The Verge

The Sims is the latest game to feature a virtual concert, but this one comes with a twist: some of the songs will be performed in the fictional Simlish language. Today EA announced “Sims Sessions,” described as an in-game music festival that will take place inside The Sims 4 from June 29th to July 7th. It’ll be headlined by pop star Bebe Rexha, who will sing her single “Sabotage” in Simlish. Glass Animals and Joy Oladokun will serve as the opening acts, though it sounds like they will be performing in boring old English.In addition to listening to music, players will also be able to explore the festival space, create new outfits, and buy “exclusive digital merchandise” from all of the performers. Meanwhile, Rexha will also be... Continue reading…

Windows 11 was announced today with a load of new features, and if you’re a Windows enthusiast, you are no doubt eager to give it a try. If you want to install a real version, rather than the leaked version that hit the internet on June 15th), Microsoft says it is going to share an early build of Windows 11 through its Windows Insider Program starting next week.If you want to play with early versions of Windows (and we strongly suggest you do it on a machine that you are not using for your day-to-day computing), you can join the Windows Insider program here — just click the Register button and sign in with your Microsoft account. Get an early download of Windows 11 via Windows Insider. You can check if your current... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge My job requires me to set up several Windows PCs per week. That means several times per week, I have to hear the following:“Hi there! I’m Cortana, and I’m here to help. A little sign-in here, a touch of Wi-Fi there, and we’ll have your PC ready for all you plan to do.”I typed that from memory because it is constantly echoing in my head. I cannot escape it. It’s the bane of my existence. I do not want to use Cortana. I do not want Cortana to help me boot up several PCs a week. Please, Cortana, leave me alone. But for years, my complaints have been shouts into the void that Microsoft has not heard.That’s why I’m a bit too excited about one of the tiny announcements that Microsoft just made. If you dig into the company’s Windows 11... Continue reading…

Surface Laptop 2 | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Now that Microsoft has announced Windows 11, you may be wondering what you’ll need to install it. Confirming information pulled from last week’s leak, all you’ll need to run it is a 64-bit CPU (or SoC), 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage, specs that are only slightly higher than Windows 10’s current requirements. This marks the end of Windows support for older 32-bit hardware platforms, even though it will continue to run 32-bit software.The fastest way to find out if your system can handle Windows 11 is to download Microsoft’s PC Health App (click here), which will automatically tell you if your specs and settings are ready for the new OS.The system requirements listed by Microsoft are as follows:

Microsoft unveiled Windows 11 on Thursday, and its least expensive version Windows 11 Home will now require an internet connection at setup — and a Microsoft account. Previous versions would let you opt out of Microsoft accounts by creating a local account instead, though the company didn’t necessarily make it easy to find and pushed you to use Microsoft’s login instead. It’s possible you’ll still be able to use a local account afterwards.The internet requirement may make sense since Windows 11 will largely be delivered via a Windows Update, like many of the updates to Windows 10, so you’d need an internet connection to install it on your PC. You’ll need to make sure your machine has enough free storage space to install the updates,... Continue reading…

Supporting local news sources is suddenly something the tech industry worries about, and with Windows 11, Microsoft is adding integration with local news “content creators and authors” front and center.In an expansion on the weather and news taskbar widget it recently added to Windows 10, it not only highlights sources in your areas, but it has a payment feature built right in. As shown in the video stream, you can support people with straight cash donations or Microsoft points, and it shows how many tippers are contributing to each person.

