next year that sounds like a bit of a hybrid of Peacock and Netflix, with both a free tier as well as a paid plan that will focus on premium originals.The new service will comprise a “vast content scope, expansive library and more Spanish-language originals than any other streaming service,” Univision said in a press release on Monday. The tiered streaming service will effectively pluck the “best” parts of its existing services, PrendeTV, VIX, and Univision NOW and combine them with the company’s latest content haul gobbled up by way of its acquisition of Televisa, an IP and production grab for which Univision agreed to pay $5 billion.The company previously acquired VIX,... Continue reading…

On February 1st, I shed a tear for the future of gaming, when Google decided it would no longer fulfill its promise to build games specifically for the cloud. But Microsoft is about to take up the torch: the company has hired former Google Stadia design director Kim Swift, best known for Valve’s hit game Portal, according to an interview with Polygon.“Kim is going to build a team focused on new experiences in the cloud,” Xbox Game Studios publishing head Peter Wyse told Polygon, adding that Microsoft’s goal was to create “cloud-native games.”She’s now listed as senior director of cloud gamingSwift has spent over a decade in the games industry since her student project Narbacular Drop landed her team jobs at Valve Software, where she... Continue reading…

Image: TikTok TikTok is announcing a new feature that will let users embed mini apps, called Jumps, into their videos. For example, if someone is making a cooking video, they could embed a link to the recipe app Whisk, which would allow viewers to pull up a recipe sheet inside of TikTok with the tap of a button. The feature is currently being tested, with only a select group of creators having the ability to embed a Jump into their videos, but TikTok says it will be rolling out the feature after more testing.When watching a video with a Jump, viewers will see a button near the bottom of the screen, which will then open the content on a new screen within TikTok. Creators making a video will be able to choose a Jump to add and will then be able to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitch is once again struggling with how to handle sexually suggestive streams from some of the most popular women on its platform. Over the weekend, the service banned two top female streamers — Amouranth and Indiefoxx — who had been broadcasting ASMR streams from their beds. Both streams involved the creators licking a microphone while wearing what appeared to be the TikTok-famous leggings known for making your butt look great. It’s just the latest instance of Twitch making itself the arbiter of what counts as too sexy for its audience and advertisers.As usual, Twitch declined to explain why either streamer was banned. But the reason seems to be a breach of Twitch’s restrictions on “sexually suggestive” content. The rules ban... Continue reading…

Photo by James Devaney/Getty Images Roc-A-Fella Records (RAF), co-founded by hip-hop mogul Jay-Z, has sued fellow co-founder Damon Dash for allegedly hawking a non-fungible token of Jay-Z’s 1996 debut album Reasonable Doubt.The lawsuit claims Dash partnered with platform SuperFarm to auction an NFT of Reasonable Doubt, following a well-trodden path of selling art ownership via NFT. It quotes a purported SuperFarm press release calling the sale “one of the most significant NFT auctions to date,” since it would transfer “the rights to all future revenue generated by the album from Damon Dash to the auction winner.” That’s an unusually sweeping promise for an NFT. “Selling the copyright to Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt as an NFT is a groundbreaking landmark — both for the crypto... Continue reading…

Netflix announced a new feature film deal with Amblin Partners on Monday, the film studio started by acclaimed director Steven Spielberg. Amblin Partners will produce multiple feature films per year for the streaming service, some of which could theoretically be produced, developed, and directed by Spielberg.Along with the announcement, Spielberg shared his excitement over the new partnership:

