The Verge

Eufy, the Anker-owned smart home brand, is announcing a new SoloCam line of battery-powered security cameras that have local storage and are designed to operate without connecting to a separate hub. The new lineup will include two “Essential” (standard) cameras, two spotlight cameras, and one solar-powered camera.The standard and spotlight SoloCams will be offered in 1080p or 2K resolution models, and Eufy says that you can get four months of battery on a single charge. All of the cameras also offer 8GB of local storage, which Eufy estimates should hold at least two months of video.You’ll be able to preorder all of the models of the SoloCam on Wednesday, but they’ll be shipping out at different times over the next couple months. Here... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Deals from the last week or so have been especially kind to gamers who have a PS4 or PS5. Sony’s Days of Play sale event has discounted many games, and today there are price cuts on subscriptions that will help you get more enjoyment out of your console. At Newegg, a one-year subscription to PlayStation Plus is $44, down from Sony’s usual $60 price. It’s just one dollar more at Amazon, if you’d prefer to shop there. This service will allow you to play online multiplayer games, and it’ll make you eligible to download some complimentary games every month.Another useful service that’s more affordable today is PlayStation Now, which is effectively Sony’s take on Xbox Game Pass. It lets you download some of the games in its library, while... Continue reading…

A screenshot from Gran Turismo Sport. | Image: Sony The Olympics is currently hosting its first-ever virtual sporting event series, the Olympic Virtual Series, where competitors can play in virtual versions of five different physical sports: motorsport, cycling, baseball, sailing, and rowing. The cycling competition, for example, takes place in Zwift, which lets you pair your bike and a bike trainer with your computer, phone, or tablet. The motorsport competition takes place entirely inside Gran Turismo Sport.You might notice that none of those are games you might typically associate with esports, such as Overwatch, which has previously hosted World Cup-style tournaments where players represented their countries. At least for now, though, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is... Continue reading…

Photo by James Devaney/GC Images Former President Donald Trump’s blogging days are officially over. On Wednesday, CNBC reported that Trump’s blog has shut down less than a month after its launch.The blog, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” launched May 4th as a substitute messaging platform for the former president after he was banned from Facebook and Twitter earlier this year. But as of Wednesday, the blog had been completely removed from Trump’s website. Jason Miller, senior aide to Trump, confirmed to CNBC Wednesday that the site “will not be returning.” The old blog posts are now archived as press releases in a separate section of the site.The site ‘will not be returning’Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter in January after a deadly right-wing riot broke... Continue reading…

Behold, the P50’s mammoth-sized camera array During Huawei’s HarmonyOS livestream, the company provided a first look at its upcoming P50 series phone. Few specs were given, and it didn’t talk pricing or tease a release date, but the sizzle reel did reveal a close-up look at its interesting camera array.Four camera lenses are visible, along with two flashes. It’s tough to say exactly what we’ll be getting with this phone in terms of megapixel count and sensor size; the photo below confirms that Huawei is working alongside Leica with its optics. We’ll have to wait to see if Huawei improved on its periscope telephoto lenses that my colleague Sam Byford saw great results with on the P40 Pro Plus. The teaser hinted at Huawei’s continued camera partnership with... Continue reading…

Image: Huawei Huawei has announced that its HarmonyOS operating system is coming to its smartphones via a forthcoming update. Huawei’s consumer business CEO Richard Yu says the company is updating around 100 of its devices globally to the new operating system, which also includes tablets like the MatePad Pro. In theory, it’s a big change from its previous phones, which have run the open-source version of Android with Huawei’s own services replacing the Google software it’s been unable to include on new devices as a result of US sanctions.HarmonyOS will initially come to recent flagships like the Mate 40, P40, and Mate 30 series, before releasing on more devices later in the year. Older phones like the Mate 9, Mate 10, P20, and P10 will receive the... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Nintendo is holding an E3 event on June 15th, and the company promises it will be “focused exclusively on Nintendo Switch games mainly releasing in 2021.” The Nintendo Direct presentation will begin at 9AM PT / 12PM ET on June 15th, and Nintendo will hold three hours of gameplay deep dives once the event has concluded.Nintendo’s wording suggests we won’t be seeing any hardware announcements at the company’s E3 show. A “Switch Pro” has been rumored for months, with recent reports suggesting it may be announced ahead of E3. Nintendo’s E3 event starts at 9AM PT / 12PM ET on June 15th. Bloomberg has previously reported that this new Switch model will use more powerful silicon from Nvidia that supports DLSS (Deep... Continue reading…

