The Verge

Sunisa Lee of Team United States competes on the balance beam during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan. | Photo by Amin Mohammad Jamali/Getty Images Figuring out how to watch the Olympics this year has been frustrating. NBC holds broadcasting rights to the Games in the US, so it naturally seized on the opportunity to boost subscribers to its streaming service, Peacock, by making it “the place to flock for the Games’ top moments.” Streaming the Olympics should’ve been as easy as signing up — except it wasn’t.Peacock’s coverage was a problem straight out of the gate. The opening ceremony wasn’t streamed live on the service at all (though the closing ceremony will be), even though it was streamed live on the NBC Olympics website. The service is paywalling men’s basketball, seemingly to boost Peacock’s paid plans. And while live broadcasts and on-demand coverage of most other games and... Continue reading…

Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images The NBA and iHeartMedia, which owns iHeartRadio, will be launching more than 20 new co-produced podcasts as part of a multiyear partnership, the two companies announced. The first show is scheduled to debut in the fall.“The new shows will be produced using a wide variety of content from the NBA archives to tell the backstories of some of the greatest moments in sports history, along with a mix of the latest league news, player commentary, insider analysis, and much more,” according to a press release.The lineup could include daily shows as well as limited series, and it may pull from the NBA’s archives of content, according to Bloomberg. “We’ve been looking for the right partner to help bring our archives to life,” David Denenberg,... Continue reading…

Amazon’s Kindle e-readers with built-in 3G will begin to lose the ability to connect to the internet on their own in the US in December, according to an email sent to customers on Wednesday. The change is due to mobile carriers transitioning from older 2G and 3G networking technology to newer 4G and 5G networks. For older Kindles without Wi-Fi, this change could mean not connecting to the internet at all.As Good e-Reader first noted in June, newer Kindle devices with 4G support should be fine, but for older devices that shipped with support for 3G and Wi-Fi like the Kindle Keyboard (3rd generation), Kindle Touch (4th generation), Kindle Paperwhite (4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th generation), Kindle Voyage (7th generation), and Kindle Oasis (8th... Continue reading…

Image: Amazon Amazon has announced that its second-gen Fire TV Cube is now able to participate in two-way Zoom video calls. The company rolled out support for videoconferencing between the Fire TV Cube and Alexa smart displays late last year, but Zoom opens up even more possibilities for hosting virtual chats or work calls on the biggest screen in your home. This really would’ve come in handy over the last year, but better late than never, I guess — and it should still prove convenient for anyone working a hybrid office / home schedule in the months ahead.The Zoom app for Fire TV is required to get started. So is a webcam, obviously, and the company has some minimum requirements to meet on that front:

Image: Marvel Studios Marvel’s Hawkeye spinoff show is officially debuting on Disney Plus on November 24th, the company announced today. The announcement comes with the first official image from the show, that sees Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton iteration of the archer superhero alongside the newly introduced Kate Bishop version of the character, played by Hailee Steinfeld in the upcoming show.

Images: Arc Electricity and water don’t mix — well, actually, they mix really well, which can be problematic for humans. So the thought of an electric boat may seem risky. A new California startup called Arc is going to try to shred that perception, starting with a limited edition 24-foot watersports boat that will cost around $300,000.That’s an incredible amount of money. But Arc — which is coming out of stealth mode today, boasts a handful of SpaceX expats, and is backed by Silicon Valley powerhouse firm Andreessen Horowitz — plans to work its way down from that price point once it’s producing and selling boats, just like Tesla once did for electric passenger cars with the Roadster, followed by the Model S and X, and then the Model 3 and Y.“We... Continue reading…

A new sports add-on from Hulu with Live TV. | Image: Hulu Hulu is adding two big channels for football coverage to its live TV service. The NFL Network will be included in Hulu’s live TV package beginning today at no extra cost, while NFL RedZone will now be offered as part of a new sports add-on. The add-on includes a half-dozen channels, but subscribers will have to pony up for access.The NFL Network joins the more than 75 live TV channels already available as part of Hulu’s live TV package, which starts at $65 per month. The channel includes studio coverage, original series, live NFL season games, as well as NFL preseason games.The NFL says broadening distribution is among its “top priorities”Hulu’s new sports add-on package can expand those channels with NFL RedZone in addition to MAVTV... Continue reading…

