The Verge

Google is expanding the availability of its Stadia game streaming service to more TVs and streaming devices later this month. The first version of Stadia on Chromecast with Google TV is launching on June 23rd, more than eight months after the device launched without official Stadia support.Alongside Chromecast with Google TV support, Stadia will also be available on a number of Android TV devices on June 23rd. Not every Android TV device is supported, but Nvidia’s Shield TV devices have made the list. Here’s the official support list:

Courtesy of Marvel Studios Loki, the one-time Marvel villain played for over a decade now by Tom Hiddleston, is on the verge of starring in his own series. Instead of playing the scene-stealing antagonist — or, later, grudging sidekick — to Chris Hemsworth’s square-jawed Thor, the God of Mischief is finally going to get to be fully in the spotlight. It’s something that fans have been asking for since the character first made his scenery-chewing debut in 2011’s Thor — but the new show looks far more detached from the MCU than any of his previous adventures.Loki is a new kind of series for Disney Plus. It’s the first that intentionally feels like a capital-S Spinoff. The first two Marvel shows, WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, occupied very... Continue reading…

Image: Eero Amazon is gearing up for Prime Day 2021 — which is happening on Monday, June 21st, and Tuesday, June 22nd — by releasing some teaser deals for Prime members. Today’s big deal is on the Eero 6 mesh Wi-Fi 6 router. It’s normally $129, but you can get one for $83. This is a good starting point if you have plans to build a multiroom mesh Wi-Fi system to blanket every corner of your home in reliable internet access.This router has two ethernet ports, one for a modem and another for any other device you’d prefer to have wired for the fastest speeds. The Eero 6 claims to cover 1,500 square feet with Wi-Fi signal, and you can easily add another one to your network to expand coverage.If you want to dive into the Eero ecosystem more fully,... Continue reading…

Samsung’s prototype heart rate monitor with stretchable OLED display. | Image Samsung / SAIT We’ve had curved displays for a while now, but what about stretchy ones? Samsung says it’s making progress building screens “that can be stretched in all directions like rubber bands,” and that the first applications for this material could be in building flexible health tech.The company’s researchers recently created an OLED display that can be stretched by up to 30 percent while operating as normal. As a proof of concept, engineers integrated this display into a stretchable heart rate monitor that can be stuck onto the skin like a Band-Aid.“The strength of this technology is that it allows you to measure your biometric data for a longer period without having to remove the solution when you sleep or exercise, since the patch feels... Continue reading…

The Realme GT, Realme’s Snapdragon 888-equipped flagship phone, is coming to Europe and will sell for €549 (about $670) for a model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, according to the company’s website. The price makes it among the cheapest Snapdragon 888 devices available to date, if not the cheapest. Xiaomi’s excellent-value Mi 11 started at €749 (~$910) for an 8GB / 128GB model, for comparison.Realme says the GT will ship to Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Portugal, though the device isn’t currently available to actually order. It’s not clear which other European markets it’ll be available in when it does launch.Realme announced the Chinese version of the GT in March. It started at 2,799 yuan there for the 8GB... Continue reading…

Image: Apple Apple’s hosting its second all-virtual Worldwide Developers Conference this year, and it seems like the company plans to squeeze in even more hardware announcements alongside its usual software updates. WWDC 2021 will run all week long, but things start off with the traditional Apple keynote on June 7th at 10AM PT / 1PM ET.Apple is expected to try to win back professional users at WWDC by leaning in with a new more powerful M2 chip and a redesigned MacBook Pro that ditches maligned features like the Touch Bar and brings back the HDMI port and MagSafe. The new M2 is rumored to have double the processor and GPU cores, and it might not even be Apple’s top-of-the-line: the company is rumored to launch a more powerful iMac and Mac Pro... Continue reading…

Jeff Bezos is headed into space, and he’s taking his brother with him.The Amazon CEO announced the news via a video on Instagram (below). In it, he says he and his brother Mark will be launching into space on July 20th aboard a rocket built by Bezos’ space company Blue Origin. The firm announced in May it would be targeting this date for a first crewed flight, but did not say that Bezos himself would be taking part.In the Instagram video, Bezos says that taking a journey into space has been a lifelong dream for him, and that it will be “meaningful” to have his brother along for the ride.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The return of the Angry God of ARPU Continue reading…