Microsoft officially unveiled Windows 11 today, and the software maker is committing to make it a free upgrade for Windows 10 users. Much like how Windows 10 was free for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users, this new Windows 11 version will be free for existing Windows 10 users.All you’ll need is a PC that meets the minimum hardware requirements for Windows 11, which is now a 64-bit CPU, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. Windows 11 will be delivered through Windows Update in much the same way as Windows 10 updates have been made available previously. Image: Microsoft The new Windows 11 UI. Windows 11 will include a new UI, with a Start menu overhaul, performance improvements, and updates to improve multitasking. It... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Anyone trying to watch Microsoft’s Windows 11 reveal over on its official website may have noticed the stream ran into a number of technical issues, including buffering and dropouts. It got so bad that the technical adviser to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was forced to respond, tweeting a link for viewers to watch the livestream on YouTube instead.Only the YouTube livestream wasn’t actually an official Microsoft stream at all and was technically a repost from the retailer Newegg. It just goes to show that live video is pretty damn hard, even if you’re a massive $2 trillion juggernaut like Microsoft.

Windows 11 is real, and Microsoft has just revealed the brand-new app store that will go along with it — which could be a big deal, seeing how previous versions of the idea never really caught on. It will be called the Microsoft Store, not the Windows Store, just like it has been since a rebranding in 2017.Here are some of the very first images of the new Store, and we’re adding more screenshots and details to this post right now. While Windows 11 was thoroughly leaked in mid-June, that leak notably did not include any glimpse of an updated app store, so I figure you’re eager to see how it might look! In a major move, Microsoft’s Panos Panay says developers will now be able to... Continue reading…

Snapchat Snap wants people to discover and make content with music on Snapchat, and today, it secured a major deal to help it achieve that goal.The company has signed a multiyear partnership with Universal Music Group, the world’s largest record label group, to bring its artists’ tracks to the platform. This means Snapchatters can search for music from various artists like Justin Bieber, The Bee Gees, Katy Perry, and others, and include them in their content, whether that be a snap they send a friend or something they submit to Spotlight — Snapchat’s TikTok rival.Deals like this, and specifically with UMG, are critical for Snap’s future success as people discover music online and create viral content around it more frequently. TikTok, in... Continue reading…

Microsoft Teams will be deeply woven into the upcoming Windows 11 update. During its preview of the new version of Windows, Microsoft’s Panos Panay detailed how it’ll be easier and quicker to create and join Teams meetings. The app will get prominent placement on the Windows 11 Start menu, and it’ll also be integrated throughout the system.Teams reached 145 million daily active users back in April. The service has had occasional stumbles and outages, thanks in part to that massive growth. Microsoft launched the free consumer version of Teams in May. Earlier this month, the company previewed a new “front row” layout that will come to the app later this year. It’s designed to help improve hybrid work situations where some people are at... Continue reading…

Microsoft is officially confirming the name for the next release of Windows today: Windows 11. After months of teases, hints of the number 11, and a giant Windows 11 leak, Microsoft’s new operating system is official. The big focus for Windows 11 is a simplification of the Windows user interface, a new Windows store, and improvements to performance and multitasking.Windows 11 includes a new Start menu and updated Start button that are both centered on the taskbar. This UI is very similar to what we first saw in Windows 10X, a project originally planned for dual-screen devices that Microsoft eventually canceled. A lot of the UI work that went into Windows 10X is appearing in Windows 11.The new Start menu drops the Live Tiles that were... Continue reading…

Photo by Belinda Jiao/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images UK carrier EE is introducing roaming charges for customers traveling to almost all EU countries from January next year, BBC News reports. The change applies to any customers who sign up or upgrade their plans after July 7th. From next year, these customers will be charged a flat fee of £2 (around $2.78) a day while in 47 “European destinations,” to get access to their plan’s existing data, minutes, and text allowances. The BT-owned carrier is also selling a 30-day Roam Abroad Pass, which is included with certain plans.Roaming charges for UK customers visiting mainland Europe used to be commonplace until the European Union outlawed the practice in 2017. However, following the UK’s departure from the EU, which involved a transition period... Continue reading…

It’s time for a new Windows Continue reading…

Photo by Huw Fairclough/Getty Images After several rounds in court, Amazon-backed food delivery service Deliveroo has won the right to continue classifying its couriers as self-employed, CNBC reports.The case concerned the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain’s attempt to unionize a portion of the service’s delivery riders operating around Camden. While law obviously differs between the US and UK, a similar throughline in these types of cases is proving (or disproving) the amount of direct control the platforms have over their contractors — the more meddling into how, where, and when generally translates to a stronger case that these workers are, in fact, misclassified employees.The UK Court of Appeals, however, was convinced that a newer version of the Supplier’s... Continue reading…

