The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Five9 will remain independent — its deal to be acquired by Zoom is off. Though a press release from Five9 says it was “terminated by mutual agreement,” it’s also the case that Five9 shareholders rejected the $14.7 billion deal.Zoom originally announced the acquisition on July 18th. Five9 automates managing customer contacts for businesses, and the deal was supposed to bolster Zoom’s business offerings. Its major competitors are behemoths like Microsoft and Google, and the deal would have helped the smaller company expand.This was supposed to be an all-stock transaction, but unfortunately for Zoom, its stock price has lost more than a quarter of its value since they announced the acquisition. Usually, when a company is bought,... Continue reading…

Image: Marvel Studios Three months after Scarlett Johansson sued Disney over its streaming release of Black Widow, arguing she stood to lose millions of dollars because her salary was based on the box office performance of the film, the suit has now been settled, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and The New York Times and others. Representatives for Johansson confirmed the settlement to The Verge as well.While the terms of the settlement don’t appear to be public, Deadline cites a source saying that the deal was in the “tens of millions.” Both parties have paid lip service to continuing to work together: Johansson told The Hollywood Reporter that she was “happy to have resolved our differences with Disney,” and “look[s] forward to continuing our... Continue reading…

Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for SiriusXM Because no peace can be found in the age of man, TikTok has decided to partner with select creators, celebrities, and online entities like Lil Nas X, Bella Poarch, and Grimes to release a collection of non-fungible tokens. These TikTok Top Moments, as the company is calling them, are inspired by six “culturally significant” TikTok videos in the form of one-of-one NFTs. TikTok plans to auction them alongside a selection of limited edition NFTs it’ll sell weekly throughout October.The partnerships, creators, and new material being tokenized and put up for auction vary. Musician Lil Nas X is up first on October 6th with a collaboration with artist Rudy Willingham, while Grimes is collaborating with Brittany Broski (“Kombucha Girl”), and... Continue reading…

One of the features Google offers exclusively through its Pixel Android phones is the Personal Safety app. Over the years, it’s added features like a safety check-in that automatically notifies your emergency contacts if you don’t respond as scheduled and the ability to automatically dial 911 if it detects you’ve been in a car accident. Now XDA-Developers and Android Police point out a new feature that can automatically record video if you activate the built-in Emergency SOS.We installed the update from Google Play on a Pixel device. It informs users that it can record continuously for up to 45 minutes once it’s activated, assuming your phone has enough storage. If there’s an internet connection, the video will get automatically backed... Continue reading…

Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus has notified 4.6 million customers about a data breach | Getty Images Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus said Thursday it had notified 4.6 million customers that their personal information, including credit card numbers. may have been part of a May 2020 data breach.The Dallas-based company said in a news release that an “unauthorized third party obtained personal information associated with certain Neiman Marcus customers’ online accounts.” Neiman Marcus notified law enforcement, and is “working quickly to determine the nature and scope of the matter.” The company did not say who was responsible for the breach or how they were able to access its systems.The data access may have included names and contact information, credit card numbers, and expiration dates— but not the CVV numbers on the back of the cards—... Continue reading…

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Microsoft announced a new version of the Surface Pro last week, along with the Surface Laptop Studio. The Surface Pro 8 feels very much like a logical evolution of Microsoft’s tablet / laptop. Some of the more notable improvements include a 120Hz display with slimmer bezels, Thunderbolt 4 support, as well as a reworked surface keyboard that includes a dedicated space to store and charge the new Surface Slim Pen 2.Meanwhile, the Surface Laptop Studio features a uniquely hinged screen and more powerful hardware. This is effectively a replacement for the Surface Book 3, with a three-point adjustable display that can lay flat for drawing or snap upright to deliver a more traditional laptop experience. This laptop comes equipped with an... Continue reading…

The 2017 version of Aibo, Sony’s robot dog. | Sam Byford / The Verge Amazon announced its Astro home robot on Monday, which is designed to be an Alexa on wheels that can also bring you stuff (if other people load it into the cargo bay) and act as a sort of guard dog. With a touchscreen for a face and the ability to move itself around a single story of your house, it’s a bit like the personal robots from decades of science fiction. Given that Amazon seemingly wants to continue making home robots, though, we figured we’d go through a little history to look at some previous attempts.Of course, there’s plenty of discussion to be had about what does or does not count as a robot — to anyone with a smart home setup, Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant could be considered robots, as they can do any number of tasks... Continue reading…

Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images Waymo and Cruise, two of the leading autonomous vehicle companies in the US, received permits from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to offer rides to passengers in their robotaxis.But while Cruise was approved to give rides in its fully driverless vehicles without safety drivers, Waymo only is allowed to deploy its autonomous vehicles with a human monitor behind the wheel. In order to give rides to paying passengers in its fully driverless vehicles, as it does in Arizona, the Google spinoff would need to apply for an additional permit from the California Public Utilities Commission.Waymo was the first company to receive a driverless testing permit in 2018. And while the idea of a fully autonomous ride-hailing service is... Continue reading…

Photo by James Gourley/Getty Images I am a woman who believes in taking accountability for her actions and this is mine. Because I unleashed this tweet upon my colleagues, I must now share it with the masses. This is my punishment. Now it’s yours too.

Illustration by Alex Castro / Th Slack appears to be having issues for some people, with reports coming in of users who can’t connect to the service, receive errors when trying to send messages, and can’t even access Slack’s website. The issue doesn’t appear to affect everyone, and Slack hasn’t gone as far as calling it an outage on its status page. The differences in experiences pointed to a possible routing issue or the even more likely culprit, DNS (it’s always DNS).At 3:50PM ET, Slack confirmed what we suspected and what others had already figured out — it was DNS.Some of my co-workers have had issues today, while it’s working fine for others (including, unfortunately, me). It’s unclear how widespread the issues are — DownDetector only shows a thousand or so... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The last five months marked a turning point in Apple’s company culture — will it last? Continue reading…

Clubhouse Clubhouse is getting a bunch of new features next month, including one many people have wanted: in-app recording. Starting in October, app users will be able to record a room, save it to their profile and club, or download it. Clubhouse is calling the feature “replays.” Creators and moderators are the ones who can record, and they can toggle that option on or off. Rooms must be public to be recorded.Along with full recordings, users will be able to create 30-second shareable clips in rooms that allow it. The app is also gaining a search feature so people can type a keyword or name and receive the rooms, people, clubs, and bios that match. Finally, spatial audio is also now coming to Android devices after rolling out to iOS devices in... Continue reading…

Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) — the group that maintains the USB standard across its many varied incarnations — has introduced new, official logos for companies to use to brand their USB-C cables and packaging to go with its USB4 and 240W power standards. The goal is a noble one, aiming to help ease the confusion about the different types of USB-C cables (which can differ widely in things like charging and data transfer speeds) when you’re buying one.Naturally, the USB-IF, in its... unique wisdom, has chosen to simplify things the only way it knows how: a slew of new logos that will soon adorn packaging for cables and chargers to help indicate to customers what charging and data speeds their devices support. Because nothing says... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Thursday said it’s looking into tightening rules around cell phone service, in an effort to rein in SIM swapping scams and port-out fraud, two ways fraudsters can access a person’s cell phone account and phone number for nefarious purposes.The agency says in a statement it has received numerous complaints “from consumers who have suffered significant distress, inconvenience, and financial harm” due to SIM swapping and port-out fraud. And, the FCC said, recent data breaches have exposed customer information that could make it easier for bad actors to carry out these kinds of attacks successfully.SIM swapping is when someone hijacks your cell phone number so they can intercept two-factor... Continue reading…

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge After announcing plans for digital car keys in its phones during the Galaxy S21 launch, Samsung is finally starting to add support for the feature. Samsung says support for the ultra wideband (UWB) and NFC-enabled digital car keys will hit South Korea first, and it will only work with one car to start — the all-electric Genesis GV60.On devices that support UWB — the Samsung Galaxy S21 Plus and Ultra, Note 20 Ultra, and Galaxy Z Fold 2 and 3 — Samsung promises “passive entry,” meaning you can unlock and lock your car without pulling your phone out of your bag or pocket. With your phone nearby, you’ll also be able to start your car and make adjustments to mirrors, seats, and more. Image: Samsung How keys for the... Continue reading…

The Zephyrus G14 is still great, but it’s no longer on top Continue reading…

Cryptocurrency mining rigs sit on three-storeys of racks inside the BitRiver Rus LLC cryptocurrency mining farm in Bratsk, Russia, on Friday, Nov. 8, 2019. | Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg via Getty Images China is cracking down on Bitcoin mining, and some experts fear that the cryptocurrency’s environmental footprint could become dirtier as a result.Bitcoin is incredibly energy hungry. To create new coins, miners race to solve complex puzzles using specialized machines. As a result, Bitcoin is estimated to use as much electricity annually as the entire country of Poland. Until this year, a majority of that electricity came from a mix of coal and hydropower in China. Last week, China sounded the death knell for Bitcoin mining within its borders when it made all cryptocurrency transactions and mining illegal — although most mining operations fled earlier in the year when bans were announced in provinces where most had previously set up... Continue reading…

