The Verge

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Prime Day 2021 is kicking off in just a few days. Prime members will get to enjoy exclusive tech and gaming discounts on Amazon. In addition, other retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, and Target will each be having deals of their own that don’t require a subscription. We’ll be covering the deals in-depth starting Monday morning, June 21st, so join us then. We’re collecting the best early Prime Day deals right here, but here are a few more excellent deals to take us into the weekend.Through Sunday, people who sign up for a free My Best Buy account can get $150 off most of Apple’s last-gen iPad Pro in both the 11-inch and 12.9-inch sizes. This limited-time price cut results in the best prices we’ve seen for the Wi-Fi and LTE-connected... Continue reading…

Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.In this episode, the show is split into three sections. First, Nilay and Dieter talk to Verge senior editor Tom Warren about this week in Microsoft: leaks of the Windows 11 UI, announcements from E3 2021, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella doubling as the company’s chairman.

AMD helps bring OLED to the mainstream Continue reading…

The Destiny Toaster in all its glory. | Image: Bungie A year after Bungie said it would explore making an official Destiny Toaster during a charity livestream, our bread-based dreams are finally becoming a reality. The Destiny Toaster is now available to preorder from Bungie’s online store for $84.99. It’s not due to ship until at least December, but Bungie says that once it does it’ll toast the game’s Tricorn logo into every slice of bread it touches. Does it also make normal toast? We have no clue.If you’re a little lost as to why the developer of Destiny would go to the effort of making a toaster (because lord knows I was), PCGamer has you covered. Apparently “getting that bread” is in-game slang for getting a good loot drop, and there’s also a gun in the game that’s the spitting image... Continue reading…

Image: Bandai Everyone’s favorite digital pet, the Tamagotchi, is being reinvented for its 25th anniversary. The new Tamagotchi Smart puts the creature into a colorful smartwatch, allowing you to strap your digital pet — and all the chores that come with it — directly to your wrist. Kotaku reports that the new device features a touchscreen for petting your little friend, voice recognition for chatting, and a pedometer. Oh, and it can also display the time. Neat.After their original release of the Tamagotchi in the late 90s, there was a global flurry of enthusiasm, leading to a spin-off anime series, video games, and a movie. The Tamagotchi Smart is fundamentally very similar to the 90s toys, but benefits from 25 years of tech progress. Its screen is... Continue reading…

Photo by Tunahan Turhan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Last year, Taiwan was held up as a model example of how to control the pandemic. Now, with a rising case-count threatening the country’s vital tech industry in the middle of a global semiconductor shortage, its government is letting its powerful corporations buy COVID-19 vaccines on its behalf. It’s an unusual workaround, but one that makes sense given Taiwan’s complaints that China scuppered earlier deals.As reported by Nikkei Asia and Reuters, the Taiwanese government said on Friday that it would allow chipmaker TSMC and Terry Gou, billionaire founder of tech assembly giant Foxconn, to negotiate on its behalf with vaccine makers. Both TSMC and Gou (who will be working through his Yonglin Education Foundation) said they hope to buy... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Spotify has acquired Podz, a startup whose technology generates preview clips of podcasts, the streaming service has announced. Unlike other services podcasters can use to manually create clips, TechCrunch says Podz automates the process of finding key moments from episodes using machine learning trained on over 100,000 hours of audio.The acquisition is aimed at improving podcast discovery, letting users browse short clips rather than 30-minute plus podcast episodes. Spotify says this will make it “easier for listeners to find the content they want to listen to, and for creators to be discovered and build a fan base.” Podz tells TechCrunch that users on its platform typically follow up to 30 podcasts, up from an average of seven.M... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Facebook is rolling out its v30 update to the Oculus Quest and Quest 2 VR headsets. As previewed earlier this week by Mark Zuckerberg, v30 includes a new multitasking interface for Infinite Office that lets you put multiple apps side by side, including the browser, Oculus TV, Oculus Move, the store, and so on.Like many new Oculus Quest features, it’ll be found in the Experimental section of the settings menu at first. Once multitasking is enabled, apps can be dragged up from the menu bar or the apps library and snapped into position.The v30 update also enables Air Link for the original Quest headset. Air Link came to the Quest 2 in April and allows you to stream VR games from your PC to your headset wirelessly, as opposed to Oculus... Continue reading…