TCL’s wearable display plugs directly into your phone or laptop. | Photo: TCL TCL says its wearable display will go on sale in July starting in Australia for $899 AUD (about $680 US), with more markets to follow. The company has been teasing the concept for a couple of years now and showed it off earlier this year at virtual CES.TCL calls it NxtWear G and emphasizes that it’s not a VR or AR device in its current configuration. Instead, it acts as an external display for your mobile device or laptop, with two 1080p Micro OLED panels that give the effect of looking at a 140-inch screen.The wearable display works with phones, tablets, and laptops that offer USB-C DisplayPort functionality, including recent MacBooks, iPad Pros, and Samsung S21 series phones. The glasses plug directly into your device, displaying... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is announcing today that it is delaying its plans to phase out third-party cookies in the Chrome browser until 2023, a year or so later than originally planned. Other browsers like Safari and Firefox have already implemented some blocking against third-party tracking cookies, but Chrome is the most-used desktop browser, and so its shift will be more consequential for the ad industry. That’s why the term “cookiepocalypse” has taken hold.In the blog post announcing the delay, Google says that decision to phase out cookies over a “three month period” in mid-2023 is “subject to our engagement with the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).” In other words, it is pinning part of the delay on its need to work more... Continue reading…

The Xbox Series S offers many of the same features as the Series X, but a fraction of the cost. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Amazon Prime Day is officially behind us, and while many of the event’s best deals still linger, some retailers are already moving on to bigger—or at least different—things. Take Costco, for example, which is currently offering a members-only deal on the Xbox Series S online, dropping the price from $300 to $290. The next-gen console shares many of the same characteristics as the Series X, yet, it has a slimmer build, less storage, and no disc drive. It also has less processing power, though, it’s still compatible with all the same games, as well as most Xbox One titles. It’s a small discount, but the Series S is hard to come by at any price. Read our review.Cyberpunk 2077By all accounts, it’s been a rough six months for the team... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge Volvo plans on offering the lidar — and artificial intelligence-powered safety features — of its upcoming electric vehicle as standard, but the Swedish automaker plans on charging extra for its semi-autonomous systems, like the hands-free Highway Pilot.Volvo’s fully electric successor to the XC90 SUV, to be revealed in 2022, will have two new components that have never appeared on a Volvo vehicle before: a lidar sensor produced by Luminar and an onboard “autonomous driving computer” powered by video game hardware manufacturer Nvidia.Those two pieces of hardware will help enhance Volvo’s traditional safety features, like automatic emergency braking and blindspot detection, before the company is ready to start rolling out more... Continue reading…

We’re more than four years into the life of the Nintendo Switch, and yet in some ways the handheld device remains an enigma. Namely: when there’s a port of a big game, you never quite know what to expect. Sometimes you get a welcome surprise like Doom Eternal, other times a mess like Apex Legends. Which why I was only cautiously excited about Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 — an excellent-yet-awkwardly named remaster of the first two games in the series — making its way to the Switch. This is a game where movement and flow is paramount; if frame rate hitches get in the way of a good run, it’s not really worth playing.Thankfully, from what I’ve played, THPS is a surprisingly solid port. It’s not the ideal way to play, but it definitely works.... Continue reading…

Some sales include a digital display showcasing the moment being purchased. | Image: Wenew After selling an NFT for $69 million in March, Beeple is making his next big move in the digital art space: he’s launching an NFT platform that’ll sell “iconic” moments in time.The platform, called Wenew, is co-founded by Beeple and some longtime collaborators. They’re also bringing on Ryan Schreiber, the founder of Pitchfork, as Wenew’s editor-in-chief. Schreiber will help curate the moments sold on the platform, which will include highlights from the careers of athletes and artists.“We’re definitely looking at this as sort of immortalizing these moments of human achievement for collectors,” Schreiber told The Verge. Image: Wenew Wenew calls the digital displays “physical artifacts.” Wenew’s first NFT series... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro and Grayson Blackmon Ransomware funds more ransomware, so how do we stop it? Continue reading…