Image: YouTube Being able to sample audio from other users’ videos is one of TikTok’s greatest strengths. It allows memes to percolate across the platform and lets users discover new content by watching videos with the same sound. Soon, YouTube will expand this feature in its TikTok competitor, Shorts, letting users sample sounds from any content uploaded to YouTube.YouTube officially announced this feature last month in a community support post, but tells The Verge it should now be available for the first time in new markets as part of the launch of Shorts in the UK, Canada, and a number of Latin American countries (including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela). The YouTube-sampling tool will then roll out to other Shorts... Continue reading…

Honor has released a couple of official images for its upcoming 50 series smartphone via its Weibo page and Twitter. The images focus on the rear of the phone, showing an eye-catching pair of circular camera bumps. The Honor 50 series is currently due to be announced on June 16th.Amidst a sea of square and rectangular camera bumps, the dual circle design is an interesting look for Honor’s next flagship. It’s also a style that Honor’s former parent company Huawei is planning to use for its next flagship, the similarly-named P50. It’s possible that the two companies finalized their designs before Huawei sold off Honor late last year, but it’ll be strange to see such similar looking devices released from two distinct manufacturers within... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Dell is being sued in California over its claims that its Alienware Area-51m R1 laptop would offer “unprecedented upgradeability,” Tom’s Hardware reports. Alienware customer Robert Felter is accusing the company of running a “false and misleading” marketing campaign, in which it promised that the laptop’s core components, including the CPU and GPU, could be swapped out for more powerful models. A year later, the Area-51m R1’s successor was announced with new components not available as upgrades for the original model.“Consumers were misled by Dell’s false and misleading marketing campaign and paid a significant premium for the Area 51M R1 under the incorrect belief that this ‘unprecedented upgradeability’ would save them money in the... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Apple appears to have planned a dedicated event on Apple Music’s upcoming spatial audio feature for later today. According to a video that MacRumors says was uploaded to Apple Music as a teaser — it’s since been removed — Apple will broadcast a special event called “Introducing Spatial Audio.” The event doesn’t appear on the Worldwide Developers Conference schedule but is set for 3PM ET.That is, of course, immediately after the presumed conclusion of Apple’s much anticipated 1PM ET keynote to kick off this year’s online WWDC, where the company is expected to announce its annual updates to each of its operating systems. Later in the afternoon at 5PM ET Apple will give its usual “State of the Union” presentation, which is more focused on... Continue reading…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Sunday that the automaker’s Model S Plaid Plus is “canceled,” since the basic Plaid is “just so good.”Tesla has been teasing its Model S Plaid since 2019, and Musk said late last month that delivery for the vehicle — which will have top speeds of 200 mph and range between 390 and 412 miles— would be pushed to June 10th as it needed “one more week of tweak.”He also tweeted Sunday that the Plaid could go from zero to 60 mph in under two seconds (a statement he’s made previously).

These images of Ganymede were constructed from imagery from NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 and Galileo spacecraft | USGS Astrogeology Science Center/ Wheaton/ NASA/ JPL-Caltech On Monday NASA’s Juno space probe, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016, will get a close-up look at Jupiter’s biggest moon Ganymede, the agency said in a press release. It will be the closest NASA has gotten to the largest moon in the solar system for more than 20 years— Galileo cruised by Ganymede in 2000— coming within 645 miles of its surface. The information Juno gathers will give insight into the moon’s composition and ice shell, as well as provide data for future missions to Jupiter.“Juno carries a suite of sensitive instruments capable of seeing Ganymede in ways never before possible,” said principal investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “By flying so close, we will bring the... Continue reading…

