The Verge

CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES - 2021/08/16: Flames from the Dixie fire approach powerlines. | Photo by Ty O’Neil/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images California utility company PG&E was found at fault for sparking another massive inferno. This time it was the Dixie wildfire, the second largest in state history. Electrical distribution lines sparked the blaze after coming in contact with a tree, according to the results of an investigation completed by state firefighting agency Cal Fire yesterday.The Dixie Fire raged for more than three months last year, burning over 1,300 structures and killing one person. In perhaps its most traumatic episode, the blaze tore through the town of Greenville one August evening — growing explosively overnight. By morning, it had decimated most of the historic Gold Rush town. “We lost Greenville tonight,” local Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) said as he held... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Meta reportedly pulled the plug on a custom operating system that was supposed to power upcoming virtual and augmented reality headsets, although its full reasoning and future plans still aren’t clear. The Information reported the news today, saying the company formerly named Facebook suspended development of a project called XROS — named after XR, an umbrella term for AR / VR — in November. That leaves Meta with the Android-based operating system used in Quest (previously Oculus) VR devices, something that offers convenience but also makes Meta dependent on another company’s OS.The Information article reports that XROS development began in 2017 and had more than 300 people working on it. It’s apparently synonymous with the “reality... Continue reading…

There’s a video doing the rounds on Twitter today that supposedly shows “how Walmart envisions Shopping in the #Metaverse.” In it, a virtual avatar browses shelves of virtual groceries, picking and tossing items into a shopping cart with all the grace of stop motion skeleton in a ’50s adventure film. Responses to the clip have been suitably mocking, criticizing the VR experience for its pointless skeuomorphism and outdated visuals.This is appropriate, given that the video is actually four years old.Current metaverse demos still look like this sloppy ad from 2017A quick Google reveals that the clip was made for Walmart by a digital agency in 2017 to “impress influencers at SXSW” (an example of an obscure capitalist ritual known as a... Continue reading…

Amazon announced that it will buy an undisclosed number of electric delivery vans from Stellantis in 2023. The automaker has said that it will roll out an all-electric version of its Ram ProMaster commercial van that year.Stellantis, which is the company that formed last year from the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and the French PSA Group, has not officially revealed the electric vans. But Amazon says it will be the first commercial customer when they eventually enter production, with the two companies working together to put “thousands” of electric vans on the road.Amazon has been working with Rivian, the buzzy electric vehicle company that went public last year in one of the biggest IPOs ever, on a fleet of electric delivery... Continue reading…

Amazon announced that it will buy an undisclosed number of electric delivery vans from Stellantis in 2023. The automaker has said that it will roll out an all-electric version of its Dodge ProMaster commercial van that year.Stellantis, which is the company that formed last year from the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and the French PSA Group, has not officially revealed the electric vans. But Amazon says it will be the first commercial customer when they eventually enter production, with the two companies working together to put “thousands” of electric vans on the road.Amazon has been working with Rivian, the buzzy electric vehicle company that went public last year in one of the biggest IPOs ever, on a fleet of electric delivery... Continue reading…

From left to right, the Nokia 2760 Flip, C100, G400, C200, G100. | Image: HMD HMD, the company behind modern Nokia-branded phones, has announced five new “US exclusive” phones coming in the first half of this year. None of these are flagships: there’s only one 5G device, and all five are set to retail for under $250. HMD has also revived a classic Nokia design as a modern feature phone — the Nokia 2760 — a flip phone that inherits its name from the original 2007 handset.The company isn’t fully detailing the specs of the five phones today and says it plans to release this information closer to each handset’s launch. Instead, it’s emphasizing that the phones will be available across a wider range of US wireless providers, which now include Dish Wireless and Consumer Cellular in addition to T-Mobile and TracFone.T... Continue reading…

Photo by Yichuan Cao/NurPhoto via Getty Images The market’s only gotten weirder since Theranos Continue reading…

An artistic rendering of the Callisto system inside the Orion crew capsule for Artemis I | Image: Lockheed Martin When NASA debuts its new massive deep-space rocket for the first time in the coming months, a familiar voice assistant and video teleconferencing tool will be going along for the ride. A version of Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant and Cisco’s Webex videoconferencing platform will be included on the flight to space, part of a technology demonstration to see if these tools might benefit future astronauts flying to distant destinations like the Moon and Mars.The upcoming flight is known as Artemis I, and it’s the first test mission in a series of flights planned for NASA’s Artemis program — an initiative to send the first woman and the first person of color to the surface of the Moon. Tentatively set for March, Artemis I will mark the... Continue reading…