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is calling on Microsoft to face the same antitrust scrutiny as other large tech platforms in a letter to the company Monday.In the letter, Jordan asks Microsoft president Brad Smith if he believes the company would be affected by the swath of antitrust bills introduced in the House earlier this month. There are five bills in total, spanning from offering up more money for antitrust enforcers to banning large tech platforms from buying up small competitors.The antitrust package came out of a yearslong investigation into Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. The measures focus on the anticompetitive behaviors of these four companies, and it’s not as clear how they would affect other large companies like Microsoft.... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images Clubhouse — which inadvertently sent every other tech platform from Spotify to Facebook scrambling to build out copycat functionality — seems to be taking its first steps away from pure live audio experiences. How do we know this? The company appears to have accidentally leaked a messaging feature, called Backchannel, to some users late last week.Based on several tweets circulating on Friday (including the below screen recording), Backchannel is an apparent means for users to chat via text instead of audio. Apparently the feature was not referenced whatsoever in the app’s release notes of the version, and what was rolled out looks blatantly unfinished. It’s not clear how long this version of Backchannel existed out in the wild, but... Continue reading…

Fans of Apple TV’s hit show Ted Lasso can now buy official merch that lets you rep AFC Richmond, the fictional soccer team featured in the show — and yes, that means you can buy a jersey. The new merch store has opened just about a month ahead of the show’s July 23rd season 2 premiere.A jersey costs $59.95, and you can personalize it with your first and last name. There are professional level kits on the way, too — Ted Lasso co-creator Bill Lawrence says they’ll be available in September.

Image: Google A colleague here at The Verge tells this story: “This weekend my wife was like, ‘Google says I’m almost out of storage!’ and I was like ‘We have 2TB with Google One, that’s not possible!’” What was the problem? Well, just because you’ve established family sharing with your Google account, you don’t automatically start to share your extra storage from Google One. You’ve got to turn it on.First, the basics: Google One is essentially the paid version of Google Drive. It gives you extra storage (beyond the free 15GB) to use across Drive, Gmail, and Photos, and lets you share that storage with up to five family members. Plans begin at 100GB for $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year. If that’s not enough, you can go up to 2TB for $9.99 a month /... Continue reading…

Staff make their way around the aisles collecting items before sending them to the on-site dispatch hall to be packaged inside one of Britain’s largest Amazon warehouses in Dunfermline, Fife. | Photo by Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images Amazon marks millions of unsold products for destruction each year in the UK, according to a new investigation by British television program ITV News. ITV found stacks of boxes marked “destroy” that were filled with electronics, jewelry, books, and other new or gently used items in one warehouse’s “destruction zone.” The news outlet caught the practice on camera while going undercover at the Dunfermline fulfillment center in Scotland. It says it tracked some of the goods to recycling centers and a landfill.About 124,000 items at Dunfermline were labeled “destroy” during a single week in April, according to an internal document obtained by ITV News. Just 28,000 items were set aside for donations during the same period. About half of all... Continue reading…

The trio of Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus is one of the better deals you can get in streaming today, and it’s even nicer when you can watch for free. For a special Prime Day 2021 promotion, Amazon is covering three months of the Disney Plus bundle for customers who purchase one of its hardware devices — and this includes inexpensive products like the Fire TV Stick, which is down to $17.99 for Prime Day. The bundle usually costs $13.99 per month, so you’re saving quite a bit if you can find any use for a new streaming stick.Buy any of the eligible Amazon devices, and you’ll receive three free months of the Disney Plus bundle. The deal is available for new customers but also extends to returning users who have let their previous... Continue reading…

A COVID-19 testing site in Boston, Massachusetts | Staff Photo By Stuart Cahill/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images Google appears to have automatically installed the COVID-19 exposure notification app for Massachusetts on some Android phones, users reported. The system is still only active if users turn it on, Google told 9to5Google.The app, MassNotify, launched on June 15th. Many Android users said that it was silently installed on their phones without any notifications: “Ghost installed on my phone without my consent. While I believe in what this app was meant to do, installing it without so much as a notification is extremely alarming,” one user wrote in a Google Play Store review.The feature was “automatically distributed,” Google said in a statement to 9to5Google, but users still have to actively opt in to send and receive exposure... Continue reading…

A new version of Windows is on the way Continue reading…