Image: Lucasfilm Both Marvel and Star Wars can get a little too serious for their own good. Their stories are often so focused on what happened before, or what’s coming next, that they forget about the fact that people are tuning in to watch thrilling adventures about superheroes and space wizards. What I’m saying is, both franchises often put canon ahead of fun. But Disney Plus has offered them a chance to cut loose a little in the form of the animated anthologies What If…? and Star Wars: Visions. The two series take very different approaches to the concept of messing with established stories and characters — and some extra freedom means that Star Wars ends up being a lot more exciting.The premise of What If…? is pure comic book fodder: each episode... Continue reading…

The Amazon Halo View and the Fitbit Charge 5. | Image: Amazon / Fitbit In the image above there are two wearables. One is Fitbit’s recently released Charge 5, a $179.95 fitness tracker designed to measure everything from your heart rate to your sleep and even your skin temperature. The other is Amazon’s new $79.99 Halo View fitness tracker, which Amazon says can measure everything from your heart rate to your sleep and skin temperature. Ten points if you can tell me which is which.The Halo View was just one of a host of new devices announced by Amazon at its now annual fall hardware event this week. But while many of Amazon’s new products feature completely original designs and features, like its cute Astro “home robot” or Ring-branded home surveillance drone, there were a handful that bear a striking... Continue reading…

Image: Wyze Wyze, the budget-focused tech company that now sells everything from security cameras to headphones, has launched a new smart scale with four built-in electrodes capable of measuring everything from body fat percentage to body water percentage. In addition to weighing humans, there is also a dedicated mode to let you weigh your “baby, pet, luggage, or your kid’s absurdly heavy backpack,” Wyze says. The Scale S follows the original Wyze Scale released last year, but it’s $5 cheaper with a price of just $15.Weight is displayed on the built-in 3.5-inch LED display, while a companion app (of course) allows you to set goals and track progress over time. It can sync data with Fitbit, Google Fit, and Apple Health and track data for up to... Continue reading…

Cross-app group chats between Instagram and Messenger. | Image: Facebook Facebook will now let you start cross-app group chats between Messenger and Instagram, the company announced Thursday. The update is a big step forward in Facebook’s ambitions to make its apps work better with each other. To be able to use the cross-app communications, you’ll have to opt in, and Facebook says that “over 70% of eligible people on Instagram have updated to the new Messenger experience.”The company is bringing other new features to the messaging apps in addition to cross-app group messaging. Polls will be available in group DMs on Instagram and in cross-app chats so you can, for example, vote on where to grab lunch. Facebook has added group typing indicators to Messenger, so you can see when multiple people are drafting a... Continue reading…

Sony Santa Monica Kratos’ voice actor, Christopher Judge, says he’s the reason why God of War: Ragnarok was delayed. In a tweet, Judge writes that he needed multiple surgeries in 2019 and that God of War developer Sony Santa Monica studios delayed the game so he could recover and continue voicing video games’ favorite problematic dad.

Corsair When it comes to PC components and accessories, there isn’t much that Corsair itself doesn’t make. The company’s adding gaming monitors to its list of offerings with today’s announcement of a 32-inch model called Xeneon. It uses a 1440p quantum dot IPS 16:9 aspect ratio panel that has a 165Hz refresh rate to display fast-paced content. Other standout specs include AMD FreeSync Premium and Nvidia G-Sync compatibility for adaptive sync to eliminate screen tearing when the frame rate fluctuates. It also has 100 percent coverage of the SRGB color gamut, and on its back, there are plenty of ports, which I’ll expand upon later.Corsair is utilizing its well-known presence in the market to go up against not just other monitor manufacturers,... Continue reading…

Apple’s MagSafe Battery attaches to any iPhone 12 or 13 model. | Dieter Bohn / The Verge The Apple MagSafe Battery pack recently launched in July, and we are now finally seeing the first significant discount on the magnetic power bank that usually costs $99. The MagSafe ecosystem may still be a bit underdeveloped, and there are some compelling alternatives from other manufacturers, but the little battery is a svelte option for juicing up an iPhone 12 or 13 on the go.With 1,460mAh and 11.3Wh, the MagSafe battery doesn’t earn its praise on specifications alone, but it has the software integration that no other power bank — magnetic or wired — has, with on-screen animations and charge levels visible, so you know exactly how much charge is left. Not only can it charge certain iPhones, but while it’s recharging via its built-in... Continue reading…

