The Verge

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…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A new collective is trying to solve the live audio monetization problem. A group of primarily tech-focused hosts are launching a shared podcast feed that’ll round up the many social audio chats they’ve started, with plans to run ads across the collected feed.The group, which is being spearheaded by Techmeme Ride Home host Brian McCullough, will initially involve nine total contributors, including Alex Kantrowitz of the Big Technology newsletter and product designer Chris Messina. They’ll share a podcast feed where they can publish audio they’ve recorded live across various social audio platforms, like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces, and that feed, which is already live but hasn’t been publicly announced, is called SpaceCasts. Anyone who... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced a new naming system for notable variants of virus that causes COVID-19 based on letters of the Greek alphabet. The new names aren’t intended to replace official scientific designations, but it’s hoped they’ll provide labels that are easier to remember and say than alphanumeric names, and less stigmatizing than the informal use of countries’ names to identify new variants.The WHO has a list of existing “variants of concern” and “variants of interest” that have been given new labels under the Greek alphabet naming scheme. “Alpha” refers to B.1.1.7, the variant first documented in the UK, while “Delta” is B.1.617.2, which was first documented in India. In total, the WHO has already used 10... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge AMD is partnering with Samsung to provide RDNA 2 graphics technology for an Exynos mobile system-on-chip, potentially giving a boost to GPU performance in flagship Samsung phones. The announcement was made today at Computex Taipei.There aren’t many details on the chip or which products it’ll be used in, but AMD describes the chip as a “next-generation Exynos SoC,” and says Samsung will provide further information later in 2021. The GPU will use AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture, enabling features like ray tracing and variable rate shading. AMD says it’ll make its way to “flagship mobile devices.”“The next place you’ll find RDNA 2 will be the high-performance mobile phone market,” AMD CEO Lisa Su said on stage. “AMD has partnered with industry... Continue reading…

The steelbook edition comes with an extra copy of the film on Blu-ray. | Image: Arrow Films Dennis Villeneuve’s Dune isn’t the only film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel getting a 4K release this year. That’s because the original adaptation, made in 1984 by a young David Lynch, is getting a limited edition 4K Blu-ray release on August 30th. The film was both a critical and box office bomb that Lynch later disowned, but it’s also a fascinating historical artifact and sci-fi cult-classic.Arrow Films, the distributor handling the release, says the 4K restoration is sourced from the film’s original camera negative, scanned at 4K 2160p and mastered in Dolby Vision HDR. It also includes uncompressed stereo audio and a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround sound mix.

Remember when Elon Musk claimed you’d be able to play The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 on a 10 teraflop gaming rig he’s stuffing into the new Tesla Model S and X? AMD is officially providing the guts — during its Computex 2021 keynote, the chipmaker just revealed that the new Tesla infotainment system consists of an AMD Ryzen processor paired with an AMD RDNA 2 GPU.“So we actually have an AMD Ryzen APU powering the infotainment system in both cars as well as a discrete RDNA2-based GPU that kicks in when running AAA games, providing up to 10 teraflops of compute power.... we look forward to giving gamers a great platform for AAA gaming,” says AMD CEO Lisa Su.And if you combine that information with another piece of news AMD revealed... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge AMD has announced that FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), its super sampling technique that should boost performance and image quality in supported games, will launch on June 22nd. The company gave a presentation at Computex Taipei today with more information on the feature, though it’s still not clear just how effective it’ll be.AI-powered super sampling is a major point of differentiation between AMD’s GPUs and those from its competitor Nvidia. DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling), Nvidia’s version of the technique, uses neural networks to reconstruct images at higher quality from lower resolutions in real time, enabling games to run at smoother frame rates without compromising the image quality. Nvidia launched DLSS back in 2018 with... Continue reading…