The Asus ROG Rapture GT-AXE16000. | Image: Asus Asus’ latest router is the ROG Rapture GT-AXE16000, and it says it’s the “world’s first quad-band Wi-Fi 6E gaming router.” That doesn’t quite make it the world’s first quad-band Wi-Fi 6E router overall (Netgear announced a quad-band Orbi system last October which you can already buy), but this is the first such system to specifically target gamers, and as a standalone router its starting price is cheaper than comparable mesh systems.Quad-band routers, as their name suggests, broadcast a total of four wireless bands for connectivity. Asus’ latest router has a 2.4GHz band, two 5GHz bands, and a fancy new 6GHz band. The three highest frequency bands each offer a theoretical maximum speed of 4,804Mbps, which drops to 1,148Mbps for the... Continue reading…

Vivo has announced the V23 and V23 Pro, the latest phones in the company’s mainstream V series that sells a ton in India and other Asian countries.The most unusual feature is the Sunshine Gold model’s ‘color-changing’ exterior that apparently shifts colors completely when exposed to sunlight. Vivo says the material took two years to research and develop; if you leave it in the sun for about thirty seconds, the phone will turn to blue-green before gradually returning back to the original gold. Plot twist: these phones are both gold. The other standout feature is the display’s notch that houses two selfie cameras, a 50-megapixel main unit and an 8-megapixel ultrawide on both phones. The selfie camera system also... Continue reading…

Stellantis The iconic American brand will only sell electric vehicles by 2028 Continue reading…

WeMo’s first video doorbell supports HomeKit and HomeKit Secure Video. And then there were three... At CES 2022 this week, Wemo announced the immediate availability of the Wemo Smart Video Doorbell, a HomeKit video doorbell that works with HomeKit Secure Video. It joins the Logitech Circle View and Netatmo Smart Video Doorbell camera as the only currently available residential HomeKit video doorbells.The $250 wired doorbell from the Belkin smart home brand is a short, chunky black device measuring 4.9 inches high. It has a 178-degree vertical field of view, 4MP high-resolution camera with “enhanced night vision and optimal zoom clarity,” according to the press release. It also features IP55 weatherproofing and works on 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi. Image: Wemo The Wemo Smart Video Doorbell... Continue reading…

Image by Belkin Belkin is adding the Immerse earbuds to its existing Soundform true wireless lineup. The earbuds come with hybrid active noise cancellation (ANC) technology, which should deliver audio free of background noise. Image by Belkin In case you haven’t heard of the “hybrid” form of ANC, SoundGuys describes it as two microphones located on the inside and outside of each earbud, which detect and cancel out sound coming from your environment. The other forms of ANC put the mic on the inside or outside of the earbud, which isn’t always as efficient for filtering out noise.The Immerse earbuds have a pretty long battery life as well. Each earbud is supposed to get eight hours of play time on a single charge, and when combined... Continue reading…

Image: Samsung Samsung now makes the biggest, curviest, you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it PC monitors out there; two Verge editors recently replaced their multi-monitor setups with a single 49-inch Samsung Odyssey G9 when it went on sale for $999 the other week. But the company’s not satisfied simply filling your horizontal field of view with 49 inches of real estate — today at CES, it’s revealing an even bigger 55-inch curved screen with a special stand that lets you flip the gigantic monitor vertically, so the screen curves right over your head.It’s called the Samsung Odyssey Ark, and the company is pitching it as a real product that it’s planning to bring to the United States in the second half of the year. We don’t have a price or firm release... Continue reading…

Samsung’s new barrel-shaped Freestyle projector was just announced at CES. The 1080p projector goes up for preorder today for $899. What matters more than its spec sheet, according to Samsung, is that this highly portable and swiveling visual lightshow with integrated speaker and voice control is coming to support your carefree “lifestyle” and nomadic “experiences.”Olds, in other words, need not apply.How can I be certain of this? Because when I, a curmudgeonly old, showed the Freestyle to my 13-year-old daughter under strict embargo, her first reaction was, and I quote: “I want that. A fake window on my wall would be so pretty.” A sampling of one teen is surely correct.The 1.83 pound (0.83kg) LED projector is capable of producing... Continue reading…