Microsoft Flight Simulator | Microsoft Just in time for the launch of Microsoft Flight Simulator on Xbox Series consoles next month, developer Asobo Studios has added some extra details that players will appreciate. World Update V is focused on the Nordic region (specifically Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden), bringing stunning vistas to an already visually impressive title.A brief trailer shows the payoff for some extra attention on landscapes (so many fjords) and urban areas with detailed architecture for you to fly around showing off everything from ancient castles to modern stadiums, towers and bridges. According to the team, the new areas include “100 airports and 77 carefully selected points of interest.” You can see Lego House and Frederiksborg Castle in... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google Meet, Google’s answer to video calling services like Zoom, is getting a collection of helpful tweaks to its hand-raising feature as part of ongoing updates to Workspace. The new changes, spotted by 9to5Google, include a new hand-raising animation, notification sound, and adjustments to how hosts are made aware of raised hands.While the update is minor, for anyone who uses Google Meet in a large group setting or regularly attends webinars, the tweaks will be helpful — plus, the new animation really is nice. Image: Google The new hand-raising animation. Here’s Google’s breakdown of the changes you’ll notice as the update rolls out to Workspace users:

Massively popular battle royale game PUBG Mobile is returning to India after being banned in September 2020, TechCrunch writes. The app is available in early access on Google’s Play Store under a new name, Battlegrounds Mobile India, and with some changes to the game itself, like green blood and a new account system.PUBG Mobile was initially banned alongside hundreds of other apps because of connections to Chinese companies — in this game’s case, it was major video game investor Tencent. At the time of the ban, PUBG Studio (owned by the larger South Korean company Krafton) announced that it would relaunch in the region with new features customized for Indian gamers, including the color change to blood, and framing the game explicitly as... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge More than six months after its initial debut, the PlayStation 5 remains as elusive as ever. Sony also expects console shortages to stretch into 2022, however, at 5:15PM ET / 2:15PM PT, both the PS5 and PS5 Digital Edition will be available at Sony’s store. You can head to that site right now, and the page will automatically toss you into the queue to (hopefully) secure a PS5 from the batch being released into the wild today.Sony says that you don’t need to refresh the page, but make sure that you stick around once the queue begins because it’ll likely ask you at some point to verify that you’re still present, or else you might be booted from the queue. If it’s your first time, welcome to the needless drama involved with buying a PS5.S... Continue reading…

Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images Nielsen, the nearly century-old research firm which produces the eponymous gold standard for television ratings, is taking a more serious look into how much Americans are streaming. The result of its labors: an ominously named rating system it calls The Gauge.While Nielsen has tried to calculate the popularity of various streaming programs before (through audio analysis), The Gauge seems to hew closer to the ways Nielsen has measured TV viewership in the past: via a device which, according to The New York Times, “observes internet traffic that passes through a router.” Presumably, this device is attached directly to the televisions of the roughly 14,000 homes from which The Gauge currently gathers data, as the Times once again reports... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Update June 17th, 4:15PM ET: Walmart appears to have sold out of Series X consoles for today. I hope that you got one!Microsoft’s next-gen console may have arrived, but getting your hands on an Xbox Series X isn’t exactly easy. Much like the PlayStation 5, Microsoft’s console remains in short supply due to increased demand and ongoing chip shortages, a problem that will likely extend into 2022. Thankfully, if you haven’t managed to secure either console, the Series X is available at Walmart right now for $499.99. (Walmart is releasing new waves of consoles every 10 minutes for now, so check again if you strike out.)If you’re not sure how the Series X differs from the more affordable but weaker Series S console, there a few things to... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple is cutting the prices for its AppleCare Plus extended warranty for both its M1 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops. AppleCare for the new M1 Air now costs $199 (versus the old $249 price), while AppleCare for the M1 Pro is down $20 to $249, as spotted by MacRumors.If you’ve got an Intel-based laptop, those price cuts are a mixed bag. Apple is applying the $199 price for the MacBook Air to both the M1 and Intel-based models, even though it no longer directly sells the Intel Airs. If you’ve got an Intel-based Pro, on the other hand (which Apple does still offer, at least for now), you won’t be getting any discount — AppleCare Plus for that model will still cost the same $269 as before. Image: Apple Note the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Snap is removing its controversial “speed filter” from Snapchat this week, NPR reports. The in-app effect displays your current speed in miles or kilometers per hour, and many critics have claimed the feature encouraged reckless driving — with some saying that Snap should be held liable when the speed filter was connected to deadly car crashes.There have been multiple lawsuits over the years connecting Snapchat to car crashes. One concerning a 2015 car accident in Georgia arrived just a few years after Snapchat was first updated to include the filter. In the years since, the company has demoted the filter to a sticker, burying it in a separate menu, and making it a bit harder to use.The Ninth Circuit Appeals Court recently ruled that... Continue reading…