A mockup of what Twitter Super Follows could look like | Twitter Twitter announced earlier this year it was working on a Super Follows feature that would allow some users to charge followers and give them access to extra content. On Sunday, app researcher Jane Manchun Wong tweeted screenshots of what she says it will look like.According to Wong’s research, which is typically very accurate, the Super Follows program will be limited to Twitter users with at least 10,000 followers, who have posted at least 25 tweets within the past 30 days, and are at least 18 years old. As Twitter has referenced, one of the main features of Super Follows will be bonus content, such as exclusive tweets for Super Followers.Wong also discovered a list of content categories that Super Follows users would choose from to... Continue reading…

Apple needs a distraction, and it needs one fast.On Monday, the company will hold its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2021) during one of the most fraught moments for developer relations in Apple history. While Apple emerged from the Epic v. Apple trial in a seemingly strong legal position, its reputation took a body blow. Evidence revealed the company doesn’t “treat every developer the same” — it cut special deals with big companies like Amazon and Hulu and made arbitrary, cutthroat decisions to lock competition out and lock users in.Developers have known or suspected these things for years, and at first, online reactions seemed muted. This is the third year in a row that the shadow of antitrust regulation has hung over... Continue reading…

A trailer for the new documentary about the late Anthony Bourdain, Roadrunner, is among this week’s titles. | Photo by Mike Pont/WireImage It hit me this morning that there is no new episode of Mare of Easttown on this evening and I felt a little sad, but wow what a finale. Emmys for Kate Winslet and Julianne Nicholson, please (and be sure to read Sophie Gilbert’s excellent analysis in The Atlantic of the way women and mothers were centered in this very good series). I did not correctly predict who the killer was (but ICYMI, Stephen King did and don’t click that link if you haven’t watched the finale because obvs, spoiler). All this is to say I am in the market for a new show so I just started Hacks and can’t wait for the Loki premiere on Wednesday.The (unintentional) theme(s) for this week’s trailers roundup: Memories and nostalgia.Roadrunner This documentary about... Continue reading…

Fossil Fossil executives Greg McKelvey and Steve Prokup said in an interview with CNET that the company’s existing Wear OS watches won’t get upgraded to the new combined Wear software platform from Samsung and Google. Instead, Fossil is planning a premium watch that Prokup said would have “pretty major hardware upgrades,” and existing watches will probably be discounted as budget options.According to CNET, Fossil’s Gen 6 watch should have features similar to upcoming watches from Google and Samsung, with faster performance, longer battery life, new chips, and LTE cellular options. “All of the software benefits that Google’s talking about and launching with the unified platform is something we’ll be building into that as well,” McKelvey said.G... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro Twitter is suspended “indefinitely” in Nigeria, “for the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence,” according to a statement (threaded on Twitter) from the country’s minister of information and culture. The move comes days after the platform removed a threatening tweet by president Muhammadu Buhari which Twitter said violated its “abusive behavior” policy.On Saturday, the office of Nigeria’s attorney general and ministry of justice said it would arrest and prosecute anyone who tried to get around the block, CNN reported, and directed government agencies to cooperate with prosecutors “to ensure the speedy prosecution of offenders without any further delay.” Several news... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US Department of Justice has charged a Latvian woman for her role in allegedly developing the Trickbot malware, which was responsible for infecting millions of computers, targeting schools, hospitals, public utilities, and governments, the agency said in a news release.The DOJ alleges that Alla Witte was part of a criminal organization known as the Trickbot Group that operated in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Suriname. She allegedly helped develop the malware which was used to enable ransomware demands and payments. Victims would receive a notice that their computers were encrypted, the DOJ said, and were directed to buy special software through a bitcoin address linked to the Trickbot Group to have their files decrypted.A... Continue reading…