During Sony’s keynote presentation at CES 2022, the company rolled out the Vision-S EV we saw last year, along with a new concept SUV dubbed Vision-S 02. But the big surprise (this time) is the launch of Sony Mobility, a new company it’s starting that will focus on electric cars. While the tech industry has been focused for several years on whether or not Apple might produce a vehicle, Sony already showed us a working prototype packed full of its technology, and now it’s going a step further.Sony will establish an operating company “Sony Mobility Inc.” in the spring of 2022, through which the company intends to explore entry into the EV market.Sony posted several demo videos on YouTube featuring both Vision-S prototype EVs. Some, like... Continue reading…

You know what kind of video game movie Uncharted will be. You know it in your heart. But just in case you don’t know that you know it, you can now watch PlayStation Pictures’ entire live-action recreation of the infamous scene from that one Uncharted video game where Nathan Drake gets dragged out of an airplane by a rope ladder consisting of gigantic pieces of cargo and somehow manages to survive, without any cuts or annoying plot to get in the way.There is a lot of green screen. Lots of baddies go down. Very young actors appear to do acrobatic things. Action abounds, just as Sony promised it would in the company’s CES 2022 presentation this evening, where it also revealed it’s pivoting into electric cars.I am now adequately prepared... Continue reading…

The Aonic 40 is made of aluminum alloy and glass-filled nylon. | Image: Shure Shure has expanded its headphone lineup with the release of the new Aonic 40. The Aonic 40 are a set of wireless over-ear headphones with adjustable active noise cancellation, Environment Mode, 40mm composite drivers, USB-C quick charging, and an estimated 25 hours of battery life with ANC turned on. Priced at $249, this new model sits below the current $299 Aonic 50 in Shure’s lineup — which earned a nod in The Verge’s best noise-canceling headphones of 2021 — and shares some features like a user-customizable EQ through the ShurePlus Play app.The Aonic 40 are available nowWhile the Aonic 40 have a slightly revised look taken from their older sibling, with an aluminum build and a collapsible design, 2020’s Aonic 50 remain at the top... Continue reading…

Sony has confirmed the name of its next VR headset: unsurprisingly, it’s going to be called PlayStation VR2. Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan announced the name as part of Sony’s CES 2022 presentation, in a move reminiscent of two years ago when the PS5 logo was first revealed on stage in Vegas amid much fanfare. (It looked like the PS3 and PS4 logos but with a 5.)Sony still hasn’t shown off what the headset itself will look like, but we know quite a bit about its technical specs already. PS VR2 will work with the PS5, of course, and Sony also detailed the controllers — now officially named Sense controllers — all the way back in March. The headset supports haptic feedback, eye tracking, 4K HDR, 90/120Hz frame... Continue reading…

A built-in display can show animation, system info, and more. | Image: Asus ROG, one of Asus’s gaming brands, has announced the Strix Flare II Animate, a mechanical keyboard that gets its name from the LED display built into it, which can play animations or display logos, similar to the dot-matrix displays ROG’s built into the lids of some laptops.Asus calls this tech the AniMe Matrix LED display, and says you can use it to show all sorts of things; custom images and animations, system info like battery life, time, and date, and even audio visualizations. It’s blingy, to say the least, and more eye-catching than an illuminated logo. That could be a good thing though — this keyboard will cost $220, so it has to justify that price somehow. Gif: Asus Yes, ROG’s all-caps font does make it... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Activision Publishing, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against EngineOwning, a company that advertises cheats for Call of Duty games and other popular online shooters, and is seeking to shut down software that allows people to cheat in any Activision-published game.“By this lawsuit, Activision seeks to put a stop to unlawful conduct by an organization that is distributing and selling for profit numerous malicious software products designed to enable members of the public to gain unfair competitive advantages (i.e., to cheat) in the COD Games,” Activision said. “These ongoing activities damage Activision’s games, its overall business, and the experience of the COD player community.”According to the lawsuit,... Continue reading…

