The Verge

Members of the environmental group MilieuDefensie celebrate the verdict of the Dutch environmental organisation’s case against Royal Dutch Shell Plc, outside the Palace of Justice courthouse in The Hague, Netherlands, on Wednesday, May 26, 2021. Shell was ordered by a Dutch court to slash its emissions harder and faster than planned, dealing a blow to the oil giant that could have far reaching consequences for the rest of the global fossil fuel industry | Peter Boer/Bloomberg via Getty Images Fossil fuel companies are having a big reckoning with climate change this week. Shareholders for Exxon and Chevron voted for measures that could force them to take more responsibility for their emissions, while a Dutch court is forcing Shell to slash its pollution.Taken altogether, the actions reflect a growing push for the energy sector to phase out fossil fuels. Major oil companies had already taken some steps to at least appear to address climate change, but activists are pushing for more action on a faster timeline to meet the scale of the climate crisis.A growing push for the energy sector to phase out fossil fuelsClimate activist Bill McKibben called it a “watershed day,” adding that the ruling against Shell could be “g... Continue reading…

Elon Musk’s Boring Company started shuttling passengers through the twin tunnels it built underneath the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) this week, as part of a test to get the system ready for its full debut in June.Videos, images, and accounts shared around the internet by the people who showed up for the test offer the most coherent glimpse yet at Musk’s solution for traversing the LVCC campus. It is quite literally just Teslas being driven through two 0.8-mile tunnels — a far cry from the autonomous sled-and-shuttle ideas that Musk once proposed for The Boring Company.There are three stops to the “LVCC Loop” system. The stations at either end are above ground, while the one in the middle is at the same 30-foot depth as the... Continue reading…

Photo by Michele Doying / The Verge Iran is temporarily banning cryptocurrency mining after some of the country’s major cities experienced repeated blackouts. President Hassan Rouhani said that the ban would last until September 22nd.The country has experienced summer blackouts in years past, and while the current round of outages is mostly being blamed on a drought that’s affecting the country’s ability to generate hydroelectric power, it seems that the Iranian government is eager to cut down on any aggravating factors. Power-hungry cryptocurrency mining operations, for instance.According to the BBC, Iran operates a program where Bitcoin miners must register with with the government, pay extra for electricity, and sell their coins to the central bank. President Rouhani... Continue reading…

Image: Ford Ford will spend $30 billion on electric vehicles by 2025, and says 40 percent of its global fleet will be all-electric by 2030. The company is working on an all-electric versions of its Explorer and Lincoln Aviator SUVs. And it’s developing two new electric vehicle platforms: one that will power full-size pickup trucks, and one that can easily flex between all- and rear-wheel drive to fit multiple vehicle types.The company had previously committed $22 billion to EVs and had announced a goal to be all-electric in Europe by 2030.Ford is also creating a standalone business for its commercial vehicle division called Ford Pro. The company hopes that by offering more dedicated services to these customers, it can build on what is already a... Continue reading…

A company illustration shows astronauts staring at a fleet of conceptual lunar rovers. | Image: Lockheed Martin Lockheed Martin and General Motors unveiled plans on Wednesday to build an autonomous buggy-like vehicle that future astronauts can use to zip around the surface of the Moon. The two companies collaborated to pitch a conceptual Lunar Terrain Vehicle to NASA’s Artemis program, a Moon exploration campaign that calls for various robots, vehicles, and scientific bases to be planted on the lunar surface within the next decade.Ahead of a presentation Wednesday morning, Lockheed and GM said in a joint press release that the vehicle will use the automaker’s autonomous driving technology and is “being designed to traverse significantly farther distances” than Apollo-era buggies. Just like those Moon buggies from the ‘70s, the Lockheed-GM concept... Continue reading…