Some of the very best games on PlayStation 5 so far are old titles made new — so it’s fitting that Sony is officially acquiring Bluepoint Games, the acclaimed studio that specializes in remasters. It’s the team that brought us the Demon’s Souls and Shadow of the Colossus remakes, as well as fantastic remasters of the first three Uncharted games, the cult-classic Gravity Rush, and both the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection and Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection for previous gen consoles. Bluepoint was behind the excellent 2013 port of Flower to the PS4 as well.That’s not the only reason Sony’s Bluepoint buy isn’t surprising though. The company spilled the beans in June when it bought Returnal developer Housemarque, but accidentally... Continue reading…

Apple Watch | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge People who get irregular pulse notifications on an Apple Watch but don’t have atrial fibrillation — the condition the feature focuses on detecting — could still have another type of problem with their heartbeat, according to a new study.The findings show that even if someone with a concerning alert from their Apple Watch doesn’t get an atrial fibrillation diagnosis, they may not be in the clear, says study author Marco Perez, the director of the Inherited Arrhythmia Clinic at Stanford University Medical Center. “Even if you didn’t find atrial fibrillation, we were finding a lot of people who had something else that probably needed some clinical attention,” he says.The analysis, published in the journal Circulation, was done using... Continue reading…

Wccftech There have been rumors that Asus partnered with Noctua, maker of very quiet PC case fans and this silent, fan-less CPU cooler, to make a custom Nvidia RTX 3070 desktop graphics card that looks like no other. While its existence has leaked a few times, picked up by PC Gamer in recent months, Wccftech was quick to spot that an Asus employee in Vietnam posted images of the graphics card and other info to the Asus ROG Vietnam Facebook page. Those assets have since been taken down, but not before Wccftech was able to snag the photos and take note of the details.This new GPU, apparently called the RTX3070-08G-NOCTUA, won’t be as affordable as your average RTX 3070 (MSRP of $499), plus the cost of a couple of Noctua fans. Asus’ Facebook page... Continue reading…

It’s a strange thing that one of the most enjoyable physical interfaces I use in my day-to-day life is on a kettle. The Stagg EKG Electric Kettle, specifically, a $150 appliance that’s almost entirely controlled through a single, magnificent dial that is a strong contender for the best way to turn on a kettle (a competition that, admittedly, lacks much competition).Using the Stagg is a delightful experience of tactility. The main control is a single dial/button located on the front right of the base. Turning it on takes just a single press, a deep, solid click that lets you know through touch and sound that you’ve turned on the kettle. Turning it off is a similar single press, another resonant click to announce that the kettle is off.... Continue reading…

It is rare for a big company to come out and categorically deny an entire report, but that’s what Nintendo just did — the Japanese corporate entity issued a press release insisting Bloomberg’s seeming revelation that Nintendo was pushing developers to build 4K-resolution games for an upcoming but potentially canceled “Switch Pro” handheld was entirely incorrect.Nintendo writes the report “falsely claims that Nintendo is supplying tools to drive game development for a Nintendo Switch with 4K support” and insists that it’s “not true.” Separately, it says that it has no plans for any new Nintendo Switch other than the slightly refined OLED model that’ll be out next week.On Thursday morning, Zynga spokesperson Sarah Ross also denied the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Epic Games announced Thursday that it would be making its parent verification services free for all developers in order to make it easier to build games that keep kids safe online.Epic Games bought SuperAwesome, a safe kidtech company, last September. With this new addition to the company, Epic Games was able to launch its Kids Web Services (KWS) program, allowing developers to “verify the identity of parents or guardians when granting their children permission to use features that collect personal information.” Once a parent is verified through the system, they receive what Epic calls the “ParentGraph,” which makes it simpler to offer verification through other games on the Epic platform.Epic says that this system not only protects... Continue reading…