The OnePlus 10 Pro | OnePlus Rather than announce all of the details of the OnePlus 10 Pro flagship, OnePlus is choosing to space out the details in drips and drabs. First, it released an official teaser image that revealed the design of the phone alongside a China release date of January 11th. Now, it’s announcing the phone’s specs, which include the newest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, ultra fast charging, and a 5,000mAh battery.If you’ve been keeping up on Android news the past few months, none of these details will come as a surprise. Flagship Android phones in the US all tend to feature Qualcomm’s most powerful processor and if there’s any interesting news here, it’s that OnePlus is getting a small jump on Samsung and becoming the first major smartphone to... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge General Motors is no longer the top seller of vehicles in the US as reported Tuesday by CNBC. The Detroit powerhouse lost the crown to Toyota, which reportedly sold about 114,000 more vehicles than GM in 2021.GM reported Tuesday that total sales were down almost 13 percent last year due to semiconductor shortages. Vehicle and technology companies worldwide have been faced with production difficulties due to chip shortages, and GM has had to cut features from some vehicles, such as wireless chargers and HD radios, due to supply issues.

The second EV to feature the German automaker’s coveted performance branding Continue reading…

Image by Robinhood Robinhood has introduced a new experience geared towards trading noobs, and the company says its personalized stock recommendations could help beginners get a sense of the technical side of trading.If you’re a new user and haven’t added anything to your Investment Profile, you’ll get the option to choose “Get help with your first investment” from the Investing tab. Robinhood will then present you with a questionnaire that asks what your investment goals are, how long you plan on investing your money, and more.Based on those answers, Robinhood will recommend a personalized portfolio containing four diverse exchange-traded funds (ETFs), with additional information about each fund and why Robinhood picked it for you. Once you’ve reviewed... Continue reading…

Dell’s new 32-inch UltraSharp videoconferencing monitor supports 4K in more ways than one — the first, obvious for a display, is its 3840 x 2160 panel. But it also has a built-in 4K webcam, perfect for the age of Zoom meetings and working from home. Better still, you can connect to the monitor with a single USB-C cable, which will provide a video signal to the screen and send 90W of power back to your laptop.The monitor’s official name is the U3223QZ (Dell’s naming is catchy as ever), and its webcam uses a Sony 4K HDR STARVIS CMOS sensor. That’s similar to the imaging tech that Dell uses for its $200 external UltraSharp webcam, but unlike that device, the monitor has two built-in microphones. Dell also says that you’ll be able to... Continue reading…

Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for Fortune Google is giving four of its top execs a significant pay bump, raising their salaries from $650,000 to $1 million, just weeks after the company told staffers it wouldn’t automatically adjust salaries to account for inflation. The new executive salaries were disclosed in an SEC filing.The executives receiving the $1 million base salaries are chief financial officer Ruth Porat, senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan (who is in charge of Google search); senior vice president and chief business officer Philipp Schindler; and president of global affairs and chief legal officer Kent Walker. All four executives are eligible to “participate in a maximum $2,000,000 annual bonus program, based on contributions to Google’s performance against... Continue reading…

Verizon is the latest carrier to offer a mobile data plan without monthly caps on its fastest network speeds. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon has updated its unlimited plans in anticipation of new 5G spectrum coming online tomorrow soonish. The new plans cost the same and include the same level of access to the carrier’s Nationwide and Ultra Wideband 5G networks, but the priciest Get More plan receives a notable upgrade: unlimited monthly “premium data.” That puts it on even terms with the other major carriers’ top-tier unlimited plans.The plans previously known as Start, Play More, Do More, and Get More Unlimited are now called 5G Start Unlimited, 5G Play More Unlimited... you get the idea. The Get More plan ($90 / month for one line with autopay) previously included 50GB of premium data each month — once customers reached that limit, they’d be subject to slowdowns... Continue reading…

Ti or Ti?It’s a question that’s plagued Nvidia fans for years, ever since the company started appending the “Ti” designation to its most powerful GPUs, like the RTX 3090 Ti that Nvidia just announced at CES 2022.But how do you pronounce “Ti”? There are two camps: those who pronounce it “tie,” like the neck garment or the first syllable of “titanium,” while others fervently insist that it’s pronounced as initials: “tee-eye.” Not even Nvidia seems to know which is right, as the company’s CES presentation showed — different presenters switched back and forth between saying “tie” and “tee-eye” from one segment to the next.Should “GeForce” be called “Gee-Eee Force”? Of course not. Do you say “Ertex” instead of RTX? Preposterous. But... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The highly addictive clock app is testing a feature that should save you the trouble of having to DM the most share-worthy clips from your For You page with friends. TikTok has introduced a “Repost” button that works a little like Twitter’s retweet feature — but it doesn’t appear to be available to everyone yet.Several sites earlier reported on the feature, and social media consultant Matt Navarra tweeted an image of the button on December 19th. TechCrunch today reported a more detailed explanation of how the tool works in practice, including that it seems to be limited to the For You feed from the share menu rather than throughout the TikTok app. (Videos that are shared can similarly be un-shared from this menu as well.)Additionally,... Continue reading…