In Black Rock Forest, just north of New York City, Angie Patterson aims a shotgun at a northern red oak tree. Patterson is a plant ecophysiologist, and the leaves that she’s shooting out of the canopy will give her data to understand how and why trees migrate.Trees have been on the move since at least the last ice age. As their native habitats become inhospitable, tree ranges shift, slowly, to areas they can thrive. But climate change is disrupting the process, scientists say. As of 2019, the IUCN Red List categorized more than 20,000 tree species as threatened, and upward of 1,400 as critically endangered.As scientists scramble to learn more about what drives tree migration, others are planning for the future. To preserve... Continue reading…

Spotify’s Only You feature will visualize listeners’ data. | Spotify Spotify loves when people share its annual Wrapped music breakdown on social media, so it’s making that more of a year-round treat. The company is announcing a new digital experience today called Only You, which will give users personalized playlists in a shareable form. The in-app experience will give users a variety of playlists and data insights based on their music listening habits, and a new feature called Blend will let two friends automatically merge their musical tastes into a playlist.Among the new experience highlights is “Your Dream Dinner Party,” which lets users pick three artists they’d invite to a dinner party with Spotify making a mix for each artist. Another is “Your Artist Pairs,” which highlights unique pairings that... Continue reading…

Mark Abramson, of Heal the Bay, displays a New Zealand mud snail on the tip of his little finger at in Medea Creek at Natural Park in Oak Park on Friday March 3 2010. | Photo by Brian Vander Brug/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images DNA sleuthing helped scientists spot early outcrops of a spreading snail invasion in Pennsylvania. The method could be used to spot the unwanted critters before they cause serious damage. That way, conservationists can stop them from conquering even more places.New Zealand mud snails became a global pest in part because they can reproduce asexually — just one snail in a new area can essentially clone itself until there are 500,000 snails in a single square yard. They’re about the length of a pencil eraser so they’re hard to find until there are so many in a location that it’s nearly impossible to stop their spread.“It opens the door for us to be able to use this technology to detect the snail at a much wider scale”“It’s kind of... Continue reading…

Riot is bringing its tactical shooter Valorant to mobile devices. There aren’t a lot of details yet — such as when it will launch, on what hardware, or how it will differ from the main game — but Riot says the new version will simply be called Valorant Mobile.The developer claims that the PC version of the game, which launched last year, currently averages 14 million monthly players. Valorant is also coming off of its biggest competitive tournament to date, with an event in Iceland, and Riot says that more than 1 million concurrent viewers tuned in to the finals on May 31st.The news shouldn’t be too surprising. Earlier this year, Riot made a similar move with League of Legends, launching a mobile-focused spinoff called Wild Rift.... Continue reading…

With photogrammetry, hundreds of still photos can be transformed into an incredibly realistic 3D model of a real place on Earth — assuming you capture them all.This Memorial Day weekend, a self-flying robot cameraman did that entire job for me. I simply designated where to fly and where not to fly, kicked back in a chair, and a Skydio 2 drone nabbed those photos all by itself. Today, Skydio is launching Skydio 3D Scan, an optional software suite for its self-flying drones that lets them build incredibly detailed models for far more important tasks than my holiday backyard BBQ. We’re talking about scanning bridges that might be in need of structural repair, accident reporting at crash sites, and allowing clients to... Continue reading…

No Man’s Sky is getting yet another big update, this time focused on the way the sci-fi adventure looks. The update is called “Prisms,” and developer Hello Games describes it as “a visual overhaul” of the game. It’s available starting today.The changes include new weather effects, volumetric lighting, furry aliens, skies full of stars, and more. The studio also says that PC and next-gen versions of the game will get “detailed reflections, improved lighting quality, more detailed biomes, and more.” You can get a good rundown in the trailer above. As part of the update, No Man’s Sky is also getting a very cool new feature: flying pets that you can ride. These include giant beetles, flying worms, and huge butterflies.As always, the... Continue reading…