Featuring a new Discover tab, and a redesigned home screen. | Image: Nvidia Starting today, Nvidia’s Shield devices are getting a revamped user interface, similar to what we saw come to other Android TV devices in February. The biggest change is a new Discover tab, which features content recommendations grouped by genre. The “All Apps” screen has also been tweaked: it’s now simply called “Apps” and uses a full-screen layout that Nvidia says shows more apps at once.The new design appears to have drawn inspiration from the Google TV software on last year’s Chromecast. They’re not identical (Google TV has the recommendations-focused “For you” tab as its home screen, for example), but there are obvious similarities. Most notably, the large circular app icons on the left side of the display have disappeared, and... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge In 2017, The New York Times profiled Sunvalley, a Chinese electronics manufacturer that obsessively monitored Amazon to build and maintain US-facing brands with a reputation for quality. They include phone charging specialist RavPower, home office and dash cam supplier Vava, and headphones and home appliance purveyor TaoTronics. Now, all three of them have disappeared from Amazon, seemingly for ignoring the platform’s rules.On Wednesday, Amazon confirmed to The Verge that it had removed RavPower. (Amazon tells us it’s checking on Sunvalley’s other brands). But it’s clear from their empty Amazon storefronts that something’s going on — and Sunvalley’s Chinese parent company has already issued a statement, spotted by The Wall Street... Continue reading…

Image: Canoo California EV startup Canoo announced Thursday that it plans to build its electric vehicles at a new factory to be built outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The startup claims the facility will create “more than 2,000 jobs” and that it will open in 2023.The facility will be built on a 400-acre site at the MidAmerica Industrial Park complex in Pryor, Oklahoma. It will house a paint shop, body shop, and general assembly plant, according to Canoo, which is calling the facility a “mega microfactory.”But since Canoo wants to put its first vehicle — an electric van first announced in 2019 — into production by the end of 2022, it will have the first units built by a contract manufacturer in the Netherlands called VDL Nedcar. Canoo says VDL Nedcar... Continue reading…

Is it an e-bike or an e-moped? Who cares, it’s fast Continue reading…

Yesterday, Facebook took a leap many people have been predicting for years: it started putting ads inside virtual reality. The company launched a limited test of advertisements inside three Oculus Quest apps, saying it would expand the system based on user feedback. The move is a turning point for Oculus, bringing one of Facebook’s most controversial features into a medium that inspires both idealism and alarm. And it raises three big questions about Facebook’s future and immersive computing.The first question is how deeply Facebook will end up linking advertising with hardware sensor data. Even more than smartphones, Oculus Quest headsets are a gold mine of information about you. They capture precise head and hand motion, pictures of... Continue reading…

Microsoft is bringing its Xbox Design Lab back for Xbox Series X controllers. Originally launched in 2016, Xbox Design Lab allows Xbox owners to create personalized Xbox controllers. Microsoft is bringing the program back for the next-gen Xbox Series X controllers, after putting it on hold just ahead of the Series X launch last year.Custom controllers will be available in the US, Canada, and most European countries today, priced at $69.99 with millions of color combinations. Just like before, you can customize colors in pretty much every part of the controller, including bumpers, thumb sticks, the D-pad, and options for buttons. Engraving is also available for an extra $9.99.All new Xbox Design Lab controllers will be based on the Xbox... Continue reading…

A recent forest fire burned out a campground on April 18th, 2021, in the Dragoon Mountains of Eastern Arizona. | Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein / Corbis via Getty Images The stage is set for a bad season, but there are still a lot of unknowns Continue reading…

Party guests included Axel Mansoor, formerly the Clubhouse app icon. The app enters the real world Continue reading…

The Beatles/Peter Jackson The Beatles: Get Back, a documentary about the iconic band directed by Peter Jackson, will debut as a three-part series on Disney Plus over the Thanksgiving holiday later this year.Jackson spent three years restoring and editing some 60 hours of footage shot in January 1969 by Michael Lindsay-Hogg that hasn’t been seen before, and more than 150 hours of previously unheard audio. It captures John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr preparing for their first live show in more than two years, writing and rehearsing 14 new songs.The documentary also includes the band’s famous rooftop concert on Savile Row in London— you’ve probably seen parts of it — a show that ended up being The Beatles’ final public performance.... Continue reading…