Activists outside demanding a vote to pass ‘The Green New Deal’ in Washington, D.C. March 26, 2019. | Photo by Aurora Samperio/NurPhoto via Getty Images Nearly two-thirds of Americans now believe that climate change is an urgent problem to address, but they aren’t nearly as enthusiastic about giving up oil and gas, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center.Only one-third of people surveyed supported completely phasing out fossil fuels. Less than half of respondents are okay with phasing out new gas-powered vehicles. Taking those steps might seem drastic, considering fossil fuels currently make up about 80 percent of the US energy mix. But phasing out most, if not all, fossil fuels is pretty much in line with what’s needed to meet the scale of the climate crisis, according to climate experts.Now that many Americans are taking the threats posed by climate change seriously,... Continue reading…

Photo: Netflix Jeff Lemire’s Sweet Tooth is a comic book about a young boy surviving in a world ravaged by a pandemic. He also happens to be a “hybrid,” a new breed of half-human, half-animal creature that began to appear alongside the deadly sickness. It’s a dark story, one that had the potential to be incredibly bleak and uncomfortable when translated to television. That’s particularly true now, as the real world continues to deal with its own pandemic. For the team adapting the story for an upcoming series on Netflix, all of these factors combined to create a slightly different approach. “It made us lean more into the hope,” executive producer Amanda Burrell says of the show.Netflix’s eight-episode Sweet Tooth series will debut on June 4th. It’s a... Continue reading…

Photo by Richard Bord/Getty Images Airbnb doesn’t want you to forget about Airbnb, especially when you’re planning post-pandemic vacations. So on Monday, the company made multiple announcements all seemingly designed to get people renting, traveling, and, crucially, choosing Airbnb to do so. It announced flexible booking, which lets people search across days, weeks, or months to plan a trip, as well as more location flexibility when looking for a place to stay. It also launched a faster onboarding process for hosts, during a time when competitors like Vrbo are trying to poach them, as well as a new service for Super Hosts that’ll allow them to reach out to the Airbnb team directly for support issues.“We just think there’s this huge inflection point in travel brought on... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Waze has a new CEO: Neha Parikh, the former president of Hotwire and a board member of Carvana. Parikh replaces Noam Bardin, who stepped down as CEO of the Google-owned navigation service last November after leading the company for 12 years.Parikh will join Waze as CEO starting in June, the company says. She is a veteran of online hospitality brand Expedia, having served in a variety of positions at two of the corporation’s subsidiaries: Hotels.com, where she ended as senior vice president for global brands and retails, and flight and hotel booking service Hotwire, where she is currently president.As Hotwire’s youngest and first female president, Parikh “led a return to growth by revamping the business model, reshaping the product,... Continue reading…

Possibly the most ambitious Pokémon game to date will be available early next year. Today Nintendo announced that Pokémon Legends: Arceus will be launching on the Nintendo Switch on January 28th, 2022. The game was first announced in February.Legends looks to be a big change for Pokémon, a franchise that’s become known for its slowly evolving roleplaying games. It’s an open-world RPG that takes place in a much older version of the Sinnoh region, before the time of pokémon trainers and organized competitions. In addition to the new setting, the experience also looks to be much more seamless compared to the main games, as Nintendo says players will be able to go out into the wild to “study the pokémon’s behaviors, sneak up to them, then... Continue reading…

You can now hide like counts on Instagram and Facebook. After years of testing on both platforms, Facebook and Instagram have settled on an opt-in experience for hiding like counts to allow people to disable seeing them across all posts and an option to hide their own public like counts from others.Instagram is enabling this feature after years of tests and pressure from experts to make changes to its platform. The service was ranked as “the most detrimental to young people’s mental health and wellbeing” in a 2017 study by the Royal Society for Public Health UK. Experts have argued that removing a like button or like counts could help reduce anxiety and social pressures for some Facebook and Instagram users.“We tested hiding like... Continue reading…

Walk walk fashion baby | Disney It will delight you even as you question its need to exist Continue reading…