Microsoft is hosting a special Windows event later today where we’re expecting the company to unveil Windows 11. Microsoft has been teasing a “next generation” of Windows for months, and a leaked copy of Windows 11 suggests we’re going to see a number of changes during Microsoft’s event today.Microsoft is expected to focus on new UI improvements to Windows, including a new Start menu, rounded corners, and more simplifications to using Windows 11. We’re also expecting to hear more about a new Windows store that will offer better access to apps, and some multitasking and gaming improvements to Windows 11.The event should run for around 45 minutes, which gives Microsoft enough time to talk through the important aspects of Windows 11 ahead... Continue reading…

The JioPhone Next. | Image: Jio Platforms Indian tech giant Jio Platforms has collaborated with Google on a new affordable smartphone called the JioPhone Next, Jio’s parent company Reliance announced today. The Next is aimed at helping the roughly 300 million users in India who are currently on 2G networks upgrade to 4G, TechCrunch reports. It will be released in India on September 10th, before coming to other markets at a later date.Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani said the JioPhone Next would be an “ultra-affordable 4G smartphone,” but didn’t reveal exact pricing or full specs for the device. However, the company did say it will include voice assistant support, translation features, and a camera with support for augmented reality. The phone is running on an optimized version... Continue reading…

Microsoft Design (Instagram) A new version of Windows is coming today Continue reading…

Margins from all four sides were removed decades after the painting was completed. | Video: Rijksmuseum A mixture of artificial intelligence and painstaking research has allowed researchers to restore Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Night Watch to its original size, the Associated Press reports, centuries after it was trimmed down to fit in a smaller wall. The work was conducted as part of the Operation Night Watch project, and the results are being exhibited in the Honor Gallery in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, which sees the original painting flanked by printed strips filling in the lost sections.The Night Watch was originally completed in 1642, after which it was hung in the club house of the civil militia it was based on. But 70 years later it was moved to a new location, where there wasn’t space for the whole painting and it was unceremoniously... Continue reading…

A classic iPod interface for your Spotify or Apple Music library. | Screenshot: tannerv.com/ipod In an era before multitouch displays, the iPod’s click wheel was the king of music playback control. Now, a new project from frontend software developer Tanner Villarete has attempted to emulate its classic controls as a web app, complete with support for your Spotify and Apple Music library.It’s fantastically simple, using your mouse or finger on a touchscreen to emulate the classic controls. You’ll need to sign in using an Apple Music or Spotify Account, and then it’s a simple case of using the virtual click wheel to select and listen to a selection of your most listened-to artists. It even supports the iPod’s classic “Cover Flow” interface, letting you to flip through album covers like a jukebox. Screenshot:... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is opening up applications to a new program for developers of media apps that lets them keep more of what they earn — paying a lower 15 percent commission to Google in exchange for supporting certain platforms and features (via 9to5Google).The Play Media Experience Program is another way to get around the company’s 30 percent service fee, and it’s also an admission that the Google had already been cutting deals with some developers behind the scenes; Google is positioning it as the global expansion of a program that was previously invite-only, though it doesn’t seem to have mentioned it before today.If that sounds familiar, you might be thinking of how Amazon managed to evade Apple’s App Store tax. Apple, too, explained that... Continue reading…