Image: Amazon Amazon’s body fat percentage scanner performs better than other, more cumbersome methods of calculating body fat, a new study showed. A body scan is one feature on the Amazon Halo Band subscription service, which the company announced last August.The Halo Body feature works through smartphone cameras. Users take four photos of their bodies, which are then combined into a 3D image. Then, Amazon’s tool uses machine learning to calculate the user’s body fat percentage. When Amazon launched Halo, the company said it did an internal study to validate the feature. Now, they’ve released a study — which was funded by Amazon, but conducted with leading experts in the field — showing that the tool works well.The results show that the tool... Continue reading…

Get ready to start seeing ads in Instagram Reels. The app’s video feed / TikTok clone will start including ads today across the globe. They’ll look just like any other Reel — full-screen, looping, up to 30 seconds long — and will appear in between other clips. Ads will be identified by a small “sponsored” tag below the name of the advertiser’s account.Instagram started testing ads in Australia, Brazil, Germany, and India in April. There’s nothing particularly surprising about more ads making their way into the app, other than the pace with which Instagram has moved to turn this new format into a revenue generator. Facebook also said this week that it would bring ads to Oculus Quest apps.Reels only launched in August 2020, and the... Continue reading…

Tempo, the company behind the piece of exercise equipment that uses Microsoft Kinect to check your form, is announcing that it’ll have Olympians teach classes on its connected device. The classes are being made as part of an event that’s called the Tempo Games challenge, which will involve participating in workouts led by seven Olympic athletes that will be headed to Tokyo this year — you can see Tempo’s list below:

Pokémon Unite, the team-based, five vs. five strategy game co-developed with Tencent’s TiMi Studio Group, now has a release window — and it’s soon. It’s coming first to Nintendo Switch in July 2021, followed by a release on mobile devices in September. Presumably, it’ll be released on both iOS and Android, but specific platforms weren’t confirmed today.In case you can’t decide which platform you want to play the game on, don’t fret too much, as Pokémon Unite will support cross-play between Nintendo’s console and mobile devices. The Pokémon Company announced that the game will also support cross-progression, which can be enabled by signing in with either your Pokémon Trainer Club account or Nintendo Account on the devices that you want... Continue reading…

Plenty of actors can, I’m sure, cite plays they were in where the audience was bored, listless, or simply nonexistent. But few have had to contend with the challenges presented by performing in a public lobby in GTA Online. That’s a shame, frankly, because it’s hilarious.A YouTuber by the name of Rustic Mascara has been testing the limits of this bold new performance space, and, though I can’t explain exactly why, I find it amazing to watch.In one video (above), he performs a speech from Act II Scene ii, in which Hamlet explains to his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern why exactly he is so very, very sad. In Rustic’s performance, this is prefaced by requests to nearby players that they please not kill him. He gets as far as... Continue reading…

A Ring doorbell equipped with a camera | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Amazon-owned Ring used Los Angeles police officers as brand ambassadors for its security cameras, providing free products and discount codes in exchange for recommendations, the Los Angeles Times reported. Ring gave at least 100 LAPD officers free devices, which helped the department create a network of surveillance cameras, making it easier to obtain video footage, according to the LA Times.Ring ended Pillar, its police officer ambassador program in 2019, and a spokesperson said in an email to The Verge on Friday that “the practices and programs in question do not reflect Ring today. We stopped donating to law enforcement and encouraging police to promote our products years ago.”The LAPD did not immediately reply to a request for... Continue reading…

Instant hype-beast status included Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Switch is nearly five years old and facing increased competition from new and powerful consoles from Sony and Microsoft. But despite all of this, Nintendo’s E3 2021 presentation this week was arguably the highlight of this year’s event — even if the long-rumored Switch Pro failed to make an appearance. Nintendo showed off the much-anticipated sequel to Breath of the Wild, revealed that the mythical Metroid Dread is launching later this year, and peppered in a handful of other announcements to excite fans. As always, the company continued to exist in its own world, divorced from the technological rat race that typically defines these debates.In fact, the launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X appears to have had very little impact on... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The PS5 has received a few feature updates since it launched in late 2020, but Sony shared today that it’s prepping to roll out a major system update later this year — and it wants you to test it first. You can register for it’s “first-ever” beta to try the new console software if you’re over 18 and live in the US, Canada, Japan, UK, Germany, or France.Sony isn’t yet sharing what new features are coming in the beta, but it’ll divulge details in the coming weeks, it says. Could it be that the PS5’s long-awaited M.2 SSD slot will get switched on for additional speedy storage, or will the console finally get variable refresh rate and 1440p support? You can already tell that I’m expecting a lot out of this incoming update.Microsoft has... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The biggest change to Microsoft’s Office documents in decades is coming to life soon, as the company’s Fluid framework arrives in Microsoft Teams, OneNote, Outlook, and Whiteboard. Microsoft first unveiled Fluid last year, showing how the framework allows blocks of Office content to live independently across the web. That idea is now becoming a reality, with collaborative content that can be copied, pasted, and shared with others.Instead of tables, graphs, and lists that are static and bound to specific documents, Fluid components are collaborative modules that exist across different applications. They will begin showing up in Microsoft Teams first this summer, embeddable in meetings and chats. Microsoft’s Fluid... Continue reading…