Square and Blockstream are partnering on a solar-powered bitcoin mining facility | Blockstream Financial services firm Square Inc. will partner with blockchain technology provider Blockstream Mining to build an open-source, solar-powered bitcoin mining facility, Blockstream announced in a press release Saturday. Square confirmed the news in a tweet, saying it was “committed to driving further adoption and efficiency of renewables within the bitcoin ecosystem.”According to the release, Square will invest $5 million in the facility, which will be a “proof-of-concept for a 100% renewable energy Bitcoin mine at scale,” and will be built at one of Blockstream’s sites in the US. “We hope to show that a renewable mining facility in the real world is not only possible but also prove empirically that Bitcoin accelerates the world toward a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge India’s government has told Twitter it could face “unintended consequences” if it fails to comply with the country’s new social media rules, Reuters reported. India’s technology minister wrote in a June 5th letter to Twitter that the company’s responses to previous government letters about the new rules did not confirm whether Twitter was in full compliance, according to Reuters.Under India’s Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code, which took effect in May, social media companies could be subject to legal action if they fail to follow the code’s provisions, which are aimed at regulating the platforms’ content. The new rules call for platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp to remove content within 36 hours of... Continue reading…

Getty Images An analysis of the cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline found that the hackers were able to access the company’s network using a compromised VPN password, Bloomberg reported. The hack led to a ransomware payout of $4.4 million, and resulted in gas prices around $3 per gallon for the first time in several years at US gas stations.According to cybersecurity firm Mandiant, the VPN account didn’t use multi-factor authentication, which allowed the hackers to access Colonial’s network with a compromised username and password. It’s not clear whether the hackers discovered the username or were able to figure it out independently. The password was discovered among a batch of passwords leaked on the dark web, Bloomberg reported.The breach occurred... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images The California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) said Friday (pdf) it has authorized General Motors-owned self-driving vehicle company Cruise to provide driverless passenger service to the public in its robotaxis.The CPUC said Cruise is the first entrant in its driverless pilot program, which lets companies give test rides in vehicles without drivers. Under the terms of the program, Cruise may not charge passengers for the rides, and the company must submit quarterly reports to the CPUC about the vehicles’ operations.Cruise has been testing its driverless vehicles in San Francisco, and last month applied for a permit that will allow the company to charge for autonomous rides and deliveries in the area. The company unveiled its Cruise... Continue reading…

The FBI is trying to get a list of IP addresses, phone numbers, and other information on people who read a USA Today article about the deaths of two of its agents (via Politico). The subpoena (PDF) says it relates to a criminal investigation, and is seeking the information of readers who accessed the article in a specific 35-minute timespan, but it’s unclear who or what the Bureau is trying to track down. USA Today is fighting back against handing over the information, calling the request unconstitutional.“We were surprised to receive this subpoena particularly in light of President Biden’s recent statements in support of press freedom. The subpoena is also contrary to the Justice Department’s own guidelines concerning the narrow... Continue reading…

People walk by the National Covid memorial wall in London. | photo by Andrew Aitchison / In pictures via Getty Images How can we possibly memorialize the brutal toll of COVID-19? It’s something I’ve been thinking about this week. The US observed Memorial Day on May 31, honoring people who died in military service. Artists, politicians, and activists are now starting to think about how to memorialize the more than 3.7 million people around the world who have died of COVID-19.Temporary memorials have already sprung up over the past 18 months, with flags, painted hearts, and pictures honoring the dead. But plans for new, more permanent memorials are starting to take shape. Some are massive structures, others are quiet gardens, and still others will be incorporated into spaces already dedicated to memorializing people who have died. In the UK, plans are... Continue reading…

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a controversial anti-hacking law which bans “exceeding authorized access” on a computer system, was narrowed by the Supreme Court on Thursday in a 6-3 ruling. The court said the law shouldn’t cover people misusing systems they’re allowed to access — and that claiming otherwise would criminalize a “breathtaking amount” of everyday computer use.The court case, Van Buren v. United States, concerns a former Georgia police officer named Nathan Van Buren. Van Buren accepted $5,000 in exchange for looking up a woman’s license plate in a police database. (The deal was actually an FBI sting operation, and the plate number was fictitious.) Because the exchange violated department rules, prosecutors said... Continue reading…