Gain a headphone jack, lose some unnecessary cameras Continue reading…

Lenovo has announced a new product called the Go Wireless Charging Kit, which lets you retrofit wireless charging functionality to a wide variety of laptops. It makes use of “Power by Contact” technology from Energy Square, rather than the more common Qi standard.The kit consists of a 3.2mm-thick brushed metal charging mat that you plug into the wall and leave at your desk, as well as a long wireless charging receiver that attaches to the base of your laptop and connects over USB-C. Once set up, Lenovo says it should charge most 13-inch to 14-inch “non-touch notebooks of up to 65W” with efficiency of 93 percent, and it’ll work with both Windows and macOS devices. Wireless charging on laptops is pretty rare. Dell released... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Republicans and Democrats are having very different conversations Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Soon, public links to an untold number of items stored on Google Drive and YouTube will stop working. In the name of enhanced security, Google is changing the way it handles link sharing on both services, and while active users may be able to opt out of the switch, files and videos abandoned on unused or inactive accounts may simply slip out of view forever.That’s because shared links are now part of a newer system that Google says increases security. On YouTube, the newer links are apparently more difficult for anyone to guess or access without being explicitly given access. The newer links also have the affect of tying more activity to specific accounts and requiring viewers to log in, which allows access to be tracked and made a part... Continue reading…

According to noted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple will sell an iPhone with a 6.7-inch screen for less than $900 in 2022 (via 9to5Mac). If this turns out to be the case, iPhone 14 buyers will have a less expensive way to get a screen size that Apple currently only sells on the 12 Pro Max, which starts at $1,099.Kuo predicts that Apple’s 2022 non-pro iPhone lineup includes phones with 6.1 and 6.7-inch screens (the same sizes as the current iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max, respectively). Absent is the iPhone Mini with its 5.4-inch screen. Analysts, including Kuo, have said that the Mini will be going away in 2022 due to reportedly low sales.While some may mourn the loss of an actually small phone option, from Apple’s perspective, going big... Continue reading…

Image: EA Battlefield 2042, coming this fall, will offer the series’ largest skirmishes yet; its “All-Out Warfare” modes can fit 128 simultaneous players in a single match on PS5, Xbox Series X and PC. But you won’t always have 128 humans in each match — EA will be backfilling those servers with bots to keep games populated, the company confirms to The Verge, and there’s currently no plan to let you turn that off.Humans will take priority, so you might never encounter an AI soldier at peak playtimes — and if you truly hate bots, you’ll be able to play other modes. But the main event allows up to 64 “AI soldiers” to help fill a game, depending on your region, platform, and how many real-life humans are available to join up. That applies to both... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge One of tech’s biggest problems in the past few months has been due to one of its smallest components: chips. Months into the shortage, the effects have spread far beyond the difficulty of buying an Xbox Series X or PS5. Car companies are being hit the worst, and even home appliances might start to see issues with supply.Earlier this year, companies expected to have supply chains sorted and products more consistently back on shelves by summer — but June is nearly over and there’s seemingly no end in sight. And with the upcoming slate of big tech releases and the holiday shopping season coming up, expect things to get worse before they get better.“We had thought probably six or seven months ago, like everybody else, that it would be... Continue reading…

Photo credit should read PAULA BUSTAMANTE/AFP via Getty Images John McAfee, founder of the company behind McAfee Antivirus, has been found dead according to reports from Reuters, El Mundo, El País, and others. He was being held in a Barcelona prison, and the Catalan Department of Justice has stated that his death was likely caused by suicide. Lawyers for McAfee confirmed his death to Reuters and The New York Times, with one saying it was “the result of a cruel system that had no reason to keep this man in jail for so long.”McAfee was being held in prison, pending extradition to the US, since his arrest in October 2020. He faced charges of tax evasion and had also been charged with securities fraud relating to an alleged cryptocurrency pump and dump scheme. Spanish courts had approved his... Continue reading…