Around 15 years ago, Yoshio Sakamoto had an idea for the next mainline Metroid game. Called Dread, the game would feature longtime protagonist Samus Aran constantly pursued by some kind of all-powerful force. The idea was to instill fear in players with an enemy they couldn’t defeat. This was the same time that the Nintendo DS was becoming a breakout hit, but Sakamoto soon realized that the handheld wasn’t powerful enough for his ideas. “It was difficult to realize that concept with that hardware,” he said recently during a meeting with reporters.Development on Dread stopped and started a few times due to these technical limitations, before eventually being shelved indefinitely. “We had put it on hold,” Sakamoto explains. Which is what... Continue reading…

Bharti Kamble putting up a WhatsApp status on the temperature range of the human body. The backbone of India’s rural healthcare system is now tasked with beating back COVID-19 myths, one message at a time Continue reading…

Snapchat Snapchat is making it easier for developers to use viral content to directly promote their apps. Today, it’s launching Creative Kit for Spotlight, which will allow app developers to give users the power to publish directly to Snapchat’s TikTok rival, Spotlight. At the same time, Snapchat users can browse content made on those apps and then easily navigate to download them.It’s a win-win for both parties: Snapchat gains more content on its platform while developers are rewarded with additional downloads if an effect or tool they launch goes viral. Developers can also set up hashtag topics that’ll tag this content, so they can track how well it’s doing, and viewers can see everything made with that effect. Snap says it won’t take any sort... Continue reading…

Loki was Disney’s first show to make the switch. | Photo: Marvel Studios From July, all of Disney Plus’ global original series will be released on Wednesdays rather than Fridays, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The change has reportedly been made to give the service’s increasing number of original TV shows more space in the schedule, while the service’s original movies will continue to release on Fridays.Disney has announced a number of new premiere dates following the change, with most now releasing a few days later than previously planned. Monsters, Inc. spinoff Monsters at Work for example, will now release on Wednesday, July 7th rather than July 2nd, while Turner & Hooch has shifted from July 16th to Wednesday, July 21st. However a couple of series will now release earlier, like The Wonderful World... Continue reading…

“Smile recognition” in action. | Image: Canon Information Technologies Tech company Canon has come up with a downright dystopic way to tackle the problem of workplace morale: it’s installed cameras with AI-enabled “smile recognition” technology in the offices of its Chinese subsidiary Canon Information Technology. The cameras only let smiling workers enter rooms or book meetings, ensuring that every employee is definitely, 100 percent happy all the time.This depressing tale was highlighted in a report from The Financial Times on how Chinese companies are surveilling employees to an unsettling degree with the help of AI and algorithms. Firms are monitoring which programs employees use on their computers to gauge their productivity; using CCTV cameras to measure how long they take on their lunch break; and... Continue reading…

The battery pack can wirelessly charge two devices at once. | Image: Zens Zens’ new battery pack has a wireless charger on both sides, allowing you to charge two Qi-compatible devices simultaneously in what can only be described as a “charging sandwich.” The Dual Powerbank was announced alongside a trio of other battery packs including the Magnetic Single Powerbank, the Single Powerbank with Stand (which can itself be wirelessly charged, as well as wirelessly charge other devices), and the 10,000 mAh Powerbank with Stand.Although you could theoretically use it to charge two Qi-compatible phones, the intended use case appears to be charging an iPhone along with an accessory like a pair of AirPods. That’s because one side of the battery pack includes a MagSafe connection, which should keep it centered on iPhone... Continue reading…