Get yourself a tripod that doesn’t need solid ground to be stable | Photo by Brent Rose for The Verge This week’s best deals are all over the place, but in a good way. There’s the ever-handy GorillaPod tripod shown above, as well as excellent deals on Sony noise-canceling headphones and the PC version of Resident Evil Village. You can also find other deals that are likely still up for grabs here, including the first notable discount on the Apple AirPods Max, as well as hefty price cuts on the Fitbit Charge 4 fitness tracker and Sony’s Back Button attachment for the PS4.If you’ve been browsing the web for some Father’s Day gift ideas, check out our gift guide that’s full of fun — but thoughtful — suggestions. Also, Prime Day 2021 is coming up soon. Amazon recently confirmed it’ll take place over two days, spanning from Monday, June 21st,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Tyler Comrie How an innocuous Reddit thread mutated into a dangerous, viral lie Continue reading…

On Microsoft’s search engine Bing, searching for “Tank Man,” the iconic figure from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in China, turned up no image results in the United States for part of Friday. Vice was able to produce the same results in the US, and heard from multiple users from other countries who ran into the same issue.Stranger still, searching “Tank Man” or “Tiananmen Square Tank Man” turned up normal search results in Bing, it’s just images that were mysteriously missing. When The Verge contacted Microsoft for an explanation, it said “This is due to an accidental human error and we are actively working to resolve this.” Search results for “Tank Man” after the accident. It’s an unfortunately timed accident... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple employees are pushing back against a new policy that would require them to return to the office three days a week starting in early September. Staff members say they want a flexible approach where those who want to work remote can do so, according to an internal letter obtained by The Verge.“We would like to take the opportunity to communicate a growing concern among our colleagues,” the letter says. “That Apple’s remote/location-flexible work policy, and the communication around it, have already forced some of our colleagues to quit. Without the inclusivity that flexibility brings, many of us feel we have to choose between either a combination of our families, our well-being, and being empowered to do our best work, or being a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Pidgeon Pagonis, an intersex activist, noticed last week that the #intersex hashtag wasn’t working on TikTok. They couldn’t click the tag on one of their own posts and trying to search for intersex pulled up a “null” page. This was the second time Pagonis noticed the tag disappearing, and they worried that TikTok had banned it just as they were about to start a series of celebratory videos called Intersex Joy.Pagonis usually feels safe on TikTok because people on the platform are generally receptive to intersex topics. After growing up with secrecy, lies, and shame around being intersex, Pagonis sees TikTok and other platforms as spaces where intersex people “can connect with each other and also advocate for ourselves and each other,... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Linux gamers using Valve’s Proton compatibility tool to run Windows games will be getting a performance upgrade in the future: Nvidia has announced that it’s working with Valve to bring FPS boosts using its DLSS technology featured on its RTX cards. It’s almost enough to make me want to revisit Linux gaming.DLSS, or Deep Learning Super Sampling, is a technology that lets gamers get more performance without having to give up too much image quality. It does this by running the game at lower-than-native resolution (say, rendering the game at 1080p when your monitor is 4K), but then upscaling the image to native resolution using some mightily impressive algorithms.The tech will, of course, be exciting for people with Linux gaming... Continue reading…

The redesigned Siri Remote for Apple TV. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Apple’s new Siri Remote introduced a gesture that makes it easy to scrub through content by turning the control pad into a scroll wheel. But a number of Apple TV users noticed that the feature doesn’t work properly on some services, like HBO Max, or at all on others, like Disney Plus.A spokesperson for Disney Plus confirmed to The Verge that the feature — one of the best on the redesigned Siri Remote — isn’t supported on its service. It’s not a service issue, though, but instead related to custom video players.Some streaming apps available on Apple TV use their own players, while others use the tvOS media player. The jogging gesture works with streaming apps that use Apple’s native media player, but it is not yet supported for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter Blue — the social network’s first subscription product that adds an undo button to tweets among other minor additions like changing the color of icons and adding folders for bookmarks — launched on Thursday. It’s limited to Canada and Australia for now but has already garnered attention for lacking the features people would be willing to pay Twitter for, like no ads, or better tools to handle harassment.Which makes Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s thread today, the day after the product launched, somewhat humorous and frustrating. What can we say: the guy loves to talk about bitcoin, even when other more pressing matters are at hand!