Nvidia is unveiling its latest flagship gaming GPU today, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. Based on Nvidia’s latest Ampere architecture, the RTX 3080 Ti will succeed the RTX 3080 and promises to deliver 1.5x more performance over the previous generation RTX 2080 Ti. Nvidia is making the RTX 3080 Ti available worldwide on June 3rd, priced from $1,199.The RTX 3080 Ti looks very much like the RTX 3080, with an identical design and ports. The main difference is a jump in power and VRAM. The RTX 3080 Ti ships with more VRAM than the RTX 3080, with 12GB of GDDR6X in total. This new GPU is essentially as close as you can get to an RTX 3090 on paper, with half the VRAM. The $1,199 price matches the same pricing Nvidia used for the RTX 2080 Ti Founders... Continue reading…

The X15 comes in lunar light, Alienware’s colorway that is white on the outside and black on the inside of the clamshell. Alienware is keen on giving Razer a run for its money when it comes to making a super-thin gaming laptop. Two of the configurations of Alienware’s new X15 flagship model are actually 15.9mm thick, almost the same as Razer’s just-refreshed 15.8mm-thick Blade 15 Advanced. That’s impressively thin, especially considering that Alienware doesn’t usually try to compete in this realm.What’s also noteworthy is that, despite its thin build, the X15 looks like it will be a capable machine. Alienware is also announcing a bigger and thicker 17-inch X17 laptop that’s even more powerful. We’ll go into detail on both below.Let’s start with the X15, which will cost $1,999 for the base model, available starting today. Packed into that entry model is... Continue reading…

The new Radeon RX 6800M. | Image: AMD AMD has announced its long-awaited Radeon RX 6000M series of mobile GPUs, featuring its RDNA 2 architecture.Today’s release consists of three chips: the RX 6800M (configurable at 145W and above), the RX 6700M (up to 135W), and the RX 6600M (up to 100W). AMD says the flagship 6800M delivers the fastest AMD graphics for laptops yet; it claims the 6800M will run modern AAA games at frame rates that are comparable to or better than those of Nvidia’s mobile RTX 3080. It’s also purported to outperform Nvidia’s chip while gaming on battery.AMD says the RX 6700M will deliver up to 100fps “in popular games” at 1440p resolution. The 6600M is better for “epic 1080p gaming.” Keep an eye out for independent reviews of these chips in the coming... Continue reading…

It’s a perfect match. | Image: Among Us on Twitter Turns out that the bean-like Fall Guys characters would be the perfect height to pat the bean-like Among Us crewmates on the head, should they ever exist in the same universe. The Among Us and Fall Guys Twitter accounts made the discovery on Monday. How?Well, it all started with this question from Chris on Twitter:

A screenshot from Knockout City. | Image: EA EA just released its chaotic and fun new multiplayer dodgeball game, Knockout City, on May 21st, and for the launch, had put together a special promotion: the full game would be free to play until May 30th, after which you could pay $19.99 on the platform of your choice if you wanted to keep playing. (It’s also included with an EA Play or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription.)But on Sunday, EA and developer Velan Studios announced that even if you missed that window to try Knockout City without paying for it, you can still check it out without dropping a dime: the game is now free to try up until you level up your “Street Rank” (Knockout City’s take on a Fortnite-like battle pass) to 25.

My cat, Pretzel. The original photo is on the left, the compressed version is on the right. Google Photos has long offered one of the best deals in all of photo storage: it’ll back up your entire library for free, so long as it can compress the images a bit. But as of tomorrow, June 1st, that deal goes away, and you’re now eating through Google storage (which you may have to pay for) whether your images are compressed or not.With the change looming, I’ve been wondering how bad Google’s compression actually is. Does the compression leave my photos in “High Quality,” as Google has claimed for years? Or does the compression degrade my photos enough to make it worth using more storage by switching over to “Original Quality” backups?I ran some quick tests this morning to find out. I took some photos and videos from my Pixel 5 (one... Continue reading…