Nvidia goes back to 4K for more than $1K Continue reading…

Apple Watch | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge People with irregular heartbeats who use wearable devices like Apple Watches and Fitbits aren’t overwhelming doctors with worried calls about their hearts, a new study shows. But they are more likely to be treated with a heart procedure called an ablation, the analysis found.The small study is one of the first to show how people with existing heart problems use wearables. Devices like the Apple Watch have a heart-monitoring feature that can alert users if they have an irregular pulse. Technically, those features on the Apple Watch are only authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for people who don’t have underlying heart conditions. But people with heart conditions, including a type of abnormal heart rhythm called atrial... Continue reading…

The Huawei Watch 3. | Image: Huawei Huawei has announced its first smartwatches running its own HarmonyOS operating system, the Huawei Watch 3 and Huawei Watch 3 Pro. In theory it’s the third separate operating system Huawei has used for its smartwatches, which originally ran Google’s Android Wear (now Wear OS) before introducing its own LiteOS software with more recent devices.Despite the new OS, the Watch 3 offers a similar set of features to Huawei’s previous wearables. New additions includes a redesigned home screen that now consists of a watchOS-style grid of apps rather than a list (though you’re free to switch back to a list if you prefer), and there’s also support for video calling through Huawei’s own MeeTime service.Although it’s branded as a HarmonyOS device,... Continue reading…

Huawei’s new 12.6-inch MatePad Pro with stylus and keyboard cover. Huawei has announced a trio of new MatePad tablets; a new 12.6-inch MatePad Pro, a smaller 10.8-inch MatePad Pro, and a new MatePad 11. Not only are they the company’s first tablets running its own HarmonyOS operating system, but the smaller MatePad Pro and MatePad 11 use Snapdragon chips produced by Qualcomm rather than the Huawei-designed Kirin processors found in its previous devices.Between these hardware and software changes, the tablets highlight the challenges that the Chinese technology giant is going through. It’s simultaneously trying to break free of Android, which outside of China is dominated by the Google apps and services that Huawei is unable to preinstall on its phones. But they also speak to the problems US sanctions... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A Californian court has dismissed bribery charges against Apple’s Chief Security Officer Thomas Moyer, Reuters reports, who was accused of offering iPads as bribes to obtain concealed-weapons permits for Apple employees. Judge Eric S. Geffon dismissed arguments of corrupt intent as “pure speculation” that were “not supported by the evidence presented to the grand jury.”Moyer was accused last November of trying to bribe Santa Clara County officials by offering to donate 200 iPads to two officers in the sheriff’s office following a meeting in 2019. Moyer had indeed made the offer, but evidence suggests he believed the permits were already approved at this time, Judge Geffon wrote. This, combined with the fact that Moyer followed Apple’s... Continue reading…

Clothes hangers with Depop’s logo appear in a pop-up shop in Selfridges, London. | Photo by David M. Benett/Getty Images for Depop E-commerce site Etsy, best known for selling handmade and vintage wares, is buying up a cooler, younger rival, UK-based secondhand shopping app Depop.The $1.6 billion acquisition lets Etsy access Depop’s young and growing userbase. Etsy says more than 90 percent of Depop’s users are under 26, meaning they mostly belong to Gen Z, while Etsy’s own users are firmly millennial, with a median age for sellers of around 39. Etsy claims that Depop is the 10th most visited shopping site for Gen Z consumer in the US.“We are simply thrilled to be adding Depop — what we believe to be the resale home for Gen Z consumers — to the Etsy family,” Etsy chief executive Josh Silverman said in a press statement. “Depop is a vibrant, two-sided marketplace... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla CEO Elon Musk has blamed supply chain price pressure for incremental price increases the company has made to its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles over the past several months. “Prices increasing due to major supply chain price pressure industry-wide,” the CEO tweeted in response to a complaint about the changes. “Raw materials especially.”Today, the CEO followed up to say that “microcontroller chips” are a particular challenge right now. But although Musk said that he’s “never seen anything like it,” he added that he doesn’t expect this to be a long-term issue. “Fear of running out is causing every company to overorder – like the toilet paper shortage, but at epic scale.”Musk had previously indicated in an April earnings call that... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon Prime Day, the company’s annual shopping holiday, will take place on Monday, June 21st through June 22nd, the company officially announced today. The forthcoming summer dates mark a return to form; the retail giant has historically held its shopping extravaganza in mid-July but postponed last year’s event until October due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In its most recent earnings report, Amazon previously confirmed this year’s Prime Day would take place in Q2.Like previous years, you can expect to find discounts on true wireless earbuds, 4K TVs of all sizes and panel types, video games, and more. Outside of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Prime Day has become one of the best opportunities to get deals, whether they’re for gifts or... Continue reading…