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A sales rep at a T-Mobile store in Fort Worth, Texas has filed a gender discrimination suit against the company after a member of the HR team inappropriately questioned her about having an OnlyFans account.Caitlyn Stevens had been working at T-Mobile for nearly seven years when a male colleague became angry with her about how she was handling a customer interaction, the complaint says. He approached her “in a physically aggressive manager,” forcing a coworker to step in and stop the man from hitting her.Stevens reported the incident to the store manager. Rather than disciplining the male colleague who’d allegedly tried to hurt her, the manager relocated Stevens to a different location, according to the complaint. The location got less... Continue reading…

Long battery life, fast performance, questionable value Continue reading…

Photo by Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times / Getty Images Road deaths jumped 7.2 percent in 2020 from the year before, hitting a 13-year high, even though people weren’t driving as much, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). But while NHTSA’s numbers paint a grim picture, they offer only a glimpse at what’s shaping up to be a historically bloody year of driving.Overall, 38,680 people died in car crashes in 2020, the highest number since 2007. But it’s worse than it sounds, since the number of miles driven in the US dropped by 13 percent. That means every mile someone drove last year was more dangerous than it was the year before.Heeding the call to “stay home,” Americans drove less during this pandemic year. But those who did get behind the wheel engaged in... Continue reading…

An illustration of a Maui parrotbill perched on a branch. | Photo by Brown Bear/Windmill Books/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Some 150 birds named for people tied to slavery and white supremacy could eventually get new monikers as part of an ongoing reckoning with racism within the world of birding. That includes Jameson’s firefinch, named for a British naturalist who bought a young girl while in Africa “as a joke” and then drew pictures of her being brutally killed. In a new story this week, Washington Post reporter Darryl Fears breaks down the horrific history of ornithology that has managed to be scrubbed clean in many history books.Indigenous peoples understood the animals long before white settlers supposedly “discovered” themFears also writes about the names these birds already had, given to them by Indigenous peoples who understood the animals long... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook has extended former President Donald Trump’s indefinite ban into a two-year suspension that will end January 7th, 2023. It will then reevaluate Trump’s ban to “assess whether the risk to public safety has receded,” Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, announced Friday. If Trump is reinstated and violates Facebook’s rules again, the company will implement a “strict set of rapidly escalating sanctions” that could lead to a permanent ban.The suspension accompanies a broader change in how Facebook treats “newsworthy” posts that break its rules and speech by politicians. The social network will still allow some violating content that is “newsworthy or important to the public interest” to remain online. But as The... Continue reading…

Image: Tinder Tinder is finally letting you avoid all your exes, friends, colleagues, relatives, and anyone else you might not want to run into on a dating app. The company announced today it’ll start allowing people to block their phone contacts.Romance-seekers can access the feature from their settings, under the “Block Contacts” menu, where they can define which contacts they’d like to block — meaning these people won’t surface for them, and vice versa.Users can either upload their full contacts list to Tinder or add them individually. Tinder says it won’t store everyone’s contacts — only the ones they’ve chosen to block — and people can unblock or disconnect their contacts list at any time. Blocked contacts won’t be notified they’ve been... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitch is announcing some big updates to emotes on Friday, including that animated emotes will soon be available on the live-streaming platform.Emotes are a huge part of the experience of Twitch. They’re everywhere in Twitch chats, and Twitch partners and affiliates can offer custom emotes to subscribers that can be used in chats on other channels. Every user on Twitch also has access to a set of global emotes, such as the wide-mouthed Komodo dragon “PogChamp” that’s often spammed in chats to express hype.Animated emotes could make chats more lively (or chaotic)Right now, though, all emotes are static, so animated emotes could give streamers new ways to make their chats even more lively (or chaotic, depending on the chat). Twitch... Continue reading…

Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge Panic is finally sharing some more information about its delayed Playdate, the tiny yellow handheld with a crank. The quirky little gadget is going up in price, launching at $179 instead of $149, but its first “season” of games that will be rolled out to the Playdate over time is being doubled from 12 to 24. The device will also have 4GB of storage instead of 2GB.The company is also announcing a Playdate Update video set for June 8th at 12PM ET where it will share news, a look at games coming to the device, and information on preorders. The company says that preorders won’t go up immediately following the update, so don’t worry if you can’t catch the show live. You’ll be able to watch the 15-minute Playdate Update on Panic’s YouTube... Continue reading…