People try to keep cool in Lisbon, Portugal during a heatwave in 2018. | Photo credit should read PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA/AFP via Getty Images Heat is a killer — and climate change is driving up its body count. On average, about 37 percent of heat deaths can be tied back to human-caused climate change, according to a new study in Nature Climate Change.The study looked at data from 732 places in 43 countries over a period of about three decades, from 1991-2018. They used information including heat deaths and temperature readings from those places to build computer models that calculated how many deaths could be attributed to climate change. The numbers varied depending on location, with a larger percentage of climate-change related deaths occuring in warmer countries than cooler ones.Overall, about 166,000 people died of heat-related deaths between 1998 and 2017, according... Continue reading…

An image of Michalangelo’s The Day, part of the tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici. This image was taken in 2002, long before bacteria got a chance to feast on its grime. | Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images Michelangelo’s marbles in the Medici Chapel were looking dingy, so a team of art restorers decided to smear some bacteria on the situation. The specialized microbes cleaned up centuries of grime, leaving the marble statues with a fresh new look, The New York Times reports.The team selected specialized strains of bacteria to target different stains on the marble. Some types of bacteria can thrive in harsh environments and are adapted to eating things that can cause humans problems. These bacteria can break down things like pollutants into relatively harmless components.In this case, the team looked for bacterial strains that would eat away at the stains and other gunk, without harming the marble itself, and tested their top choices on... Continue reading…

Xiaomi has shown off its latest fast charging tech demo, and consequently is claiming the new world records for both wired and wireless charging speeds. Using a modified Mi 11 Pro with a 4,000mAh battery, Xiaomi says it’s able to fully charge the phone in 8 minutes over a 200W wired “HyperCharge” system, or in 15 minutes with 120W wireless charging.Charging speeds are a frequent battleground for Chinese smartphone companies, who often release demonstrations of breakthroughs that may or may not show up in final products. Two years ago, for example, Xiaomi announced a 100W system that could charge a 4,000mAh battery in 17 minutes, while last year’s Mi 10 Ultra filled up in 23 minutes at 120W — though it did have a bigger 4,500mAh battery.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Intel made a splash earlier in May with the launch of its first 11th Gen Tiger Lake H-series processors for more powerful laptops, but at Computex 2021, the company is also announcing a pair of new U-series chips — one of which marks the first 5.0GHz clock speed for the company’s U-series lineup of lower voltage chips.Specifically, Intel is announcing the Core i7-1195G7 — its new top of the line chip in the U-series range — and the Core i5-1155G7, which takes the crown of Intel’s most powerful Core i5-level chip, too.Like the original 11th Gen U-series chips, the new chips operate in the 12W to 28W range. Both new chips are four core / eight thread configurations, and feature Intel’s Iris Xe integrated graphics (the Core i7-1195G7... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook-owned Instagram has made changes to its algorithm after a group of its employees reportedly complained that pro-Palestinian content was not viewable for users during the conflict in Gaza. Instagram typically surfaces original content in its stories before reposted content, but will now begin to give equal weighting to both, the company confirmed to The Verge on Sunday.As reported by BuzzFeed News and the Financial Times, the Instagram employee group had made numerous appeals about content that had been censored by Instagram’s automated moderation, such as posts about the al-Asqa mosque being mistakenly removed. The employees didn’t believe the censorship was deliberate, according to FT, but one said that “moderating at scale is... Continue reading…

Go Vilnius Weary of pandemic travel restrictions and aching to get out and see new people? The city of Vilnius, Lithuania has interesting solution: A real-time “portal” to another city. They really went all-in on the idea and the design; it looks quite a bit like something out of the erstwhile sci-fi movie/show Stargate.The city installed a circular “door” for the portal near its train station that connects to a portal in Lublin, Poland, about 600 kilometers (or roughly 375 miles) away. The portals both have large screens and cameras that broadcast live images between the two cities— a kind of digital bridge, according to its creators— meant to encourage people to “rethink the meaning of unity,” Go Vilnius said in a press release. Aw. ... Continue reading…