Nintendo has announced that its Uji Ogura plant will be turned into a public gallery to “showcase the many products Nintendo has launched over its history.” The factory, located in the Ogura district of Uji, a city just outside Kyoto, was built in 1969 and was mainly used for manufacturing playing cards and hanafuda cards, which is how Nintendo got started as a business in the 19th century.“Nintendo has been discussing the possibility of building a gallery, as a way to share Nintendo’s product development history and philosophy with the public,” the company says in a statement. “To this end, the Nintendo Uji Ogura Plant will be renovated to accommodate the gallery, a decision reached after taking consideration of The City of Uji’s plan... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge After months of government bans on DJI drones, with lawmakers questioning whether the company was sending information to the Chinese government, the Pentagon has now admitted that the drones being used might actually be safe (via The Hill), releasing a report saying that two “Government Edition” DJI drones are “recommended for use by government entities.”Last year, the Department of the Interior grounded all its drones, citing concerns of potential spying by the Chinese government, and the Department of Commerce put DJI on its Entity List after the company allegedly provided the Chinese government with surveillance tech for its Uyghur Muslim detention camps. That second claim isn’t being addressed at all today.The report isn’t... Continue reading…

We recently noticed that Alienware’s just-announced X15 and X17 thin and vaguely light gaming laptops are conspicuously missing a port — and it’s not because they’re thin-and-light, it turns out. Alienware has just confirmed to The Verge that it has discontinued the Alienware Graphics Amplifier external GPU, and so these laptops won’t need that proprietary port anymore. The company isn’t saying whether it’ll offer a future eGPU, but pointed us to off-the-shelf Thunderbolt ones instead.The Alienware Graphics Amp was first introduced in 2014 for $299 and designed to be a companion to the company’s midrange Alienware 13, giving it the vast majority of the power of a desktop graphics card plus four extra full-size USB ports when docked. I... Continue reading…

Image: Ikea Confirming what The Verge reported back in April, Ikea tonight listed a new Symfonisk “picture frame with Wi-Fi speaker” product on its website. The device, which is listed for $199, has not yet been announced — but it’s one of two new collaborations between Ikea and Sonos set for release in the near future.According to the likely-to-be-removed website, the Symfonisk picture frame measures 22 inches high, 16 inches wide, and 2 inches deep. Ikea says customers will be able to choose between “various interchangeable fronts,” and the frame will be offered in either black or white finishes. Like the previous two Symfonisk products, the picture frame is designed to blend into your home decor and not stick out as an obvious tech gadget. ... Continue reading…

The logo of the online video library Disney+ is shown on the display of a smartphone. | Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images Even as Disney’s marquee streaming service celebrates Pride Month with a prominently positioned carousel of LGBTQ+ titles on its homepage, the company has found itself at the center of a sexual orientation discrimination lawsuit brought by an executive employee.The complaint (PDF), as reported earlier by Deadline, was filed today in a California superior court on behalf of television executive Joel Hopkins, lawyers confirmed to The Verge. Hopkins had been with the company since 1994. The suit alleges that around the time that he was promoted to vice president of production finance for Touchstone Television in 2000, it became known that Hopkins identified as gay.At this time, despite his tenure and previous promotions within the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter has reopened verification applications after pausing them last week, Twitter announced on Tuesday. The pause, which went in place on Friday, came just eight days after the formal relaunch of verification applications on May 20th.When Twitter first reopened verification applications in May, it said that responses to applications would come back “within a few days,” but warned that they might take up to “a few weeks” depending on the volume of applications the company received. It’s not clear if you should expect similar timelines for a response following the pause and reopening.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook employees are circulating an internal petition calling for the company to investigate content moderation systems that led many Palestinians and allies to say their voices were being censored, the Financial Times reports. The news comes weeks after Israeli airstrikes killed more than 200 people in Gaza, including at least 63 children. Israel and Hamas have now reached a cease fire.Palestinian activists and allies have long accused social media companies of censoring pro-Palestinian content — and the issue has only gotten worse during the recent conflict. At Facebook, content moderation decisions are made by third-party contractors and algorithms, and the process is less than perfect, particularly in non-English speaking... Continue reading…