Hyundai has already showed off some practical robotics concepts last month in the lead-up to the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show. Now the South Korean automaker is going full galaxy brain with the introduction of a new “Mobility of Things” concept that it claims will power a whole slew of objects, from household plants and book shelves, to ambulances and autonomous passenger pods.The spectrum of things that can be roboticized (for lack of a better term) is “unlimited,” said Dong Jin Hyun, vice president and head of Robotics Lab of Hyundai Motor Group, in a statement. “The goal is for robotics to enable all kinds of personal mobility, connected to communicate, move and perform tasks autonomously.”“The goal is for robotics to enable all... Continue reading…

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge As is usually the case for CES, there is an abundance of gaming laptops being announced for release in early and mid-2022 that have at least two of the following traits in common: they have Intel’s 12th Gen H-series processors, or they support AMD’s Ryzen 6000-series processors, and they have Nvidia’s new RTX 3070 Ti or RTX 3080 Ti graphics chips. What’s more, many of them will also support DDR5 RAM at 4,800MHz. It’s a great time to be shopping for a laptop, as these seem faster than ever.There are always outliers we won’t catch, and we’ll be making more passes at this through the week, but there are currently well over a dozen laptops coming that have some combination of these components. We’ve covered the biggest CES 2022... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google is bringing an update to older Pixel devices to fix a dangerous bug that prevents users from calling 911, as noted by a post on a Google support page. The bug stems from an unintended interaction between the Android OS and Microsoft Teams — it only affects devices with Android 10 or later and could occur if you have Teams installed but aren’t signed in.The update resolves the “issue preventing emergency calls in certain conditions”On the support page, Google notes that the update resolves the “issue preventing emergency calls in certain conditions while some third-party apps are installed.” It’s available on devices running Android 12 (including the Pixel 3 and up), but the update hasn’t rolled out to the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro... Continue reading…

Image: Targus In addition to designing several new products for people trying to keep germ-free during a pandemic, Targus is targeting iPhone users with this new Cypress Hero EcoSmart Backpack that has built-in Apple Find My technology. Image: Targus The Cypress Hero EcoSmart backpack includes Apple’s Find My technology. In turn, users can also use their backpack to track a lost iPhone by pressing a button in the backpack. The backpack has an integrated battery that’s replaceable and can be recharged via USB, which Targus claims will provide better protection from thieves than a simple tag. Like the other bags in the Cypress Hero EcoSmart line, Targus says this one is built using approximately 26 recycled water bottles.C... Continue reading…

Self-driving tractors could be coming to a farm near you. | Image; John Deere Agricultural equipment maker John Deere has announced its latest piece of autonomous farming kit: a package of hardware and software that combines machine learning with the company’s GPS-powered auto-steer features to create a “fully autonomous tractor.”The technology to support autonomous farming has been developing rapidly in recent years, but John Deere claims this is a significant step forward. With this technology, farmers will not only be able to take their hands off the wheel of their tractor or leave the cab — they’ll be able to leave the field altogether, letting the equipment do the work without them while monitoring things remotely using their smartphone.“This is not a demo. It’s not a concept machine. It’s something we’ve... Continue reading…

A long-brewing battle between wireless carriers and airlines Continue reading…

Qualcomm and Microsoft are partnering to develop a new, customized Snapdragon augmented reality chip that’ll power future AR glasses within Microsoft’s ecosystems. The new partnership was announced at Qualcomm’s CES 2022 keynote.“We’re announcing that we’re developing a custom augmented reality Snapdragon chip for next-generation, power-efficient, very lightweight AR glasses for the Microsoft ecosystem,” said Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon. “And we’re integrating into that chip platform software from both companies: the Microsoft Mesh platform, and the recently announced Qualcomm Snapdragon Spaces XR development platform. Snapdragon Spaces will be fully integrated into Microsoft Mesh, and this platform will be available for... Continue reading…