Chris Pratt in The Tomorrow War | Amazon Prime Video So tonight is the finale for Mare of Easttown and there are so many threads that need to be tied up that I legitimately don’t know how they’ll answer all the open questions. I have a theory of who the killer is, and I don’t think it’s the same person who fathered Erin’s baby. Will Mare ever find happiness? It seems unlikely, I’m afraid. But maybe she’ll find answers or closure.I realized that in this week’s trailer roundup that— in addition to a time-traveling theme— we have two movies that feature Sam Richardson, who played Richard Splett, arguably the best supporting character on the late great HBO show Veep. Please cast him in all the things, Hollywood, he’s hilarious.The Tomorrow WarChris Pratt is drafted into a war where he has... Continue reading…

Specs for less Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla is building a factory in Texas to make some of its cars, but when it’s up and running, the cars made there may have to go on a roundabout journey to get to Texan buyers (via The Drive). Because of state laws banning car companies from selling directly to consumers, Tesla could end up shipping the cars from its Austin factory to other states, before they’re sent back to their Texan buyers. The state’s lawmakers were debating legislation that would have prevented the situation, but they’ve now missed their chance to pass it before they have to go on break until 2023 — the factory is expected to be completed by the end of 2021.Laws preventing automakers from selling their vehicles directly to consumers aren’t unique to Texas, nor are... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Unredacted documents in Arizona’s lawsuit against Google show that company executives and engineers were aware that the search giant had made it hard for smartphone users to keep location information private, Insider reported.The documents suggest that Google collected location data even after users had turned off location sharing, and made privacy settings difficult for users to find. Insider also reports that the documents show Google pressured phone manufacturers into keeping privacy settings hidden, because the settings were popular with users.Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a lawsuit against Google last May, alleging the company illegally tracked Android users’ location without their consent, even if users had... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Unredacted documents in Arizona’s lawsuit against Google show that company executives and engineers were aware that the search giant had made it hard for smartphone users to keep location information private, Insider reported.The documents suggest that Google collected location data even after users had turned off location sharing, and made privacy settings difficult for users to find. Insider also reports that the documents show Google pressured phone manufacturers into keeping privacy settings hidden, because the settings were popular with users.Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a lawsuit against Google last May, alleging the company illegally tracked Android users’ location without their consent, even if users had... Continue reading…

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured these clouds just after sunset on March 19th, the 3,063rd Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s mission. The image is made up of 21 individual images stitched together and color corrected so that the scene appears as it would to the human eye. | NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS NASA’s Curiosity rover has captured images of clouds on Mars— as described in its blog post: “wispy puffs filled with ice crystals that scattered light from the setting sun, some of them shimmering with color.”According to NASA clouds are rare in the thin atmosphere of Mars, but usually form at its equator during its coldest time of year. Scientists noticed that last year — two years ago in Earth time— there were clouds beginning to form earlier than expected, so this year they were ready. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS A gif of clouds drifting above Mount Sharp on Mars, taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover on March 19th. The images are not only stunning, they’ve provided new insights to the Curiosity team at NASA. The... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge US soldiers stationed in Europe may have accidentally exposed information about the United States’ nuclear weapons stockpile when they used flashcard apps to help them remember details about the information, according to a report from open-source intelligence outlet Bellingcat.Foeke Postma, a researcher with Bellingcat, wrote that the soldiers used study apps such as Chegg, Cram, and Quizlet to create flashcards where they stored information about bases in Europe where US nuclear weapons were likely located, secret codes, passwords, and other details about security. It appears that they forgot to set the settings for the apps to “private,” so that their usernames and photos were public-facing, and since some of the soldiers used the... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Fitbit may soon add snoring and noise detection to its devices, a move that will likely please the spouses and partners of the snoring population and be of interest to people for whom snoring is a sign of a possible health condition.According to a report in 9to5 Google, which decompiled the latest version of the Fitbit app in Google’s Play Store, the feature allows a Fitbit’s microphone (in devices that have one) to listen to “ambient noise including your potential snoring,” after you’ve fallen asleep. Not only would the feature be a major drain on the device’s battery, the idea of a sleep tracker monitoring noise “throughout the night,” as the release notes state, is a little creepy.The 9to5 Google report says the feature is called... Continue reading…