The Flex 5 is built for its price range Continue reading…

Airbnb is adding a new tool for hosts that will let them easily test and list their Wi-Fi speeds on listings. The new addition is in recognization of the fact that — particularly with the current remote work and school model — customers are renting Airbnb properties not just for vacations but for working trips that provide a change of scenery. In that vein, knowing that you’ll actually be able to have strong internet when you’re booking is a useful feature.While it’s been possible for hosts to list Wi-Fi speeds or share screenshots of speed tests before, the new tool is integrated directly into Airbnb’s app (using M-Lab’s open-source software) and allows for Wi-Fi speed to be displayed directly on a listing alongside other information... Continue reading…

Image: BBC The Thirteenth Doctor is set to step away. Today, the BBC announced that Jodie Whittaker, who took over as the first female lead in Doctor Who in 2017, will end her run on the show in 2022. Showrunner Chris Chibnall will also be leaving.“My heart is so full of love for this show, for the team who make it, for the fans who watch it and for what it has brought to my life,” Whittaker said in a statement. “And I cannot thank Chris enough for entrusting me with his incredible stories. We knew that we wanted to ride this wave side by side, and pass on the baton together. So here we are, weeks away from wrapping on the best job I have ever had. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express what this role has given me. I will carry the Doctor and... Continue reading…

Every summer, hundreds of diamondback terrapins crawl over to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to lay their eggs. In past years, the turtles have been so obstructive, they’ve caused flight delays. To manage situations like these, airports like JFK have entire departments dedicated to keeping wildlife and planes out of each other’s way.While keeping the tarmac clear of turtles allows airports to operate smoothly, the real danger looms in the skies. On average, over 10,000 wildlife strikes are reported each year to the Federal Aviation Administration, most of them birds. As more planes take to the skies the number of bird strikes has trended upward at an alarming rate, threatening to damage planes, or worse, cause... Continue reading…

The PS5 software beta now supports M.2 SSDs. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Sony has started beta testing the first software update for the PS5 today, and it includes M.2 SSD expandable storage support. The long-awaited feature is available for testers right now and will launch on all PS5 consoles later this year. We’ll need to test a variety of drives with the PS5, but right now Sony requires at least a PCIe Gen4 SSD, with a minimum capacity of 250GB. Sony is also recommending a drive capable of 5,500MB/s, but slower Gen4 drives may still be supported.I’ve tested Corsair’s MP600 (2TB) with the PS5, and it’s very easy to get it all up and running in less than two minutes. Here’s how it all works:

In Southern District of New York federal court on Thursday, Nikola founder Trevor Milton was charged with securities fraud. The charges allege that Milton made a series of materially false claims which portrayed the electric vehicle company Nikola as far closer to releasing a functional product than it actually was, and raising more than $500 million of investment in the process.“Milton sold a version of Nikola not as it was – an early stage company with a novel idea to commercialize yet-to-be proven products and technology – but rather as a trail-blazing company that had already achieved many groundbreaking and game-changing milestones,” the indictment alleges.“Behold, the Nikola One in motion”Specifically, the indictment argues... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber is teaming up with popular language service Rosetta Stone to provide free classes to drivers and couriers, the company announced Thursday.The deal is being extended to drivers and delivery workers in select markets where Uber operates. Rosetta’s digital language learning programs, which cover 24 languages, will be fully integrated into the Uber app used by its workers. And the company is working with Rosetta on developing language skills directly related to their work as ride-share drivers and delivery workers.Drivers have previously been able to take English-language courses as part of Uber Pro, the company’s rewards program for drivers. The new language services are part of a broader effort by the ride-hailing company to... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge This 8-liter desktop upgrades in a snap Continue reading…

Illustration by Ari Liloan for The Verge ‘Documented Dreamers’ have few good options after aging out of dependent visas Continue reading…

The Huawei P50 Pro. | Image: Huawei Huawei has announced its latest flagship phones for the Chinese market, the P50 and P50 Pro. They’re the company’s first major phones to launch with HarmonyOS, the company’s own branded mobile operating system, which pairs with Huawei’s typically well-specced cameras and hardware that includes Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 888 processor in some models.The launch of the P50 series has come a little later in the year than the P40 did in 2020, thanks to US sanctions which have seriously impacted Huawei’s ability to produce new phones and restricted its ability to buy chips and other components from companies using US tech. When he first teased the phones last month, Huawei’s consumer business CEO Richard Yu said that a launch date hadn’t... Continue reading…