Image: Metro Goldwyn Mayer Amazon has reached a deal to acquire the film and TV company MGM for $8.45 billion, the companies announced today. It’s a significant acquisition for the e-commerce giant, and it means it will own a library of content that’s reported to consist of around 4,000 films and 17,000 hours of TV. The acquisition is likely to help Amazon attract even more big-spending Prime subscribers as its Prime Video service competes with the likes of Netflix and Disney Plus.MGM is perhaps most notable for being the Hollywood studio behind the James Bond and Rocky franchises, but its library runs the gamut from classic films like 12 Angry Men to modern TV shows like The Handmaid’s Tale and Vikings. MGM’s library also includes unscripted TV shows like The... Continue reading…

The S2721DGF boasts everything you need in a gaming monitor, including a 165Hz refresh rate and HDR. | Image: Dell Dell’s Summer Sale Event is officially underway, and if you’re looking for a 1440p panel to support your newfound gaming habits, the Dell 27 S2721DGF Gaming Monitor is an excellent bet. The 27-inch peripheral is currently on sale at Dell for $380 — more than $200 off the initial list price — and it touts a 165Hz refresh rate, HDR, and support for both FreeSync and G-Sync, helping to smooth gameplay and reduce unwanted tearing. A 1ms response time and decent port selection round out the monitor’s feature set alongside the sleek accent lighting on the back, which, like it or not, will douse your wall in a subtle shade of blue.Mass Effect’s legendary starship may be available to No Man’s Sky for a limited time, but if you truly want to... Continue reading…

A selection of app reviews detailing the scammy behavior. | Image: Kosta Eleftheriou / App Store App developer and scam app hunter Kosta Eleftheriou’s latest discovery is a real doozy, an iOS app that refuses to function before you give it at least a 3-star review in the App Store. Although the UPNP Xtreme app — which claimed to let users stream video to their TVs — now appears to have been pulled, we were able to verify that it generates the App Store rating box the second it opens. You can’t dismiss the ratings box, nor can you tap the 1 or 2-star ratings, Eleftheriou said. We verified this behavior, but some other users report they were able to dismiss the dialog box or leave a lower rating.This is just the latest scammy app to have been unearthed by Elefheriou, who’s been waging a war against them after his own Apple Watch... Continue reading…

China is a key market for Tesla. | Photo by NOEL CELIS/AFP via Getty Images Tesla says it’s established a data center in China to store and process information produced by its vehicles locally. The announcement, made on Weibo, comes as the US carmaker faces pressure from Chinese authorities over fears its cars could be used for spying.“Car data security is very important,” said Tesla (via Google Translate). “All data generated from the sales of vehicles in the Chinese mainland market will be stored in China.”Telsa cars are reportedly banned from Chinese military sitesReports from The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg said Tesla’s cars have been banned from Chinese military sites, and that “military staff and employees of key state-owned companies” are prohibited from owning the vehicles. Chinese authorities... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is now claiming the performance crown in the desktop browser battle. The software maker has been gradually adding new features to Edge over the past year to improve performance and launch times. These additions have allowed Microsoft to claim itself the performance winner, even as Google releases Chrome 91 today.“Microsoft Edge will be the best performing browser on Windows 10 when Microsoft Edge version 91 releases later this week,” says the Microsoft Edge team in a blog post. “So, why can we say this? It’s simple: startup boost and sleeping tabs.”Microsoft first started rolling out its new startup boost feature in Edge back in March, with claims that it makes browser launches up to 41 percent faster. The new sleeping tabs... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp is suing India’s government over new internet rules it claims are unconstitutional and will “severely undermine the privacy” of its users, The New York Times reports. The Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code, which was introduced in February and comes into effect today, contains a requirement that messaging apps identify the “first originator of information” when asked. But WhatsApp, which boasts nearly 400 million users in its largest market of India, argues that doing so would require it to trace every message sent on its service, violating users’ right to privacy.“Civil society and technical experts around the world have consistently argued that a requirement to “trace”... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge In 2019, Sony quietly established a subsidiary dedicated to researching artificial intelligence. What exactly the company plans to do with this tech has always been a bit unclear, but a recent corporate strategy meeting offers a little more information.“Sony AI [...] has begun a collaboration with PlayStation that will make game experiences even richer and more enjoyable,” say notes from a recent strategy presentation given by Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida. “By leveraging reinforcement learning, we are developing Game AI Agents that can be a player’s in-game opponent or collaboration partner.”This is pretty much what you’d expect from a partnership between PlayStation and Sony’s AI team, but it’s still good to have confirmation!... Continue reading…

Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge The US has formally removed Xiaomi from its trading blacklist. The US District Court for the District of Columbia issued a final order yesterday that vacated the Department of Defense’s designation of Xiaomi as a “Communist Chinese military company” (CCMC), which would have prohibited Americans from investing in the Chinese consumer tech giant.“The Company is grateful for the trust and support of its global users, partners, employees and shareholders,” a Xiaomi spokesperson says in a statement to The Verge. “The Company reiterates that it is an open, transparent, publicly traded, independently operated and managed corporation. The Company will continue to provide reliable consumer electronics products and services to users, and to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amnesty International is teaming up with 38 other human rights groups and individuals to call for a halt to Google’s plans to set up an enterprise cloud business in Saudi Arabia because of concerns over the country’s human rights track record.The joint statement — signed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Media Matters for Democracy, among others — calls for Google to end its plans in Saudi Arabia until the company conducts a public human rights assessment and makes it clear what kinds of government requests for data it won’t honor. Even more important, the letter writers state, is conducting that investigation in the open, actually consulting with the people Google could inadvertently help Saudi Arabia to hurt, and speaking to... Continue reading…

Image: Eero Owners of Amazon’s Eero 6 and Pro 6 routers will now be able to isolate their HomeKit IoT devices from the rest of their home network and the wider internet, thanks to a new integration with Apple’s HomeKit that’s now rolling out (via MacRumors). The new feature is coming as part of a firmware update, and makes the routers some of the first Wi-Fi 6 systems that support Apple’s integration.The added feature may be welcome, but it’s probably not a surprise for those who have been paying attention: Eero’s other, cheaper routers were updated to support it in February, 2020, and an Eero Support account mentioned in November that the router was going through Apple’s certification process.Setting up your Eero (or any other supported routers)... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge More than 500 Amazon employees have signed an internal letter to Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy calling for the company to acknowledge the plight of the Palestinian people. The move comes after Israeli airstrikes devastated Palestinians in Gaza, leaving 248 people dead. Hamas and Israel have since agreed to a ceasefire.“We ask Amazon leadership to acknowledge the continued assault upon Palestinians’ basic human rights under an illegal occupation... without using language that implies a power symmetry or situational equivalency, which minimizes and misrepresents the disruption, destruction, and death that has disproportionately been inflicted upon the Palestinians in recent days and over several decades,” employees wrote. “Amazon employs... Continue reading…

Google finally has its first all-electric vehicle for capturing Street View. The tech giant and Jaguar Land Rover announced today that they have collaborated to rig up an all-electric I-Pace SUV with the equipment required to capture Street View imagery, and deployed the car in Dublin, Ireland.The I-Pace will also collect more general Google Maps data, and it will be outfitted with air quality sensors from Aclima — something Google has done with its Street View cars for the better part of the last decade. The I-Pace will collect “street-by-street air quality” data in Dublin, measuring nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide emissions, as well as fine particles. Google will make the data available to the Dublin City Council.Jaguar Land... Continue reading…