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images Our COVID-19 vaccines have passed their first tests with flying colors. They work unbelievably well, and they’re helping to slow the spread of disease in countries where they’re widely available. Now, scientists are turning to the next key question: how long will they work that well?In people who were sick with COVID-19 and then got vaccinated, new research shows that they probably work for years. That group has powerful memory cells in their bone marrow that produce new antibodies when they’re needed. And they work so well that they can even block variants of the virus, studies show. These people may not even need vaccine boosters to stay protected long term.Protection may be different for people who got vaccinated but never had... Continue reading…

If you have an iPhone, you owe it to yourself to get accessories that allow for fast charging. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Memorial Day is Monday, May 31st, but many of the best deals in commemoration of the holiday are already live ahead of the weekend. We’ll always give you the most essential deals you need to know about in this column. But if you’re hungry for more (like, way more), my colleague Brandon Widder compiled the best Memorial Day deals on video games, headphones, TVs, and other odds and ends you might find interesting.Here are a few of the highlights.Load up on fast charging accessories for your iPhoneIf you own an iPhone 8 or a more recent iPhone model, it supports fast charging. But to obtain fast charging speeds, you’ll need the right hardware. Conveniently, we’ve worked with Daily Steals to secure a deal on a bundle that includes... Continue reading…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Saturday that deliveries of the automaker’s Model S Plaid would be delayed until June 10th because the car needs “one more week of tweak.”“This car feels like a spaceship,” tweeted Musk, who is also CEO of SpaceX. “Words cannot describe the limbic resonance.”The company has been teasing the Plaid since 2019, and Musk tweeted on May 20th that Tesla would hold a delivery event June 3rd at its factory in Fremont, California.

Image: Venmo Venmo has added new privacy controls for friend lists following a jaw-dropping incident where BuzzFeed News was able to track down President Joe Biden’s Venmo account because of the app’s leaky privacy protocols. App researcher Jane Manchun Wong discovered earlier on Friday that Venmo was working on the new controls.“We’re consistently evolving and strengthening the Venmo platform for all of our customers. As part of these ongoing efforts, we are enhancing our in-app controls providing customers an option to select a public, friends-only, or private setting for their friends list,” a Venmo spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge.To find the new controls, tap the hamburger icon while on the main feed, then tap “Settings,”... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple is delaying the launch of its upcoming Podcasts subscriptions until June, the company announced in an email sent to creators Friday (via 9to5Mac). The service was previously set to launch this month.Apple’s Podcasts subscriptions will allow people to subscribe to participating podcasts to get extra perks like ad-free listening or early access to episodes. In April, Apple said the subscriptions would launch in 170 countries, and that initial partners include Pushkin Industries and NPR.The shifted launch comes as some creators using Apple Podcasts have recently run into some issues, such as being unable to log in to Apple’s Podcast Connect portal or seeing a delay in the availability of new episodes. In its email sent Friday, Apple... Continue reading…

Photo by: Will Heath/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images You have reached a significant moment, perhaps not in history, or even in the grand scheme of your life’s long arc toward love and fulfillment, but a significant moment nonetheless. Do I need to spell it out for you? It’s 5PM. On a Friday. Heading into a long weekend.

Illustration by Alex Castro Twitter could be adding some new emojis to augment its formerly star-shaped, currently heart-shaped Like button, according to app researcher Jane Manchun Wong. The assets Wong found — which have been reliable predictions of future features in the past — show “cheer,” “hmm,” “sad,” and “haha” emoji reactions, though some currently only have a placeholder emoji.Facebook has had a similar set of reactions since 2016. But Wong’s leak shows that Twitter could be taking a slightly different path when it comes to which moods it wants users to express: while it has laughing and sad expressions in common with Facebook, Twitter may also include a makes-you-think and cheer option. Twitter doesn’t seem to have the “angry” expression that Facebook... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Earlier this month, Facebook-owned WhatsApp said that users would lose functionality over time if they didn’t accept its new privacy policy by May 15th. In a reversal, Facebook now says that plan has changed, and users who don’t accept the updated policy actually won’t see limited functionality (via TNW).“Given recent discussions with various authorities and privacy experts, we want to make clear that we will not limit the functionality of how WhatsApp works for those who have not yet accepted the update,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge. WhatsApp tells The Verge that this is the plan moving forward indefinitely.The new policy has been a source of controversy for monthsThe rollout of the policy has been a... Continue reading…