The line consists of 12 colors with cheesy gaming-inspired names. | Image: Xbox/OPI OPI and Xbox are collaborating on a new lineup of gaming-inspired nail polishes that also unlock in-game content for Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5. The vibrant line of 12 nail polish colors is available today in the US at Ulta Beauty. Purchasing colors in the line qualifies for redeemable codes to unlock an exclusive Ford GT livery in Forza Horizon 5 as well as an armor coating in Halo Infinite.The OPI x Xbox collection colors have some unique names, ranging from lighthearted and fun to full-on gamer cringe: Quest for Quartz (rose quartz), Pixel Dust (shimmery mauve pink), Racing for Pinks (crème rose), Suzi is My Avatar (pink-nude), Trading Paint (crème apricot), Heart and Con-soul (crimson), The Pass is Always Greener (pastel... Continue reading…

Just playing co-op Spiritfarer while enjoying Asus-branded chips and soda. Hit me up on my Asus phone if you want to chill. | Asus The iPad Pro is likely the most powerful gaming tablet you can currently buy — and likely the most popular — but Asus is announcing a Windows-based gaming tablet that may go toe-to-toe in terms of power but will vastly exceed Apple’s tablet in terms of game and accessory compatibility on day one.The ROG Flow Z13 has been announced at CES 2022, and it’s a tablet with a 13.4-inch display and a kickstand. Impressively, Asus will offer configurations of the Z13 with Intel’s Core i9-12900H 45W processor and Nvidia’s RTX 3050 Ti with 40W of total graphics power — both of which are incredible achievements in a 12mm-thick tablet. The Z13 is essentially a high-end gaming laptop that’s been crammed into a much thinner form factor, complete with... Continue reading…

Sure, you could play Titanfall 2, but many newer games should run just fine here. | Asus Asus has delivered some big upgrades to its ROG Zephyrus G14 and G15 laptops for 2022. These lines have already been beloved for great battery life, solid performance for gaming and creative work, and aggressive pricing. The most notable feature improvements for both laptops include the Windows Hello IR camera (both laptops previously omitted a webcam), while the G14, with its 14-inch display, has a 50 percent bigger trackpad, along with a jump to 16:10 aspect ratio displays from its previous 16:9 (the G15, which has a 15.6-inch display, is still 16:9).That’s not all, though. The G14 features up to AMD’s new Ryzen 9 6900HS processor, paired with a Radeon RX 6800S graphics chip. This offers 105W of graphical power by taking advantage of... Continue reading…

Asus At CES 2022, Asus announced the ROG Swift OLED gaming monitor that comes in a 48-inch (PG48UQ) or a 42-inch (PG42UQ) size. Now, 48-inch OLEDs aren’t novel at this point, but the 42-inch size is a brand-new innovation for 2022. LG debuted its 42-inch C2 OLED this week, and Asus says it’s the first company to adapt a similarly-sized model into its own product. Asus hasn’t shared a release date or price for these monitors, but you know the usual disclaimer about OLEDs: don’t expect them to be cheap.The PG42UQ, like the 48-inch model, has a 4K (3840 x 2160) display, an impressive 1,000,000 to 1 contrast ratio, a lightning-fast 0.1ms response time, a 120Hz refresh rate, 10-bit color with 98 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, and... Continue reading…

Liu Junfeng / Costfoto/Future Publishing via Getty Images China has rolled out a pilot version of an app that allows users to store and pay with digital yuan, also known as e-CNY, as reported by the South China Morning Post. And no, the digital yuan isn’t a cryptocurrency — it was developed by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) to replace banknotes and coins; thus, it isn’t a decentralized form of payment, nor will it operate on the blockchain.Although it might sound like we already pay with digital cash when we use a credit card or an online payment service like PayPal and Apple Pay, the digital yuan isn’t anything like that. e-CNY is essentially physical cash converted into a digital form, and it’s been in the works since 2014. According to CNBC, distribution of the digital currency will take... Continue reading…