The Securities and Exchange Commission believes Elon Musk has violated his 2018 settlement agreement twice, according to correspondence obtained by The Wall Street Journal between the SEC and Tesla. The agreement requires a lawyer to approve his tweets about the company.Tesla lawyers didn’t review Musk’s May 2020 tweet about how Tesla’s stock price was “too high imo” before he published it. The company’s lawyers also didn’t approve a July 2019 tweet about Musk’s goal to make 1,000 of Tesla’s solar roofs per week by the end of that year. The SEC sent the letters to Tesla in 2019 and 2020 shortly after each tweet, but has not taken any apparent enforcement action against Musk or the company.“Tesla has abdicated the duties required of it... Continue reading…

A polar bear seen with cubs at Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 2014, in North Slope, Alaska. | Photo credit should read Steven Kazlowski / Barcroft Medi via Getty Images The Biden administration moved forward today with its plans to pause — and potentially halt — oil and gas drilling on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Department of the Interior (DOI) announced today that it suspended leases that the previous administration auctioned off to oil and gas developers just weeks before Donald Trump left office.Today’s decision follows through on an executive order President Joe Biden made on the same day of his inauguration, which asked the Secretary of the Interior to put a temporary moratorium on all oil and gas activities in the refuge. Oil and gas leases will be suspended while the Interior Department conducts a new environmental review, according to a statement issued today. Based on that... Continue reading…

Fabian Kirchbauer Photography The latest EV from Bavaria is a $55,400 luxury sedan with 300 miles of range Continue reading…

When BMW first revealed its flagship iX electric SUV in November, we speculated that it would cost $70,000 or more, based on its luxury styling and upgraded battery. Well, we were right — sort of. The German automaker has just announced that when it goes on sale early next year, the new EV’s suggested price tag will exceed $80,000.That puts the iX squarely in Tesla Model X territory and leaves open the possibility that it may dethrone Elon Musk’s falcon-winged EV as the luxury SUV of choice for consumers. It will also compete with the Audi E-tron, Jaguar I-Pace, and Mercedes EQC when it eventually hits dealerships in the first quarter of 2022.According to BMW, the iX will start at $82,300 for the iX xDrive 50 when preorders for the... Continue reading…

A screenshot of Firefox’s new floating tab design. | Image: Firefox Mozilla launched a redesign for Firefox on Tuesday, and one of the changes you might notice first is a whole new look for tabs.Firefox tabs are now bigger than they used to be, and the one that’s in focus will float above the toolbar near the top of the browser. In Chrome or Safari, by contrast, the tab that’s in focus looks like it is attached directly to the toolbar.Here’s a screenshot I took to give you a better idea of what the new tabs look like. And if you want an idea of just how much bigger the new tabs are in the new design, check out this screenshot a Verge staffer took comparing the new to the old. Left: new Firefox. Right: old Firefox. Mozilla says this new detached design was made to... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge If you’re hunting for a set of truly wireless earbuds that offer great sound quality, noise cancellation, water resistance, a comfy fit, and other handy features, refurbished Apple AirPods Pro at Woot cost just $155. These originally sold for $249, but some retailers offer them new for around $200. This model is a “grade A” unit with “minimal cosmetic damage” at most, and with “like-new functionality.” These are covered with a 90-day warranty through Woot.One of the best leftover Memorial Day deals is on the 40mm GPS version of the Apple Watch Series 6. It’s for the model with a red-colored casing and sport band, and its price is down to $329 at Walmart (originally $399). The bigger 44mm Apple Watch Series 6 in this colorway is $359... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon has recently changed its terms of service to allow its customers to bring lawsuits against the company instead of having to go through an arbitration process. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company made the change after over 75,000 Echo users were organized to file individual arbitration cases, which would have left Amazon on the hook for millions of dollars in fees.Unlike lawsuits, arbitration cases are handled by a third party instead of a judge or jury. According to the American Arbitration Association’s rules (which Amazon was bound by in its old terms of service), the company involved is responsible for hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars in fees when a consumer brings a case against it — and those numbers... Continue reading…