Apple MacBook Air with the M1 processor | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple’s latest MacBook Air with the M1 processor is an excellent, lightweight productivity laptop for school or work. It has excellent performance, stellar battery life, and runs completely silently, thanks to its fanless design. At Best Buy, you can save up to $250 off the price of the 8GB RAM / 256GB storage model, bringing it down to just $750, the lowest price we’ve seen yet. Read our review.To get the best deal, you need to be signed into a My Best Buy account (free) and then toggle the option for the limited time student deal, which knocks another $100 off the discounted $850 price. If you need more storage, the 512GB version is getting the same discount, bringing its price down to $1,000.In 2019, Amazon claimed to have sold... Continue reading…

What exactly the glasses will look like or how they will function is unclear. Facebook’s next hardware launch will be its long-awaited Ray-Ban ‘smart glasses,’ CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed on an earnings call this week. When exactly the glasses will arrive is unclear. We least heard they were launching some time in 2021, but the pandemic has changed a lot of companies’ plans, and Zuckerberg did not comment on a time frame.“Looking ahead here, the next product release will be the launch of our first smart glasses from Ray-Ban in partnership with EssilorLuxottica,” said the Facebook CEO. “The glasses have their iconic form factor, and they let you do some pretty neat things.”We don’t know what those “neat things” are, though Facebook has previously confirmed that the glasses will not have an integrated display... Continue reading…

Looking back a year later at Intel’s worst summer, and how it’s been fighting its way back since Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony’s PS5 system software beta program is starting to roll out today, and it include access to the long-awaited M.2 SSD slot. The first PS5 beta is available for select users in the US, Canada, Japan, UK, Germany, and France. The beta includes some new UX enhancements and customizations, but the biggest addition is M.2 SSD expansion support.Sony notes you’ll need an M.2 SSD that’s PCIe Gen4 and has read speeds of 5,500MB/s or faster. That’s largely what we were expecting, and it means a variety of Gen4 drives will be supported — including Samsung’s 980 Pro, Western Digital’s SN850s, and many other modern M.2 SSDs.You may need to consider the cooling requirements for using an M.2 SSD in a PS5, though. “Using an M.2 SSD with your PS5... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge “Sugar dating” apps will not be allowed on the Android Play Store from September 1st, Google has announced as part of a series of policy changes for the platform. The change, which was first reported by Android Police, specifically prohibits apps relating to “compensated sexual relationships.” Other changes coming to the platform include a new crackdown on inactive developer accounts, Google says.Traditionally, sugar dating relationships involve older, wealthier individuals dating and showering younger partners with gifts. As Android Police notes, there’s no shortage of apps on the Play Store designed around setting up “sugar daddy” relationships. None of them explicitly say that older men are expected to compensate younger women for... Continue reading…

The Beoplay EQ are available in gold (pictured) and black. | Image: Bang and Olufsen Bang & Olufsen’s Beoplay EQ are the Danish audio brand’s first pair of noise-canceling true wireless headphones. Two microphones on each earbud handle noise cancellation duties alongside an extra mic for making calls, for a total of six across the two earbuds. They’re releasing globally on August 19th in black and gold.At $399 (£359 / €399), the Beoplay EQ are around $50 more expensive than B&O’s non-noise-canceling Beoplay E8 earbuds were at launch. They don’t feature the third-generation E8’s formidable battery life, which tops out at 35 hours of total charge from the earbuds and case combined. Instead, the Beoplay EQ can run for around 20 hours when used with the charging case. Battery life from the earbuds themselves is about the... Continue reading…