The OnePlus 9 Pro. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge OnePlus CEO Pete Lau has announced a “new journey” for the company including a plan to “further integrate our organization with Oppo.” Lau made the announcement by way of a post on OnePlus’ forums, saying “we’re at a turning point for the future of OnePlus” and “we must adapt as a team and a brand.”It sounds like a dramatic move for OnePlus, the company Lau started with Carl Pei after ostensibly leaving Oppo in 2013. OnePlus made its name with rebellious marketing and hype-driven online retail strategies, portraying itself as a smarter alternative to bigger smartphone brands.It was always clear that OnePlus had ties to OppoBut it remained a private company with ownership tied up in Oppo and the shadowy BBK Electronics empire, and it... Continue reading…

SoftBank has announced a Leica-branded phone for the Japanese market. Leica has lent its name to phone camera systems before, but this Leitz Phone 1 is the first time the Leica brand and iconic red dot has taken precedence on a smartphone.The camera system is of course going to be paramount for a device like this, and the hardware here is certainly unusual. There’s a single 20-megapixel 1-inch sensor — the biggest in any phone — with a 19mm-equivalent f/1.9 ultrawide lens, meaning other focal lengths need to use digital zoom.If that sounds familiar, well, Sharp announced the exact same thing a month ago. The Aquos R6 has the same Leica-branded camera system — though the Leitz Phone 1 makes it look a lot bigger — and other specs like... Continue reading…

CGTN A Long March rocket blasted off from China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center today, carrying three astronauts to China’s new space station. The launch marks China’s first crewed mission in five years.The launch of the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft took place at 9:22AM local time on Thursday morning. The three astronauts, Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming, and Tang Hongbo, will be the first three people to board China’s space station, Tianhe. They will stay on Tianhe for three months, bringing the space station online.The core module of Tianhe, which contains the crew’s living quarters, was launched in April 2021. This first crewed mission is part of eleven planned missions during the space station’s construction phase — two more modules and several... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Imagine that, over the past year, Facebook had managed to acquire the battle royale game Fortnite, the kid-focused game creation engine Roblox, and the best-selling game of 2020, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.For many reasons, such a spree of acquisitions would never happen. One of the biggest is that antitrust scrutiny has made it increasingly difficult for Facebook to acquire anything that resembles a social network. It was more than a year ago that the company bought the moribund GIF search engine Giphy, which had few prospects for success as a standalone company; the United Kingdom’s competition watchdog has so far blocked the deal from closing, warning the acquisition would somehow harm Facebook’s competitors.And yet if you... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon has decided it would really like to attract more developers to its Android and Fire OS app store, so it’s following in the the footsteps of Apple (and Google) by announcing a new “Amazon Appstore Small Business Accelerator Program” that takes less money out of developer’s pockets (via AFTVNews).But where Apple and Google reduce their cut of a developer’s first $1 million in revenue from 30 percent down to 15 percent, Amazon’s formula has a slight tweak: it’ll take a higher 20 percent of revenue, but give developers an additional 10 percent in “AWS promotional credits.” The idea is that if your app is using Amazon’s popular AWS cloud services anyhow, it’ll be equivalent to you keeping 90 percent of the money. And if you happen to... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge On February 4th, 2014, Microsoft found its new CEO in the cloud — Azure boss Satya Nadella took the top job, Steve Ballmer retired, and Bill Gates stepped down as chairman. Now, after growing Microsoft to become one of the most valuable companies in the world yet again, Nadella has now been unanimously elected chairman of the Microsoft board.It’s the first time in two decades that Microsoft’s chairman will also be its CEO, after Bill Gates originally stepped down as CEO in 2000 (Gates left the Microsoft board entirely in 2020), and it’s a testament to how much Nadella is now trusted to lead the company forward. When Gates stepped down as chairman in 2014, the board elected independent chairman John Thompson, who’d previously been CEO... Continue reading…

Image: USPS EV startup Workhorse has filed an official protest after losing the bid to make the United States Postal Service’s next-generation mail vehicle in February, a contract that could ultimately be worth some $6 billion. The USPS instead gave that contract to defense contractor Oshkosh.The Ohio-based company filed a bid protest in the US Court of Federal Claims on Wednesday. The complaint is currently sealed, though a judge could ultimately rule to make some parts of it public, as Workhorse also filed a redacted version of the complaint that could be made public.The bid protest kicks off a high-profile court fight over the contract for the next-generation mail truck, and could have an impact on how and when those vehicles switch over to... Continue reading…

Hey, the AI is doing the best it can!