Image: Rimac The Rimac C_Two concept has evolved into a production-ready electric hypercar called the Nevera, and it’s still just as absurd as it was three years when it first broke cover at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show.Powered by a 120kWh battery pack, the Nevera uses four electric motors — one for each wheel — to put down an almost unbelievable 1.4MW of power, which Rimac says is roughly equivalent to 1,914 horsepower. The quad-motor setup can push the car to 60 miles per hour from a standstill in just 1.85 seconds. It has a top speed of 258 miles per hour.What’s more, Rimac says one of the things it worked on over the last three years was improving the battery pack’s liquid cooling system, meaning drivers can use that peak power for longer before... Continue reading…

JBS, a Brazilian company which supplies a fifth of the world’s meat, was the victim of a coordinated cyberattack, Bloomberg reports.Details are still emerging about the extent and severity of the attack — which became apparent to JBS on May 30th, and was disclosed to staff in a memo on the 31st — but it has caused some of the largest slaughterhouses in the US to shut down already, and at least one in Canada. According to Bloomberg, JBS has suspended its own IT systems in Australia and North America, though the company’s backup servers appear to be unaffected. Naturally, the shutdowns of computer systems and physical plants are likely to cause supply delays.In a press conference earlier today, White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Do you own an Echo Studio, an Echo Dot, or a Ring Floodlight Cam? If so, Amazon is about to introduce your device to a new type of network it calls Sidewalk, which is meant to help extend the range of its low-bandwidth devices (so that if your network goes down, for example, your Dot can piggyback on your neighbors’), and also to make location devices such as Tile more efficient.According to Amazon, Sidewalk will use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), the 900MHz spectrum, and other frequencies “to simplify new device setup, extend the low-bandwidth working range of devices, and help devices stay online and up-to-date even if they are outside the range of home Wi-Fi.” It will do this by essentially sharing the connectivity of your compatible... Continue reading…

On Monday, Microsoft published a now-deleted blog post on Xbox Wire France that claimed Dolby Vision and Atmos will be Xbox console exclusives for two years. (You can read a cached version of the blog here.) On Tuesday, however, Microsoft said the post had inaccurate information and that there actually isn’t an exclusivity deal in place.“A blog post was mistakenly published by a local Xbox team that included inaccurate information regarding exclusivity of Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision on Xbox Series X|S,” a Microsoft spokesperson tells The Verge. “There is no exclusivity agreement of either tech on Xbox. We are proud to partner with Dolby to offer Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision to gamers on Xbox and will have more to share about the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon’s serious injury rate at its warehouses was nearly twice as high as the rest of the industry in 2020, newly released Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) data shows in reports from both The Washington Post and the Strategic Organizing Center (a collection of unions that represent over 4 million workers around the country).According to both groups’ analyses of the OSHA data, which spans 2017 through 2020, Amazon workers suffered 5.9 “serious” injuries — defined as incidents where workers received time off or a change in work responsibilities while recovering — per 200,000 hours worked (a metric that encompasses 100 workers working full time for the year). That’s compared to 3.3 injuries for that same metric across... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Alphabet Workers Union launched a campaign Tuesday to push Google to allow employees to use their chosen names on ID badges. The move comes after Phares Lee, a transgender man who works at a Google data center in South Carolina and is employed by security subcontracting firm G4S, asked to have his deadname removed from his badge and was denied.Lee came out as transgender during his initial interview with G4S. “I was assured [Google] was inclusive, yet when I asked about a badge in my preferred name I was told that my badge had to reflect my legal name,” he says in an interview with The Verge. “After arriving on site and being issued the badge with my dead name, I noticed there were many people on site, both cis and transgender,... Continue reading…

The new logo and slogan for Warner Bros. Discovery | Image: Discovery Discovery is merging with WarnerMedia, and it’s now announced a new name for the combined company: Warner Bros. Discovery. According to The Wall Street Journal, the name was first revealed during a staff meeting today.The merger was announced last month. AT&T said it would spin off WarnerMedia — the entertainment giant containing Warner Bros., HBO, DC Comics, and CNN, among many others — and that Discovery would take over the new company. But they didn’t have a new name prepared on the day the deal was announced.Discovery CEO David Zaslav will be in charge of the merged group. WarnerMedia is by far the bigger company, though, with around three times the 2020 revenue and a roster of iconic characters and properties. Discovery brings to... Continue reading…