Philo’s streaming service on various devices. | Image: Philo Philo has become the latest live TV option for cord-cutters hoping to skirt cable contracts to get a price bump — but there’s a workaround for current subscribers.Beginning June 8th, Philo’s monthly subscription cost for incoming customers will hike to $25 from $20. But those who are subscribed to the service before that date will be able to keep their plans at the current cost with no change, Philo CEO Andrew McCollum said in a Tuesday announcement on the company’s blog. To offset the price increase, Philo will be increasing its unlimited DVR storage period to a full year, up from 30 days, and existing customers who’d like to upgrade their storage will be able to bump up to the new price tier if they so choose.McCollum cited an... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Hello again, it has come to my attention that Republican Senator Ted Cruz and I are in perfect alignment on one issue: if you enter your iPhone passcode on live TV, you need to change the passcode. This means you in particular, Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal.“I recognize it’s happened before.”I honestly didn’t think anyone needed to explain this, particularly since Kanye West accidentally revealed his passcode (000000, in case you are curious) during a video with then-president Donald Trump in 2018. But here we are.If you are a member of the US federal government, you are a desirable target for all kinds of hackers, most of whom do not have your best interests at heart. Your phone stores a lot of sensitive data about where you... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Hundreds of Amazon tech workers are pressuring Amazon to quit polluting — especially in communities near its warehouses. More than 600 workers signed a petition asking Amazon to bring its pollution down to zero by 2030. They also called on the company to prioritize deploying zero-emissions technologies near the communities hit hardest by Amazon’s pollution.The petition was started after Amazon rejected a shareholder resolution asking the company to report how much pollution it emits in communities of color. Amazon says the proposal was similar to a resolution that was voted down by shareholders last year. Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting is scheduled for May 26th.Amazon’s warehouses have mushroomed around working-class communities... Continue reading…

Photo by Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images The hack of the Colonial Pipeline — which kneecapped oil availability on the East Coast for almost two weeks — was as disastrous as it was likely preventable. A branch of the Department of Homeland Security, however, is hoping to correct course by changing the rules on cybersecurity and disclosure for Colonial and other companies in the pipeline industry.As reported by The Washington Post, the Transportation Security Administration (yes, the same sub-branch of DHS everyone associates with taking their shoes off in airports) will be requiring pipeline companies to report breaches and other cybersecurity incidents, with additional rules on how to keep these critical infrastructure systems secure from digital threats arriving “in coming... Continue reading…

Turntable.fm, the social platform that lets people collaboratively build and perform DJ sets, has raised $7.5 million in venture capital funding, according to a Medium post by CEO Billy Chasen. Turntable.fm was revived by Chasen as a response to the pandemic, after it shut down in 2013. But it’s not the only version of Turntable in the works now, which makes that funding more interesting.The investment was led by the Andreessen Horowitz firm, also known as a16z, which has invested in products like Clubhouse, Coinbase, and Robinhood. The list of investors also includes Seth Goldstein, who was a co-founder and investor for the original incarnation of Turntable.fm in 2011.While Turntable.fm is being run by its original creator, another... Continue reading…

For the last year, FlyQuest has been on a mission. Though the team competes in the League of Legends Championship Series, it has steadily become as known for its socially conscious efforts as its in-game performances. The team launched initiatives centered on planting trees, donating to a coral reef foundation, and improving mental health. But for FlyQuest CEO Tricia Sugita, the process was always a bit incomplete. “While we were doing those actions, a part of it always felt missing,” she tells The Verge. “Because what was lagging behind was our design.”Today, FlyQuest is revealing a brand-new logo meant to invoke its focus on everything green. It’s a fairly simple design: a straightforward “Q” with a leaf in the middle. Despite this... Continue reading…

Image: iFixit iFixit has published a detailed teardown of Apple’s newly redesigned M1 processor-equipped iMac, and it contains bad news about how easy the new all-in-one is to repair. Whether it’s the fans, USB ports, headphone jack, power button, or speakers, iFixit says virtually any repairs to the new desktop require battling through Apple’s adhesives.Like the other M1 Macs, everything is soldered together now — so there’s no upgrading RAM or internal storage even if you do crack it open. The good news is if you do go through the effort of cracking it open, iFixit says most of the other internal parts (including the ports, webcam, and speakers) are relatively easy to swap out with replacements. Photo: iFixit These problems... Continue reading…