Engineer and YouTuber Mark Rober has created a robot that can make domino murals at lightning speed, and has shown it off with a video of it arranging 100,000 dominoes into a Super Mario Bros.-themed mural in just over 24 hours. Rober says it would take a team of seven humans a week to do the same thing.The robot, named the “Dominator,” achieves this by putting down 300 dominoes at a time — which are, of course, loaded into it by another robot. Rober says in the video that the current version of the Dominator is the culmination of years of work from him and his team, and he goes into how the device actually works, as well as showing some of the failed designs that led to the final product.If the name Mark Rober rings a bell, it may be... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Samsung Electronics has released its second-quarter earnings, reporting 20 percent higher revenue and 54 percent higher operating profit year-on-year despite its mobile division taking a hit due to component shortages. The company made an operating profit of 12.57 trillion won (~$10.97 billion) off 63.67 trillion won (~$55.56 billion) in revenue.Samsung says its mobile business suffered from the industry-wide component shortage as well as “production disruptions” in its Vietnam factories, some of which were closed after a COVID outbreak. Combined with weak seasonality resulting in less demand, revenue declined from the previous quarter, though it was still up year-on-year.The semiconductor business continues to be Samsung’s biggest... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix will require the casts and some crew on its productions in the US to be vaccinated against COVID-19, a measure that comes as the Delta variant continues to spread across the country.Deadline first reported that the streaming giant recently notified its production teams that it would require casts and crew working in “Zone A” on US productions to be vaccinated. Deadline described this classification as including both cast members and those who are in close contact with them. According to the report, Netflix plans to make few exceptions to the new vaccination policy, with exclusions including age, medical, and religious reasons.Netflix confirmed the measure to The Verge but declined to comment further.Similar measures have been... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In May, I wrote here that the child safety problem on tech platforms is worse than we knew. A disturbing study from the nonprofit organization Thorn found that the majority of American children were using apps years before they are supposed to be — and fully a quarter of them said they have had sexually explicit interactions with adults. That puts the onus on platforms to do a better job in both identifying child users of their services and to protect them from the abuse they might find there.Instagram has now made some promising moves in that direction. Yesterday, the company said that it would:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook will require its US employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 when they return to the office, the company confirmed to The Verge on Wednesday.“As our offices reopen, we will be requiring anyone coming to work at any of our US campuses to be vaccinated,” Facebook’s vice president of people Lori Goler said in a statement. “How we implement this policy will depend on local conditions and regulations. We will have a process for those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons and will be evaluating our approach in other regions as the situation evolves. We continue to work with experts to ensure our return to office plans prioritize everyone’s health and safety.”Facebook expects to reopen offices in the US fully in... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Workers at a Houston, Texas facility that processes repairs for Apple, Dell, and Lenovo reportedly say they are working in “sweatshop” conditions, according to a story from Insider. Workers’ toilets are reportedly unsanitary and insufficient, they say they lack air conditioning, and they claim their pay is low at CSAT Solutions, a company that acts as a repair partner for tech companies like Apple.In the report, which is worth reading in its entirety, employees also reportedly say there aren’t enough bathrooms or parking spots for the number of workers, and that they’re not allowed to use their phones while working, even in the case of family or personal emergencies. One employee told Insider that she got off work to discover that her... Continue reading…

Apple will be requiring customers and staff at most of its more than 270 US retail stores to wear masks even if they are vaccinated, according to a new Bloomberg report, bringing back a requirement that had been removed starting in June. The change goes into effect Thursday.“After carefully reviewing the latest CDC recommendations, and analyzing the health and safety data for your local area, we are updating our guidance on face masks for your store,” Apple informed workers in a memo obtained by Bloomberg. “Starting July 29, face masks will be required in store for customers and team members — even if they’re vaccinated.” Apple employees who work in its corporate offices have also been told they must wear masks inside of Apple office... Continue reading…

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. | Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images If you pay even the slightest attention to tech news, you’ve probably recently seen nonstop criticism of Facebook’s handling of COVID-19 misinformation, along with a barrage of negative headlines tied to a new book about the company called An Ugly Truth.These headlines generally paint the picture of a tech giant that is on the outs with users, advertisers, lawmakers, and its Silicon Valley peers. But as the world’s largest social network showed Wednesday, the reality of how its business is performing couldn’t be more opposite.Facebook said its revenue grew 56 percent in the second quarter to $29 billion, meaning it grew faster during the period than Apple or Microsoft. More impressively, its profit grew an astounding 101 percent to... Continue reading…

Photography by Zoe Schiffer / The Verge ‘Until these demands are met, we won’t stop fighting’ Continue reading…