The Peacock app displayed on a TV. Nearly a year after Peacock’s launch, NBCUniversal’s marquee streaming app is finally coming to Fire TV and Fire tablets.The streaming service will officially arrive on Amazon devices on June 24th, allowing users to access the app without having to sideload it. The companies announced Wednesday that the app would be supported across Fire TV products, including Fire TV Stick Lite, Fire TV Stick 4K, and Fire TV smart TVs. A Peacock spokesperson told The Verge that second-generation Fire TVs and above will have support for the app, as will all Fire Tablets with Fire OS 5 and above.In addition to Peacock, the distribution agreement will see 15 NBCUniversal apps arrive on Amazon devices as well, including various NBC apps and Telemundo.... Continue reading…

Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Netflix Jerry Seinfeld is perhaps best known for co-writing and starring in Bee Movie (fine, also for co-creating one of the most beloved televised sitcoms). But since that daring project, he hasn’t really returned to feature-length films. That’s about to change — Deadline and Variety report that Seinfeld is co-writing, directing, producing, and starring in Unfrosted, a new film about the origins of Pop-Tarts, for Netflix.Seinfeld’s fascination with the toaster pastry is well-documented, featuring the breakfast food in his stand-up and in a New York Times video interview on joke writing. Seinfeld is penning this film exploration alongside Spike Feresten and Barry Marder — two of Bee Movie’s co-writers — using the classic stand-up bit as a... Continue reading…

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - JUNE 17: A digital sign displays a temperature of 115 degrees Fahrenheit as a heat wave continues to bake the Southwest United States on June 17, 2021 in Las Vegas, Nevada. | Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images The US is only a few days into summer and another heat wave is already coming for the West. “Record shattering” would be an understatement to describe the last heat wave, which lingered over the Southwest last week and has since shifted eastward. Roughly 4,000 new temperature records have already been set this year. More are going to make the books over the next week.A heat dome is a trapBoth heat waves are caused by atmospheric conditions called heat domes. In short, a heat dome is a trap. It forms when high pressure in the upper atmosphere creates a sort of lid or cap that stops hot air from escaping, according to NOAA. As the air sinks back down to Earth, it compresses and heats up even more. The heat dome also blocks out clouds and... Continue reading…

T-Mobile’s 5G-branded gin and ginger beer go on sale tomorrow. | Photo: T-Mobile Whatever the reason, 5G-themed gin is now something that exists in the world, courtesy of T-Mobile. Ostensibly, “Ultra Capacity 5Gin” exists to celebrate a T-Mobile milestone: covering 300 million people with its low-band extended range 5G network and 150 million covered by its better midrange ultra capacity 5G.But maybe it just came down to the company seeing Ryan Reynolds having a good time, selling gin*, and enjoying ownership of a wireless company and it thinking, “Let’s get in on that.” Or perhaps as the Mariners were on the receiving end of yet another no-hitter, some marketing execs out for a night at ol’ T-Mobile Park drowned their sorrows in one too many $20 G&Ts and got to thinking.With notes of pine, citrus, and... Continue reading…

EA is adding to its roster of mobile game developers by purchasing Playdemic, known for Golf Clash, from WarnerMedia for $1.4 billion. The company says it plans on using Playdemic’s experience to help make future mobile games and that it’s interested in using Golf Clash’s mechanics with other franchises.It’s possible that EA could be purchasing Playdemic not only to gain ownership of a successful mobile game (Golf Clash has over 10 million installs on the Google Play Store), but because there’s opportunity for EA to incorporate some of its other series — it makes the PGA golf games after all, which could tie in well with a mobile golf game.EA seems to be focusing on mobile gaming recently — it also purchased mobile developer Glu in... Continue reading…

An illustration showing the seven Earth-like planets of Trappist-1, a nearby star system astronomers say will be able to view Earth in transit roughly 1,600 years from now. | Image: NASA / JPL-Caltech / R. Hurt (IPAC) For decades, astronomers have probed the universe for signs of life by watching distant planets glide past their host stars, studying the tiny dips of starlight that give away clues about an exoplanet’s atmosphere. Hundreds of those worlds could bear life. And if there’s life, what’s to say it isn’t looking back at us?New research published Wednesday entertains that question, finding nearly 2,000 star systems that have had a front-row seat to observe Earth in recent millennia. The study suggests that hypothetical extraterrestrial civilizations in those star systems could’ve been in the right position to watch Earth transit our Sun and look at us the same way we attempt to look at other planets.“The cosmos is dynamic, so the vantage... Continue reading…