Image: Tesla Tesla has stopped building forward-facing radar sensors into its Model 3 sedans and Model Y SUVs in North America, after CEO Elon Musk publicly expressed a desire to rely on cameras to power the company’s advanced driver assistance system, Autopilot.Tesla has been developing the vision-based version of Autopilot during the limited beta test of its “Full Self-Driving” software. But it’s not completely done making sure Autopilot works without the radar sensor, though, as it is limiting or disabling some features on these vehicles for an indefinite amount of time. Autosteer — the Autopilot feature that can keep a Tesla centered in a lane, even around curves — will only be usable at 75 miles per hour and below. Tesla is also only making it... Continue reading…

A screenshot from Knockout City. | Image: EA Knockout City took me back to childhood games of dodgeball with a single sound: “whumphf!” That one noise, which you’ll hear a lot as dodgeballs bounce every which way, represents just how well the game’s virtual version of dodgeball mimics the real thing — including all of the chaos you might remember from games on the playground.Knockout City is made by EA and Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit developer Velan Studios, and its primary mode involves three-on-three matches against online opponents. In each match, you’ll scoop up dodgeballs littered around the city-themed maps and launch them at your unsuspecting targets. When you charge up a throw, the game automatically locks onto a target, meaning you don’t have to worry about precise aim.... Continue reading…

Image: Lordstown Motors Electric vehicle startups have raised an absurd amount of money in the last year by merging with special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. That money — billions of dollars, collectively — was supposed to be enough to help each of them start fighting for space in a market dominated by Tesla. But many of these startups are still having trouble getting rolling.EV startup struggles are not new. Most of the ones that are still around spent years grappling with the inherent, unavoidable difficulties of automotive manufacturing. Now, though, the bruises of that fight are developing in broad daylight — all while they try to beat deep-pocketed legacy automakers to the punch.Startups going public makes it much easier to see where the... Continue reading…

Wind turbines, of the Block Island Wind Farm, tower above the water on October 14, 2016 off the shores of Block Island, Rhode Island. The first offshore wind project in the US has created more than 300 construction jobs and will deliver the electricity demands for the entire island. / AFP / DON EMMERT | Photo credit should read DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images Offshore wind is headed west. The Biden administration announced today that it will open up parts of the Pacific coast to commercial-scale offshore renewable energy development for the first time. The geography of the West Coast poses huge technical challenges for wind energy. But rising to meet those challenges is a big opportunity for both President Joe Biden and California Governor Gavin Newsom to meet their clean energy goals.There are two areas now slotted for development off the coast of Central and Northern California — one at Morro Bay and another near Humboldt County. Together, these areas could generate up to 4.6GW of energy, enough power for 1.6 million homes over the next decade, according to a White House fact sheet.“A... Continue reading…

Image: Focus Features Being a young person in the city is hard enough without being haunted by a cabaret singer from the 1960s, but that’s exactly what Thomasin McKenzie (Jojo Rabbit) appears to be dealing with in the first trailer for Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho. The film is set to premiere in theaters in October, but the trailer seems like a nice taste of Wright’s clever style through a horror lens.Last Night in Soho follows McKenzie as Eloise, a young fashion fan who seemingly has the ability to dream herself into the past. The problem is she isn’t herself when she visits London’s West End in the 1960s; she’s Anya Taylor-Joy’s Sandy, a singer who, if the trailer is anything to go by, probably shouldn’t be dating whoever Matt Smith is playing... Continue reading…

Image: Asus Asus’ ROG Phone 5 is now available in the US from its official store, with a price tag of $999.99. It’s Asus’ latest maxed-out gaming phone, with all of the top-notch specifications: a Snapdragon 888 Plus, 144Hz display, front-facing speakers, and a massive 6,000mAh battery.Asus says the Ultimate and Pro versions of the phone will be available later this year. We reviewed the Ultimate in March and found that it was a good phone that went a little — okay, maybe a lot — overboard with its specs. The vanilla version available for sale today, though, is perhaps a bit more reasonable: it “only” has 16GB of RAM (as opposed to the Ultimate’s 18GB), has half the storage (256GB instead of 512GB), and features an RGB logo on the back instead of... Continue reading…

Microsoft isn’t talking about its big Windows plans at Build 2021 this week, and that’s because the company is preparing to detail what’s next for its PC operating system separately. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella teased this announcement during his Build keynote this morning, revealing he has been testing “the next generation of Windows” in recent months.