Image: West Midlands Police Police in the United Kingdom raided an industrial unit outside Birmingham under suspicion it was housing an indoor marijuana growing operation, CNBC reported. They were surprised to discover instead an extensive Bitcoin mining setup which was illegally siphoning electricity from a mains supply.Prior to the raid, police observed multiple people going in and out of the building throughout the day, and spotted extensive ventilation and wiring. They also claim a drone was able to detect high amounts of heat coming off the building. Because indoor cannabis farms use systems of grow lights, heating, and ventilation to cultivate plants where they might not usually flourish, police believed they were looking at “classic signs” of a clandestine... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter relaunched its verification program last week, allowing anyone to apply for a blue check mark, but the company is pausing accepting new applications because of the volume of applications it has already received.“We’re rolling in verification requests,” the company said in a tweet. “So we gotta hit pause on accepting any more for now while we review the ones that have been submitted. We’ll reopen requests soon! (we pinky swear)”When it officially opened the program for applications on May 20th, the company cautioned that the timeline for requests could stretch out. “Once you submit your application, you can expect an emailed response from us within a few days, but this could take up to a few weeks depending on how many open... Continue reading…

Photo by Nhat V. Meyer/MediaNews Group/The Mercury News via Getty Images The lawyers of Elizabeth Holmes, ex-CEO of disgraced blood testing startup Theranos, have 112 questions for prospective jurors at Holmes’ fraud trial — including how often they check social media and whether they subscribe to Netflix.As The Wall Street Journal reported, Holmes’ attorneys have just filed a proposed jury questionnaire for her upcoming fraud trial. The extremely detailed 45-page document outlines every possible way Holmes fears a jury could be biased, and part of that apparently involves gauging exactly how online each juror is. Among other questions, jurors are asked:

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge The Verge is deeply invested in doing service journalism; we report on companies’ misdeeds, we review expensive products to tell you whether they’re worth your hard-earned money, and speak to industry leaders to get their insights on the issues affecting their companies and their customers.It is in that vein that we brainstormed some ideas for social media theme parks in Florida.See, the Sunshine State passed a law this week that blocks social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter from “knowingly” deplatforming politicians and even algorithmically ranking content, with fine ranging from $25,000 to $250,000 per day (The law, which is a mish-mash of broad speech regulations, has already been challenged in court by the tech... Continue reading…

In this photo illustration, screens display the old and new logos of MGM Studios. | Photo by Ozge Elif Kizil/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Amazon just dumped an $8 billion-plus chunk of change on MGM, a studio best known for James Bond and its logo of a roaring lion. The acquisition offers an opportunity for Amazon to spin the spy films into a big perk for its streaming services. But it’s hard to believe that dropping billions for the studio’s content library is actually going to prop up Amazon’s streaming services — at least on its own.Amazon already has a fully functioning studio arm that produces content for its Prime Video service. While it’s got a few hits here and there — Jack Ryan immediately comes to mind — Amazon has, for the most part, struggled to reach the Stranger Things-level of viewer enthusiasm that its rivals often enjoy. The company also owns IMDb TV, a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitch has received a “batch” of new takedown notices from music publishers over copyrighted songs in recorded streams (known as VODs), the company said in an email to streamers today. The notice may be worrying for some streamers who were affected by the waves of takedowns that hit last year, because if a user gets three copyright strikes on their channel, they will be permanently banned from the platform, according to Twitch’s policies. With this advance warning, it seems Twitch is trying to get ahead of a sudden flurry of takedowns and give streamers some time to remove potentially offending VODs.“We recently received a batch of DMCA takedown notifications with about 1,000 individual claims from music publishers,” Twitch said in an... Continue reading…

Our favorite smartwatch, the Apple Watch Series 6, is $70 off at multiple retailers this weekend. | Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Memorial Day weekend has officially arrived. Numerous retailers, including GameStop and Walmart, have already kicked off their Memorial Day sales online, offering customers a chance to save on a variety of electronics ahead of the three-day weekend. The holiday remains a great way to save on mattresses and camping equipment — it’s the unofficial start to summer, after all — but if you’re a gamer or prefer electronics over home goods, there are plenty of bargains to be had on headphones, TVs, and games throughout the long weekend.We’ve seen discounts on many of these items before, sure, but if you’re still looking for a good deal, it’s hard to go wrong with the highlights below. Also, with Amazon Prime Day now reportedly set for June... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge New patent applications submitted by Tesla in 2020 but published Thursday have revealed a bit more information about the Cybertruck, which is currently slated to start shipping at the very end of this year or in early 2022. One includes (in rather grainy detail) a bunch of screenshots of the new UI Tesla has been working on. Another details how the company plans to integrate solar panel tech onto the retracting tonneau cover for the truck bed — something CEO Elon Musk said might be an option. And there even appears to be an application for what could be Tesla’s so-called “armor glass,” which memorably failed during an onstage demo in 2019.We’ve seen glimpses of Tesla’s new user interface before, at the Cybertruck reveal event and when... Continue reading…

Uniqua, Pablo, Tasha, Tyrone, and Austin, The Backyardigans | Amazon When you are a parent, you quickly learn that your kids will inevitably get into shows or videos or learn songs that slowly chip away at your sanity because you will hear them over and over and over. Anyone who knows what “Baby Shark” is will know exactly the kind of hellscape I’m talking about.But once in a while, a kids’ show comes into your family’s life and you miss it when your kid ages out of it — like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood or Sesame Street. For our family, that show was The Backyardigans; my now-teenager voraciously watched episodes of the show that ran on Nickelodeon from 2004 to 2013 (we watched the DVDs), and would actually get up and dance when the music started. We looked forward to new episodes about the hijinks of... Continue reading…

NASA/JPL NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter ended its sixth flight test on Mars earlier than planned last week after bugging out mid-flight, the rotorcraft’s chief pilot wrote in a blog post on Thursday. The four-pound mini helicopter was aiming to fly farther than any of its previous excursions to test out its scientific reconnaissance capabilities, as the latest trial in an extended test campaign to demonstrate a new mode of transportation on another world.Last Saturday, Ingenuity powered up and rose 33 feet from the Martian surface to travel a distance of roughly two football fields along a preprogramed flight path, all the while snapping photos of a “region of interest” on Mars during flight. As it buzzed along at about nine miles per hour toward... Continue reading…

Burlington, Vermont, Church Street downtown with restaurants and tourists | Photo by: Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Burlington, Vermont has been running on renewable electricity since 2014 Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple’s AirPods Pro cleverly solve one of the trickiest parts of earbud design with a unique button — even if it’s not technically a button at all.Officially referred to as the “force sensor” (a title that makes the button sound far more interesting than it actually is), it’s technically nothing more than an indented portion of the AirPods Pro’s stems, with some fancy hardware that measures not just capacitive touch but also pressure. But the faux-buttons solve one of the most annoying things about earbuds: how to control them.A smart solution for a more recent problemThe issue of controlling truly wireless earbuds is a relatively new one. Older in-ear headphones often included a row of buttons on their wires, which allowed for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As the COVID-19 pandemic scales down in the United States, debates around the origins of the virus — and speculations that it came from a lab in China, not an animal — rumbled back to life. And they’re diverting attention to the wrong places. Focusing on where the virus came from is a distraction from the rest of the urgent work governments and health agencies around the world need to do in order to end this pandemic and prepare for the next one. We don’t need a consensus on the origins of COVID-19 in order to take steps to strengthen global public health.That doesn’t mean finding out where the coronavirus came from isn’t important. It’s one of the pieces of information that could give us tools to prevent a similar situation from... Continue reading…

Mistakes were made | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Come make bad decisions with us Continue reading…