Qualcomm’s vision of a Digital Chassis vehicle | Image: Qualcomm Qualcomm has announced several new expansions of its partnerships with major car companies to provide hardware and software platforms for connected vehicles at CES 2022, partnering with Volvo, Honda, and Renault to add more functionality to their upcoming cars.Qualcomm already has a full suite of automotive platforms, which it collectively calls the Qualcomm Digital Chassis. The goal is to provide automakers with a variety of tools they can use to help make their cars more intelligent and more connected (although companies can pick and choose which of the platforms they want to use). Those include:

This robot follows the fish. | Image: @ronen_segev on Twitter Something interesting swam across my Twitter feed recently: a video of a goldfish that seemed to be controlling a robotic fish tank with wheels, with the contraption following the direction the fish was swimming. “Oh no,” I thought. “They gave this goldfish a robot, and now it’s unstoppable.”Thankfully, it doesn’t seem like it was done as a part of some evil plot. The goldfish mech suit was posted by Ronen Segev, a researcher on a team that was looking into how animals navigate. Helpfully, Segev links to a full research paper in the Twitter thread, which should offer more insight into the project.

Anker has a new GaN charger that the company announced at CES 2022, the $79 Anker Nano II 100W (also known as the Anker 736 charger), which the company says is “the world’s smallest 100W gallium nitride wall charger.”The new Nano II 100W charger offers a pair of USB-C ports and a single USB-A port, and it uses Anker’s second-generation GaN II technology that the company debuted earlier this year on its other Nano II chargers.More power in a smaller packageIt’s also worth noting that the 100W output is only for a single device at once — if more than one gadget is plugged in, the Nano II 100W will divvy up wattage according. But the 100W output here is enough to charge most laptops at full speed, which is a nice improvement over... Continue reading…

Anker Anker has announced the B600 Video Bar, a nifty video conferencing toolkit that houses everything that meeting-goers need. It rests upon your monitor (or TV), and the webcam portion of the Video Bar features a 2K sensor capable of 30 frames per second capture. It offers field-of-view adjustment, autofocus, and like most fancy webcams these days, it supports an AI-powered zoom feature and image enhancement. Within the device, there’s also a microphone array. It uses an AI algorithm to make noisy environments sound quiet on the other end.The Video Bar also packs two features that aren’t commonly included with a webcam: a key light and speakers. I’d assume that a large percentage of people who work from home don’t have ideal lighting... Continue reading…

Acer Acer’s Nitro 5 gaming laptop lineup has become more refined and feature-packed over time, and the new versions announced at CES 2022 make it even more appealing. Like before, the Nitro 5 for 2022 comes in two sizes, 15.6 inches and 17.3 inches, and you can choose between a 1080p or a QHD display. What’s new for this year is that its chassis design ditched those angular corners and added some extra pizazz to its lid. Also of note is that you can get one with either the latest 12th-Gen Intel processors (starting with a Core i5 12700H and going up to an Core i7 12700H) or one of AMD’s Ryzen 6000-series processors (starting with the Ryzen 5 6600H, going up to the Ryzen 7 6800H). Both versions can stock up to Nvidia’s new RTX 3070 Ti graphics... Continue reading…

Acer is announcing updates to its Swift X line of ultraportable laptops at CES 2022, each sporting 12th Gen Intel Core processors and, on the 16-inch model, a discrete Intel Arc GPU.The 2022 versions of the laptops come in two screen sizes (and both have a 16:10 aspect ratio): a 14-inch model with a 2240 x 1400 resolution and a 16-inch model with an up to 2560 x 1600 resolution. While the 16-inch version has the Intel Arc GPU, the 14-inch model is available with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3050 Ti laptop GPU or integrated graphics.Both models run Windows 11 and are equipped with two Thunderbolt 4 ports, two USB-A ports, an HDMI 2.0 port, and a fingerprint reader. And both sound like they’ll be relatively light — Acer says the 14-inch model... Continue reading…

Intel has announced its third-generation update for its “Intel Evo” certification program at CES 2022, adding new requirements for better video calls for future devices, expanding the certification to include larger and more powerful laptops, and new foldable designs.The Evo branding (itself an extension of Intel’s original Project Athena program) was introduced in 2020 alongside Intel’s 11th Gen Tiger Lake chips as a simple and easy way for customers to know that they’d be getting a laptop that checked certain basic performance and experiential metrics.Specifically, in addition to offering one of Intel’s 11th Gen U-series or Y-series chips, Evo-branded laptops had to get over nine hours of “real-world” battery life, wake from sleep... Continue reading…