David Hall, the founder of leading lidar manufacturer Velodyne, is going to war with the SPAC that acquired his company. In a letter, Hall is calling for the resignation of two of the company’s SPAC-appointed board directors, whom he blames for Velodyne’s “poor financial performance.”It’s the latest twist in the increasingly dramatic saga of Velodyne, a top maker of the laser sensors that are viewed as crucial for the operation of autonomous vehicles. Last month, Hall was ousted as chair of the company’s board, and his wife, Marta Thoma Hall, was removed as its chief marketing officer. The board cited an investigation into “inappropriate behavior” by both Halls in its justification for their removal. Marta Hall remains a member of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Tuesday, DC Attorney General Karl Racine sued Amazon on antitrust grounds, accusing the e-commerce giant of suppressing competition by placing strict conditions on what third-party sellers can do outside of the company’s platform.“Amazon’s policies have prevented competing platforms, including sellers’ own websites, from competing on price and gaining market share,” Racine said in a press call. “The loss of competition results in less innovation.”Filed in DC Superior Court, the lawsuit alleges that Amazon unlawfully maintains its monopoly power by preventing independent sellers from offering products at lower prices on other platforms. It also claims that these “most favored nation” agreements harm consumers by inflating prices and... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Sonos is refreshing its One SL speaker, which doesn’t have always-on microphones or integrated voice controls, to make it more power efficient and recyclable, the company confirmed to The Verge. However, the new model won’t have any additional features or functionality. The updated speaker first appeared in FCC filings published Monday.The primary change in this new One SL is a “more efficient” wireless radio, according to Sonos. The base of the speaker has also been redesigned to remove extra plastics and “stickering,” and the product packaging has a “more sustainable design” like what’s used with the recently released Sonos Roam. And while there won’t be any new functionality, Sonos says that this updated One SL will only work with... Continue reading…

Image: Tidal Music streaming service Tidal is now available on the Apple Watch, allowing subscribers to stream music directly to Apple’s wearable or download it for offline listening. Instructions on how to get set up can be found on Tidal’s site. Spotify and Deezer both announced similar offline listening features for the Apple Watch last week. Subscription prices for Tidal start at $9.99 a month.Tidal has historically sold itself on the quality of its audio streaming, offering features like lossless playback and even hi-res streaming before many of its bigger rivals. But this year, some of its biggest competitors are starting to catch up. Spotify’s lossless HiFi tier is set to launch later this year, and Apple Music will introduce support for... Continue reading…

Compared to competitors like YouTube TV and Hulu, Sling TV has never had the flashiest app, and the overall user experience leaves something to be desired. It’s been easy enough to overlook these faults since Sling TV undercuts those rivals on price, but today the company announced a completely redesigned app that focuses on more polish and personalized recommendations.The new Sling TV app is rolling out first to “select customers” using Amazon’s Fire TV devices, and other platforms will be added as the year stretches on. (It’ll arrive on Roku sometime this summer, for example.) The Dish-owned company describes this as the “most comprehensive update in Sling TV’s history.” And based on screenshots and the GIF above, it does look like a... Continue reading…

Image: Panasonic Panasonic has announced not one but two follow-up cameras to the Lumix GH5, a camera that’s been popular with videographers since it launched in 2017. There’s the GH6, which Panasonic says features a brand-new sensor and will launch by the end of the year for $2,500, and the GH5 Mark II, which is going up for preorder today, with a body-only package coming in at $1,700.The GH6 will feature a new image engine along with the sensor and will have the capability to record 10-bit 4K at 120fps and 10-bit 5.7K at 60fps. The camera also promises DCI 4K60 at 4:2:2 without a recording time limit. The GH6 is currently in development, so Panasonic didn’t provide many more details, but it did say that the camera would feature a Micro Four Thirds... Continue reading…