This chip right here. | AMD AMD has announced its Radeon RX 6000 series of mobile GPUs. The company claimed that the new chips, built on its RDNA 2 architecture, deliver the best performance we’ve ever seen from AMD graphics. It made particularly ambitious claims about its flagship Radeon RX 6800M, which it claimed would run modern AAA games at frame rates comparable to or better than those of Nvidia’s mobile RTX 3080.Company claims are just company claims, of course. I’ve been testing a system with a Radeon RX 6800M for the past few days. The results I’ve seen so far are a mixed bag, and while the RX 6800M doesn’t decisively outperform Nvidia’s top RTX chips, it’s doing a better job than I’d expect at the price range we’ve been given.To see how the RX 6800M... Continue reading…

Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images Instacart has big plans to automate parts of its grocery delivery business, reports Bloomberg, but the company’s schemes look as much like bluster as ambition.Bloomberg details a plan for the gig-work grocery-delivery network to build “automated fulfillment centers around the US, where hundreds of robots would fetch boxes of cereal and cans of soup while humans gather produce and deli products.” Some centers would be built next to grocery stores while others would be “standalone” operations. Instacart would partner with a supermarket chain to handle inventory, contract out the automation side of things to a robotics firm, and take care of processing orders and deliveries itself. If it works, the system would automate out huge portions... Continue reading…

Twitter is adding ads to its disappearing Fleets beginning June 1st. | Twitter Twitter said Tuesday it will start adding full-screen ads to Fleets, its disappearing tweets that sit in a row at the top of users’ mobile Twitter interface. Introduced last November, the Fleet format — a clone of Instagram and Snap’s Stories — has apparently been successful enough that Twitter now wants to try to make money from it.“Fleet ads are full-screen billboards for advertisers,” Twitter senior product manager Justin Hoang and global product marketing manager Austin Evers wrote in a post announcing the ads. It’s partnering with a “handful” of advertisers in what it calls an “experiment,” making the Fleet ads visible to a limited group of US users on iOS and Android.The ads support images and video in 9:16, and videos can be... Continue reading…

Some great tech, along with a mood light and a bobcat skull Continue reading…

The Apple TV app on Shield. | Image: Nvidia Apple’s streaming TV app is coming to another platform today: Nvidia’s Shield. Shield owners will now be able to access Apple TV Plus, rent movies through Apple’s store, and access subscriptions to premium channels like Showtime and Starz that were set up through Apple.The biggest hook is finally getting access to Apple TV Plus. Apple needs the streaming service to be accessible in as many places as possible in order to expand viewership. And viewers need to be able to access the service on whatever device is hooked up to their TV, if Apple wants to make sure people use it and stay signed up.Apple TV Plus is already available through many of the most popular streaming devices. It’s offered through Roku and Fire TV streaming devices,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Ana Kova Maryland and Montana recently became the first states in the nation to pass laws limiting law enforcement's use of DNA databases to solve crimes. The strategy, sometimes called genetic genealogy, has been used to find dozens of people accused of violent crimes, including the Golden State Killer, but raises genetic privacy concerns.The laws focus on consumer DNA databases, which let people upload their genetic information and use it to connect with relatives. Over the past few years, law enforcement officers have started using the databases to track down suspects: they can upload DNA found at a crime scene and use matches with relatives to narrow their pool of suspects, and in some cases find the alleged criminal.Maryland legislation n... Continue reading…

Photo illustration by Alex Castro, Amelia Holowaty Krales, Grayson Blackmon / The Verge It was March 2020, and restaurants across the country were shutting down, setting up takeout windows, or doing whatever they could to absorb the shock of COVID. But it was Chuck E. Cheese, of all places, that had the foresight and steely clarity to see not just what the new era required, but what it permitted. With much of America suddenly interacting with restaurants through delivery apps, the food industry had been transformed into e-commerce, and the arcade better known for its ball pits than its food was free to invent a new identity: “Pasqually’s Pizza & Wings.”Pasqually’s cover was blown a month later, when Kendall Neff of Philadelphia wrote on Reddit that the pizza she ordered from what she believed was a local mom and pop in... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Spotify’s chief legal officer on tech’s ‘ruthless bully’ Continue reading…