The Nreal Air smart glasses. | Image: Nreal Augmented reality company Nreal is launching a cheaper, iOS-compatible, more compact version of its smart glasses. The new Nreal Air glasses are supposed to ship starting in December 2021 across Japan, China, and South Korea. The price isn’t set, but Nreal says they’ll cost “a fraction of the price” of its earlier Nreal Light glasses, which started selling for around $600 last year.Based on Nreal’s description, the new Nreal Air glasses have some core similarities with the Nreal Light glasses from 2020. Both are designed to look like relatively normal sunglasses and pitched as ideal for projecting a virtual big-screen display in front of your eyes. They’re both using micro OLED displays for their augmented reality optics and are powered... Continue reading…

Bluestacks X brings Android games to the browser. | Image: Bluestacks BlueStacks started off life as an Android emulator for Windows more than 10 years ago, allowing anyone to run native Arm-based or x86 Android apps on Windows PCs and tablets. Now BlueStacks is transitioning to the cloud, bringing Android games to the browser and across iOS, Windows, macOS, Android, and Linux devices, and even inside Discord.BlueStacks X launches today as the only cloud gaming service that offers free streaming of mobile games across multiple platforms and devices. BlueStacks has built its hybrid cloud technology under its now.gg brand to make this possible, combined with Amazon’s AWS Graviton servers. BlueStacks X also offloads part of the compute and graphics rendering to local devices thanks to advancements in modern... Continue reading…

Dolby Atmos isn’t the reason you should buy it Continue reading…

Spotify Spotify is making podcasts on its platform more interactive. The company announced today that podcasters who create their shows in Anchor, its creation software, will be able to build interactive polls and Q&As into their programs. Listeners across 160 markets will be able to engage with them. For now, the functionality is only available to Anchor podcasters — not even for people who use Megaphone, Spotify’s podcast hosting platform — and it only works on the Spotify app.To view a poll or Q&A, you’ll see it at the bottom of your Spotify mobile app. Once you respond to a poll, you’ll be able to see how others voted, while Q&A answers will be sent to the podcaster privately. These podcasters can then choose to pin and publicly display the... Continue reading…

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge Backbone Labs has acknowledged the issue that hampers the use of its excellent iPhone gaming controller with the new iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max. As we noticed last week, the iPhone 13 Pro’s thicker camera bump means the phone doesn’t sit neatly in the Backbone One controller, either sticking out on one side or causing the bridge on the back to slightly buckle. It’s not unusable, but it’s not great.“We spent a tremendous amount of time meticulously crafting every surface of Backbone One (both bits and atoms) and even designing universal support for the iPhones available when it was released,” a Backbone representative wrote in an official post on Reddit. “As a result, we’re disappointed in the situation at hand. Several folks on the... Continue reading…

DISH and Boost Mobile hope to bring in new 5G customers with their own phone, the Celero5G. | DISH/Boost Mobile After acquiring Boost Mobile as part of the Sprint and T-Mobile merger in 2020 and snapping up Republic Wireless for its 5G network earlier this year, Dish is finally ready to turn Boost Mobile into the fourth wireless carrier that the FCC envisioned.Its opening salvo? The satellite television provider is introducing an exclusive budget 5G phone for Boost Mobile’s prepaid customers.The Celero5G is a “custom-built phone” for Boost Mobile, according to its spokesperson. Just like T-Mobile’s Revvl or AT&T’s Radiant, it has unique branding that you won’t find anywhere else. For a carrier that is trying to expand its user base, this is certainly an unusual way to get there. After all, most other carriers try to dangle the latest flagship... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is launching its Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) service in Australia, Brazil, Mexico, and Japan. The software giant has been testing streaming Xbox Game Pass Ultimate games in these markets over the past few months, and is now ready to greatly expand the reach of its xCloud technology.XCloud will be available to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers in Brazil and Mexico later today, meaning it technically launches in Australia and Japan in the early hours of October 1st. Xbox Cloud Gaming will be available through the dedicated Android and Xbox Windows apps, or via the web for iOS and other devices.Microsoft is now offering Xbox Cloud Gaming in 26 countries, thanks to this big expansion. “Since cloud gaming is powered by custom... Continue reading…

Xbox Series X console. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Microsoft’s Xbox chief, Phil Spencer, says console supply issues will continue into 2022. In an interview with The Wrap, spotted by Video Games Chronicle, Spencer admits the Xbox supply issues will last for the rest of the year and into 2022 due to supply chain complications beyond just a chip shortage.“I think it’s probably too isolated to talk about it as just a chip problem,” says Spencer. “When I think about, what does it mean to get the parts necessary to build a console today, and then get it to the markets where the demand is, there are multiple kind of pinch points in that process. And I think regretfully it’s going to be with us for months and months, definitely through the end of this calendar year and into the next calendar... Continue reading…