The problem with cloud gaming is you have to think about it Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Brave, makers of the privacy-focused Brave browser, launched a new search engine in public global beta on Tuesday (via TechCrunch). Brave Search, like the company’s browser, is meant to be a private and transparent alternative to Google’s offerings that doesn’t turn users into carefully surveilled targets for advertising. It also isn’t dependent on Google’s results — Brave Search uses its own independent index of the web to function.Using an entirely different index is kind of a big deal. Google obviously dominates the space (to the point of becoming its own verb) and even other popular privacy-focused search alternatives like DuckDuckGo rely on a mix of results from larger indexes like Microsoft’s Bing and their own web crawlers.... Continue reading…

Instagram Instagram says reception to its “suggested posts” feature has been so positive that it’s launching a new test: this time, suggested posts will be mixed throughout your primary feed, sometimes ahead of photos and videos from people you follow.The company is testing new controls, too, that’ll allow users to add specific topics as an interest for their suggested posts, as well as the ability to snooze the recommendations for 30 days to hide them from the feed entirely. (You can see what that looks like below.) The feature, which launched last year, has so far offered additional content only after you’ve seen everything the people you follow have shared. This new test will come to a “small number” of users. Image:... Continue reading…

Foundation — Apple’s big-budget adaptation of the classic Isaac Asimov books — finally has a release date: it’ll debut on Apple TV Plus sometime this September, according to an email to subscribers obtained by MacRumors. An exact release date has yet to be announced, although, presumably, Apple will provide details on that in the coming weeks as the marketing blitz for the show picks up.The series has been a long time coming. Apple first announced Foundation back in 2018, as one of the marque series for the streaming service, and it debuted a trailer for it during its WWDC keynote presentation last year. But due to delays from the COVID-19 pandemic, the show was delayed to late 2021, and Apple hasn’t really shown off any more footage... Continue reading…

Black Widow in Marvel’s Avengers. | Image: Square Enix The developers of Marvel’s Avengers have released a new patch that fixes a bad bug for PS5 players that showed their IP address on-screen. Having your IP address on display poses a particular problem for streamers and people trying to record gameplay of the game, as your IP address can be used to glean a lot of information about you (such as an approximate idea of your location).“Patch 1.8b has been published and fixes the issue that was occurring on PS5 where sensitive information was displayed on screen,” the developers said on Twitter. “PS5 players are safe to stream now.”The bug first appeared in the PS5 version of Marvel’s Avengers on Tuesday following the 1.8 update, which adds new content and a long list of other bug fixes and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Supreme Court says a Pennsylvania school can’t punish a cheerleader for swearing on Snapchat. The 8-1 ruling determined that students’ rights to free expression outweighed the school’s interest in preventing potentially disruptive speech — in this case, a snap captioned “fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything.”Justice Stephen Breyer delivered the majority opinion this morning, upholding an appeals court decision from the Third Circuit. He said that student Brandi Levy — identified as B.L. in court documents — shouldn’t have been suspended from her cheerleading team for a vulgar post about school sports. “While public schools may have a special interest in regulating some off-campus student speech, the special interests... Continue reading…

New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) voted to block the issuance of new for-hire vehicle licenses for electric vehicles. The move was widely perceived as a snub toward Revel, the company best known for its electric moped-sharing service, which was planning to launch a ride-hailing service using a fleet of Tesla vehicles.Revel announced last April that it planned to launch a ride-hail service in Manhattan with a fleet of 50 Tesla Model Ys. The company had been hoping to exploit a loophole in the city’s current rules, which caps the number of new FHV licenses but exempts wheelchair-accessible and electric vehicles. The cap was originally enacted as a way to stem the tide of new Uber and Lyft vehicles that were flooding the... Continue reading…