On Wednesday, bipartisan Senate negotiators reached a deal on an infrastructure package after weeks of tense discussion. The package includes billions in new funding, including more money to connect every household to high-speed broadband, according to the White House.The Senate’s infrastructure package is expected to be around $1.2 trillion over the next eight years with around $559 billion in new spending. The White House sent out a press release Wednesday outlining what’s included in the bill, focusing on “hard” infrastructure issues like roads, bridges, EV charging, public transit, and high-speed broadband. Specifically, the package includes a $65 billion “investment ensuring every American has access to reliable high-speed... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google announced it’s adding new caller ID, missed call, and SMS message features to Google Voice on Wednesday. The otherwise minor update is notable because Google Voice has fallen to the wayside while Google focused on other messaging boondoggles.From the missed calls or voicemail sections of the mobile Google Voice app, you can now learn why you might have missed a call (for example, Do Not Disturb was on), and receive directions on how to make sure that doesn’t happen again (turning Do Not Disturb off). Google is also making it easier to redial dropped calls and switch to your mobile network if your Wi-Fi connection was the reason your call failed. Image: Google Google Voice can tell you why you missed a... Continue reading…

As employees walk out of Activision Blizzard today over allegations of “constant sexual harassment” and workplace discrimination — and how poorly they felt the company responded — Kotaku has released a report backing up allegations that a fired developer kept a hotel suite named after alleged rapist Bill Cosby.In case you’re catching up, the state of California sued Blizzard for gender discrimination last week. The allegations include claims specifically naming Alex Afrasiabi, the former senior creative director of World of Warcraft. The suit says that on top of sexually harassing women, Afrasiabi had a hotel room during BlizzCon 2013 nicknamed the “Cosby Suite” — and it suggested that other employees knew about it.Neither Kotaku’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Robinhood is scheduled to price its stock today before trading begins tomorrow, and yesterday, it disclosed a new investigation: the finance industry’s self-regulator is checking to see whether founders Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt should be registered with them. Currently, the co-founders aren’t.Is this a big deal? Maybe, I don’t know. I don’t work at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), an organization you may remember from the historic fine it leveled against Robinhood — $70 million — for, among other things, the outages that took place in March 2020. (About $12 million went to the people who were harmed, and the rest went to FINRA because that’s Wall Street, baby.) I am somewhat less concerned with FINRA’s... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Tesla CEO Elon Musk has, for years, talked about opening up his company’s vast Supercharger network to other electric vehicles. But earlier this month, Musk tweeted that Tesla plans to do this “later this year,” and this week, he finally offered some details about how it might work.It will be “real simple,” Musk claimed on an investor call Monday. Owners of other EVs will be able to charge at a Supercharger station by using the Tesla app — which, right now, is geared toward people who’ve purchased the company’s products. That’s about all Tesla will have to do to make this possible in Europe and China, where there are standardized charging cable connectors, Musk said. (Tesla has already committed to opening up the network in Norway.)B... Continue reading…

United Airlines announced a new option for passengers to preorder food, snacks, and beverages online up to five days before their scheduled flight. Orders can be made either on United’s website or through the airline’s mobile app. United claims that it is the “first and only” carrier to allow economy customers this option.Previously, only premium customers on certain eligible flights could preorder their food and drinks. Now, United is extending the option to all ticket-holders. To start out, only passengers on flights from Chicago to Honolulu; Orange County, CA; Sacramento, CA; and San Diego will be eligible to preorder food and drinks. But by early fall, United says it will extend the option to passengers of all flights over 1,500... Continue reading…

Photo by Joel Kowsky/NASA via Getty Images Test-launching its astronaut capsule a second time, Boeing needs a success now more than ever Continue reading…

Image: IGN Valve president Gabe Newell has given a rare interview to IGN, where he talks about why the company’s upcoming Steam Deck handheld exists and the philosophy the company had when designing it. The interview is worth a watch to see Newell and developer Pierre-Loup Griffais discuss the motivation behind creating an “open” device (with Newell mentioning that you could hook up an Oculus Quest to it if you wanted), along with what discussions inside Valve led to the system’s development. IGN also has a write-up summarizing the interview if you’d rather read than watch.Newell also discusses the obvious comparison between the Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch, saying Valve has chosen different trade-offs when creating its portable gaming... Continue reading…