Getty Images A preview of arguments to come Continue reading…

Amazon has settled a dispute with two workers that the National Labor Relations Board said were fired for their activism. In April 2020, the company fired Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa after they had organized a protest against Amazon’s work with oil and gas companies, as well as raising concerns with the company’s coronavirus measures at its warehouses. In a joint statement, Costa and Cunningham said that the company would have to pay them lost wages as well as inform employees that they couldn’t be fired for organizing. They haven’t mentioned whether they would be getting their jobs as UX designers back.At the time of the NLRB’s ruling, Amazon said that it disagreed with the findings, and that Costa and Cunningham had been fired... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook has shared the internal research about the impact of Instagram on teenage mental wellbeing reported on by The Wall Street Journal earlier this month. The Wall Street Journal reported that the files showed Instagram knew the social media network has a negative affect on teens’ mental health. Facebook has pushed back on the WSJ’s characterizations of its research, saying that “it is simply not accurate that this research demonstrates Instagram is ‘toxic’ for teen girls.”The research slide decks are available on Facebook’s newsroom here, split into two PDFs. We’ve also embedded the PDFs at the bottom of this story. Notably, the two PDFs have been annotated by Facebook in an effort to provide context.Following Facebook’s release... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Several Chinese companies have filed a class-action complaint against Amazon for banning them from the Amazon marketplace over their use of paid reviews, a new complaint filed on September 13th claims. In the last year, Amazon has cracked down on companies soliciting paid reviews on its platform, claiming to have permanently banned 600 Chinese brands across 3,000 seller accounts.The companies listed in the complaint, doing business as Sopownic, Slaouwo, Deyixun, Cstech, Recoo Direct, Angelbliss, and Tudi, are seeking “recovery of funds that are being illegally and improperly withheld by Amazon” and are filing the class action to “stop any further misappropriation and misuse of funds that are legally and rightfully due to thousands of... Continue reading…

Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images Virgin Galactic is cleared to resume flights of its SpaceShipTwo space plane, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Wednesday, after capping a safety investigation into issues that came up during the company’s July flight carrying its founder Richard Branson. During that mission, SpaceShipTwo strayed from its designated airspace on its descent from space, and Virgin Galactic didn’t tell the FAA about it when it was supposed to.With the investigation now closed, the FAA required Virgin Galactic to make changes “on how it communicates to the FAA during flight operations to keep the public safe,” it said in a statement. Virgin Galactic said that includes “updated calculations to expand the protected airspace for future flights”... Continue reading…

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge Don’t get me wrong; we’re excited about Nintendo’s new OLED Switch — the number of preorders in The Verge newsroom confirms it. But what about the more powerful Switch that so many of us thought was around the corner? A new Bloomberg report suggests that the global chip shortage is why plans fell through for a “Switch Pro” with upgraded hardware from Nvidia and 4K resolution.The outlet, which previously reported on the device, backs up those reports by saying it’s identified at least 11 developers, like Zynga, who have received 4K Nintendo Switch development kits. Specifically, Bloomberg claims employees heard from Nintendo that they should design games to target the higher resolution. In response, Nintendo told Bloomberg its reporting... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok has agreed to settle a lawsuit with Bev Standing, the voice actress who said she was behind the app’s original text-to-speech voice. Standing sued TikTok in May, saying that the app was using her voice without permission. A robotic version of what sounded like Standing’s voice had been in the app for months, speaking over what felt like every other video at the time.A lawyer for Standing said the settlement was still being finalized and details around payment could not be disclosed. “They’ve reached an amicable resolution,” Robert Sciglimpaglia, who represents Standing, said in a phone call with The Verge. Sciglimpaglia said TikTok would license Standing’s voice as part of the agreement, but it’s up to TikTok whether or not to... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge The 2022 Escalade is heading into production, but it’ll be missing a key feature when the first customers pick up their new ride: the hands-free driving mode known as Super Cruise. It’s the latest feature to get the axe as a result of the global semiconductor shortage, which has been an especially big drain on the auto industry.The shortage is also forcing Cadillac to hold off on adding Super Cruise to the CT4 and CT5 sedans, according to Roadshow. With the Bolt currently not on sale due to the massive battery recall, that means parent company General Motors’ most advanced technological feature is currently not available on any new car.“[W]e’re confident in our team’s ability to find creative solutions to mitigate the supply chain... Continue reading…