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule is seen docked to the International Space Station on May 5th, 2021, shortly before returning four astronauts back to Earth. | Image: NASA / Johnson Space Center Peggy Whitson, one of NASA’s most experienced retired astronauts, is going back to space — this time with a racecar driver and two other passengers in the latest mission planned by Axiom Space. The Houston-based space company announced on Tuesday that Whitson will serve as the mission commander for its second private flight to the International Space Station, with John Shoffner, a GT racer, serving as mission pilot.The Ax-2 mission with Whitson and Shoffner will be similar to Ax-1, Axiom’s first planned flight for early next year: a crew of four private citizens will fly to the International Space Station for a roughly eight-day stay conducting scientific research. It’s the latest private spaceflight planned so far as companies like... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Microsoft first let developers build third-party apps into Teams last year, but the company is going a step further at Build 2021 today. In a push to get more app developers building for Teams, Microsoft is opening up its crucial APIs, Teams Store, and tools to what it calls collaborative apps.Developers will soon be able to build apps that plug into the Teams meeting canvas, ones that use in-app purchases or subscriptions, and even create separate apps that get access to Teams’ real-time video and audio streams. “If you can build web apps, you can build extensions into Teams chats, channels, and meetings,” explains Jeff Teper, head of Microsoft 365 collaboration, in an interview with The Verge. “You can build once, run, deploy... Continue reading…

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - JULY 19: Swimmers cool off at 31st Street Beach as temperatures climb into the 90’s with a heat index expected to reach as high as 115 degrees on July 19, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois. | Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images In cities across the US, people of color are enduring hotter summer temperatures than their white counterparts, new research shows. It’s another sign that the consequences of rising temperatures will hit vulnerable communities harder than others.Rising temperatures will hit vulnerable communities harderA person of color, on average, lives in a census tract that’s more than a full degree Celsius (nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter in the summer than their non-Hispanic white counterparts, according to a study published today in the journal Nature Communications. That included anyone who did not identify as “white alone,” plus anyone who identifies as Hispanic. The difference in temperature was slightly larger still for Black residents.... Continue reading…

In September 2020, Microsoft purchased an exclusive license to the underlying technology behind GPT-3, an AI language tool built by OpenAI. Now, the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant has announced its first commercial use case for the program: an assistive feature in the company’s PowerApps software that turns natural language into readymade code.The feature is limited in its scope and can only produce formulas in Microsoft Power Fx, a simple programming language derived from Microsoft Excel formulas that’s used mainly for database queries. But it shows the huge potential for machine learning to help novice programmers by functioning as an autocomplete tool for code.“Why don’t we ... speak the language of a normal human?”“There’s... Continue reading…

Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne has a lot in common with the rest of the cult roleplaying series — namely a focus on everything demonic and post-apocalyptic. And despite a punishing difficulty level, the game received rave reviews when it debuted on the PS2. But since then it has remained largely inaccessible. There’s no easy way to play Nocturne on modern hardware.That changes today with the release of a new remastered version that’s available on the Switch, Steam, and PS4. For director Kazuyuki Yamai, it marks yet another chance to bring the game to new players. While Nocturne was initially a Japan-only release, Yamai worked on a special edition dubbed “Maniax” that would eventually launch in North America and Europe, as well as a... Continue reading…

Flexibits — best known for its popular calendar application, Fantastical — has a new, overhauled version of its contact management application Cardhop out today, which updates the app with new features and a fresh coat of paint.But most importantly, like Fantastical before it, Cardhop is also switching to a subscription model. The contact app is being added for free to the existing Fantastical Premium subscription that Flexibits introduced last year. And to mark that expanded scope, Fantastical Premium is also getting a new name: Flexibits Premium.The original Mac and iOS versions of Cardhop previously cost $19.99 and $4.99, respectively. However, similar to Fantastical, Flexibits will now be offering a more limited, free version of... Continue reading…