Photo by Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images In March and April, when COVID-19 vaccinations were starting to keep older adults out of the hospital, more and more children between 12 and 17 years old were being admitted. Many were seriously sick: around one-third of kids in this age group who were in the hospital for COVID-19 this year were in the intensive care unit, a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report shows. None died.The risk of getting seriously ill and needing to be hospitalized from COVID-19 increases with age, but kids and teenagers can still get sick. Hospitalization rates from COVID-19 in this group were, overall, around 2.5 to 3 times higher than those from the flu over the last three flu seasons. The new CDC data underscores the importance of... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Even iOS apps occasionally misbehave — they can crash, or freeze, or otherwise stop working. If you’re new to iOS, or just haven’t had this happen before, you may not know how to actually quit an app (as opposed to just swiping it off your screen). Here’s how to quit an app using iOS 14:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok has updated its privacy policy in the US to notify users that the app might, in future, collect new types of biometric information including “faceprints and voiceprints.” But when reached by The Verge, TikTok was unable to explain what types of data these terms referred to, or why the app might need to access this information in the first place.The company’s privacy policy was updated on June 2nd, as spotted by TechCrunch. (An archived version of the old policy can be read here.) The new policy lays out in some detail the ways in which the TikTok app now has permission to analyze users’ content.The policy states:

Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.This week, The Vergecast dedicates the show to operating systems — updates, releases, and rumors from this past week. Nilay and Dieter talk with Verge senior editor Tom Warren and managing editor Alex Cranz about what to expect at Apple’s developer conference next week (HomeOS?), where Microsoft will take their OS next (Windows 11?), and the debut of some new systems like Huawei’s HarmonyOS and Google’s Fuchsia OS.You can listen to the full episode here or in your preferred podcast player to hear the full discussion.Further... Continue reading…

Photo by Kirsty Griffin / Netflix Gus may have antlers like a deer, but he’s a puppy dog at heart. The main character of Netflix’s new series Sweet Tooth, based on the comic by Jeff Lemire, is a young boy struggling to survive in a world ravaged by a pandemic. But while the world around him descends into chaos, Gus, played by Christian Convery, never loses his sense of wide-eyed optimism. His ears perk up — literally — if he hears about chocolate or candy apples, and he has an almost naive belief in people who shouldn’t always be trusted. At a time when we’re inundated with grim post-apocalyptic stories about how dark humanity can get, Sweet Tooth and its adorable lead offer something very welcome: hope.Most of the set-up is familiar territory. A pandemic has killed off... Continue reading…

Image: Apple Apple’s over-ear AirPods Max are $30 less than usual at Amazon and Best Buy today. Normally $549, every color option is $520 (Best Buy has most, but not all, colors at this price). Are they worth the purchase even with this slightly more affordable cost? If you’re a discerning shopper looking for unparalleled design and build quality, as well as great sound quality and ease of use, then perhaps they’ll be worth it to you.This price is hundreds more than the likes of Sony’s WH-1000XM4 and Bose’s Noise Cancelling Headphones 700, both of which will serve most people very well. My colleague Chris Welch notes in his review, though, that the AirPods Max are tough to beat on the little details that might make a big difference with your... Continue reading…

A promotional image for WWDC 2021. | Image: Apple Apple’s annual developer extravaganza, the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), is coming up fast, kicking off with the keynote presentation on June 7th at 1PM ET. Like last year, WWDC will be an entirely digital and online-only event due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and for the keynote, that means we can likely expect another tightly produced video highlighting everything Apple has in store.While we aren’t expecting any announcements on the level of Apple’s shift to custom silicon in its computers, which was WWDC 2020’s big news, Apple presumably has some notable changes in the works for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and its other operating systems. And if the current rumors pan out, we could also see brand-new MacBook Pros with the return of... Continue reading…