T-Mobile is offering customers who switch from an MVNO a discount on an unlimited Metro plan with 5G. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile is introducing a new prepaid promotion with incentives for customers on other prepaid MVNOs to switch to Metro by T-Mobile, including waiving switching fees, a discount on an unlimited plan with 5G, and a trade-in offer for a new 5G phone. In other words, it’s doing exactly what it told regulators it wouldn’t do when it acquired Sprint a year ago.The US wireless market is lousy with 5G phone trade-in offers and 5G plan upgrades these days, but this one stands out in its direct pitch to lure Boost Mobile customers to T-Mobile’s prepaid brand — the same customers it was ordered to sell to Dish network with the intention of setting the company up as a fourth wireless carrier to replace Sprint. It’s also what Dish warned might be... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google will require that employees be vaccinated before they’re allowed to return to the company’s offices, CEO Sundar Pichai announced today in a letter obtained by The New York Times.The announcement marks Google as one of the first major technology companies to require that employees be vaccinated before they return to work. The news comes as part of a new wave of vaccination requirements this week, spurred by the Biden administration reportedly planning to announce a requirement for federal workers to either be vaccinated or face frequent testing for COVID-19 sometime on Thursday.Google’s vaccination requirement will reportedly apply to workers at US offices “in the coming weeks” and to other regions “in the coming months,” per... Continue reading…

Photo by Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images The Pfizer / BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine’s protection against severe cases of the disease holds steady after six months, according to new data released by the companies. But its ability to protect people from developing any symptoms of the disease dropped over time, the analysis showed.The data could add to the debate around if and when people may need booster doses of the vaccines, which the Biden administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other experts have been deliberating on for the past few months. The issue became more pressing when cases of COVID-19 in the United States started to surge as the Delta variant spread.Overall, the vaccine was 91 percent effective against symptomatic COVID-19 over six months. It... Continue reading…

Would you pay $10 for the privilege of strapping rocket boosters to James Bond’s iconic Aston Martin DB5 automobile and using it to score spectacular gravity-defying goals with a giant ball? Rocket League is officially making that possible from Thursday, July 29th through August 4th.Epic Games developer Psyonix says it’s signed a multiyear deal with MGM and Aston Martin to bring 007 to the vehicular sporting game — starting, of course, with the ‘60s classic made famous by Goldfinger but still stealing scenes as recently as Skyfall and the upcoming No Time to Die.Will I buy it, though? Nah — because aside from the teaser atop this post, there doesn’t seem to be much Bond about Rocket League’s version other than the DB5’s historic... Continue reading…

The Oppo Watch 2 has launched in China, featuring the same Apple Watch-style design as the original Oppo Watch but with improved internal hardware. That includes Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 4100 platform and a promise of up to 16 days of battery life from a single charge while using a low-power mode (via 9to5Google).As was the case for the Chinese model of the original Oppo Watch, the Oppo Watch 2 runs Oppo’s Android-based ColorOS, not Google’s WearOS. Last year’s model was eventually released outside of China with WearOS and access to the Google Play Store, but Oppo has yet to announce any plans for a broader release at this time. It’s also possible that the company is waiting for Google and Samsung’s upcoming WearOS 3.0 collaboration... Continue reading…

Image: Blizzard California’s suit alleges a toxic culture, discrimination, and retaliation Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images In a new letter, Activision Blizzard employees said that CEO Bobby Kotick’s note addressing allegations of sexual harassment and workplace discrimination at the company “fails to address critical elements at the heart of employee concerns.” Last week, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) filed a huge lawsuit against the company bringing the allegations to light.Staff slammed the company’s initial response to the lawsuit, and in Wednesday’s response, the employees said they are pleased to see that they have “convinced leadership to change the tone of their communications.” But employees point out that Kotick’s letter does not address some key areas of concern, including ending forced arbitration for all employees... Continue reading…

Google rolled out Google Meet, a revamped version of its video chatting program Hangouts Meet, in April 2020, and made the app available to anyone with a Google account. You can start or join a Meet videoconference right from your Gmail inbox, using the buttons that Google has placed on the left-hand side of the page.But what if you don’t intend to use Meet, or even if you just don’t want it to be there all the time? No worries — you can hide the buttons. (Note: if you’re on a corporate Google Workspace account, you may not be able to change this, depending on your administrator’s settings.)Here’s how to hide Google Meet in Gmail’s desktop app. (You can hide it in your Android or iOS app as well.)

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google announced that Gmail would natively support email scheduling in April 2019, and the feature became available in desktop and mobile about a month later.Previously, you’d have to use a third-party add-on to do this sort of basic scheduling. Thankfully, Gmail’s feature is perfectly easy to use, and it has a range of applications for scheduling work and personal messages. Maybe you’re trying to talk to someone in a different time zone, nag someone about an event, or you just want to remind your future self about something. If so, schedule an email.To schedule a message via Gmail in a desktop web browser, follow these steps: