The Verge

Image: Apple With new iPhones come new features. And starting next week, Apple HomeKit users will get plenty courtesy of iOS 15, HomePod 15, tvOS 15, and watchOS 8 software updates. Apple has confirmed that these will all be available on the same day, September 20th.So, if you’ve been excited about unlimited HomeKit Secure Video cameras, the HomePod Mini as a speaker for your Apple TV 4K, or the chance to see your doorbell on your Apple Watch, you’re in luck.Here’s a look at all the new HomeKit and HomeKit-related features that will be dropping on Monday. Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge A new software update will let you pair a single or pair of HomePod Minis to your Apple TV 4K. Control your Apple TV with Siri on... Continue reading…

Image: Nextorage Sony subsidiary Nextorage has released an SSD that’s perfect for the PS5 (via Tom’s Hardware): it has a heatsink (which Sony says is a requirement), is fast enough to well surpass Sony’s recommendations, and comes in 1TB and 2TB varieties, which gives you plenty of storage for your games. The catch? It’s kinda expensive, isn’t available in the US, and doesn’t seem to have an official “PlayStation approved” stamp despite its maker’s affiliation with Sony.Nextorage describes itself as a “Sony group company specializing in the memory storage solutions business,” and its NEM-PA SSD ticks all the boxes for PlayStation 5 compatibility. When news of the drive first broke, it seemed like the solution to the confusion that can currently come... Continue reading…

Last season, one of the more curious additions to Fortnite was Guggimon, a terrifying-looking rabbit creature that also happened to be a virtual influencer with millions of followers on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Guggimon was created by a company called Superplastic — which has previously worked with the likes of the Gorillaz — and now it’s bringing another one of its characters to the battle royale: Janky, a streetwear cat (I think?) that’s available in the Fortnite item shop starting tonight.It may seem like an odd fit, but Fortnite’s ever-growing metaverse has steadily been spreading to just about every facet of pop culture, from sports to music to superheroes. With all that going on, some CG characters that partner with... Continue reading…

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Enough for workers to secretly save them Continue reading…

It was a brief orbital talent show.“Hayley is a champ at spinning,” Sian Proctor, one of the four private citizens currently orbiting Earth inside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, said of her crew mate Hayley Arceneaux, who was somersaulting in the weightlessness of space on camera. “She’s been spinning ever since we got on orbit.” SpaceX Hayley Arceneaux spinning inside Crew Dragon. Christopher Sembroski, another crew mate, whipped out a ukulele and threatened to play it live on camera to over 55,000 viewers on SpaceX’s live YouTube stream — “You can turn your volume down if you wish, but I’ll give it a shot.” He did a little riff while Arceneaux was holding the mic, and it wasn’t half bad. “It’s still before... Continue reading…

Image: Niantic Pokémon Go developer Niantic is shutting down its augmented reality game Catan: World Explorers, the company announced on Friday (via Protocol). An AR adaptation of the popular board game Catan announced in 2019, World Explorers was the company’s latest attempt to recreate the magic of Pokémon Go, but soon it’s all coming to an end.After a year of early access, the game will not be playable after November 18th and Niantic says later today it “will be taking the game down from the App Store and removing real-money purchases from the Shop.” For the players that stick around, the company says it will increase in-game bonuses for the remaining weeks the game is live.Surely something other than Pokémon can catch onIt’s not entirely clear... Continue reading…

The iPad Mini (2021) is the latest in Apple’s line of smaller tablets. | Image: Apple With the announcement and impending release of the new iPad Mini and its revamped design, it might be all too easy to stan the new model and completely write off its predecessor. While the new model has a lot to offer — namely a larger screen, faster processor, refined design akin to the 2020 iPad Air, and a USB-C port — it also has a quality that is not so desirable: a higher introductory price.The iPad Mini line has been notoriously discount-immune over the years, possibly because of its specialized position in the market and lack of competition. The outgoing iPad Mini only recently started receiving significant discounts, falling to $300 soon before the new model was announced, but it started at $399 from the get-go. The new iPad... Continue reading…

Photo by Liao Pan/China News Service via Getty Images There are tons of books and blogs telling you how to have a magical Disney World experience, but one Florida man discovered the ultimate travel hack: using an app that lets you skip lines running on a possibly stolen employee iPad (via Gizmodo). According to central Florida’s WESH2 news, 30 year-old Rennan Carletto allegedly did just that in June, by giving himself and a group traveling through the park with him an unauthorized jump to the front of the line.According to a WPTV report, Carletto was leading an unauthorized tour of Hollywood Studios (Disney World’s worst park, no offense) and using the iPad to skip lines for the park’s rides by making reservation overrides. One Disney World fan site theorizes that he may have been taking... Continue reading…

Image: Clubhouse Clubhouse appears to be working on a new way to invite people to audio rooms in its app, based on screenshots shared by researcher Jane Manchum Wong. The invite feature, called “Waves,” is focused on the more casual, social side of Clubhouse, rather than the creator-focused live shows that have had the company’s attention.Based off the screenshots Wong shared, Waves lets you wave at friends —with a button identical to the hand in Clubhouse’s logo — to invite them to chat. If they reply, they automatically get added to an audio room so you can talk. A spokesperson declined to comment on Wong’s discovery, but it seems likely that the feature is intended for Clubhouse’s social rooms (one of several audio room types the company offers).

The Biden administration is preparing to issue a series of actions, including sanctions, to make it more difficult for hackers to profit off of ransomware attacks through the use of digital currency, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Friday.According to the Journal, the Treasury Department plans to impose these new sanctions as soon as next week. The sanctions would reportedly target specific traders and cryptocurrency exchanges, in the hope of deterring exchanges from processing these transactions when they’re made. The department will also issue new guidance for businesses regarding the risks they take on by complying with ransomware payment requests. The Treasury Department declined to comment.These proposed measures... Continue reading…

A dream for workers and IT departments alike Continue reading…

Image: Apple Apple released a seven-and-a-half-minute video to act as a guided tour of the iPhone 13 and 13 Pro’s features, and to make the differences in the lineup clearer. In the clip, Apple also goes through some of the phone’s new video and camera features like cinematic mode, photographic styles, and macro photography, and emphasizes the phones’ increased battery life.The video doesn’t really give us any new info, but it does give us more (obviously very carefully crafted) footage of the iPhone 13 outside of a blank black or white background. Image: Apple Here’s a good idea of what your fancy iPhone 13 Pros will look like covered in iced tea. Also, the video has a particularly funny scene, meant to show off the... Continue reading…

Let’s discuss Continue reading…

Image: Zynga Zynga is bringing a social deception game called ReVamp to Snapchat’s games platform “soon,” the developer announced on Friday. ReVamp, clearly inspired by the popularity of games like Among Us, is a real-time multiplayer game where players try to find the vampire among... them.Players in ReVamp “aim to reveal who the vampire player is among their group of friends while they renovate the rooms of an old mansion,” Zynga’s description says. The game also features the frequently contentious voting round, where players decide to remove people they suspect are imposters, except with ReVamp they’re finding a vampire in a group of humans, as opposed to an alien in a group of “spacebeans.” This is only the third game Zynga has released for Snap... Continue reading…

Apple CEO Tim Cook told employees that he was “looking forward to moving forward” after a verdict in the Epic v. Apple antitrust case. In an all-hands meeting with employees, Cook echoed the line Apple has taken publicly on the case, celebrating the company’s legal wins and downplaying its loss on an unfair competition claim.“If you sort of back up and remember what the App Store is about, the App Store was built to be a trusted place for users so they could go explore and discover apps. It was meant to be a great business opportunity for developers,” Cook told employees, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Verge. “Epic came along and wanted basically to be handled in a special way. Our rules are that we treat... Continue reading…

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images Starting next month, Apple will “infrequently” test employees who come into its offices and stores for COVID-19, if they’re vaccinated. Unvaccinated employees will have to get frequent testing. Apple CEO Tim Cook and senior vice president of retail and people Deirdre O’Brien announced the new policy during an all-hands meeting today, according to an audio recording obtained by The Verge.The company’s updated guidelines appear to line up with the OSHA standards that will be established as a result of the Biden administration’s push to increase vaccination rates. Those standards say companies of 100 people or more must require either immunization or weekly testing.Apple recently pushed back the date when it expects employees to return to... Continue reading…

Image: Apple We’ve just gotten our first look at the iPhone 13s’ battery sizes, thanks to a product information sheet posted on Apple’s behalf to hazardous material information and response company Chemtrec’s website (via 9to5Mac). The document shows that the batteries in iPhones have gotten significantly bigger since last year — 13 percent larger, on average — and the 13 Pro Max’s battery is getting comparable to devices like the Nintendo Switch.In the document, battery sizes are reported in watt-hours instead of the more traditional milliamp hours. Even though most phone manufacturers give battery sizes in milliamp hours, they’re often less accurate and harder to compare devices, so we prefer watt-hours. Here are the battery sizes of Apple’s new... Continue reading…

Photo by Frank Molter/picture alliance via Getty Images Doctors say they’re overwhelmed by the volume of digital messages they receive from patients during the pandemic, and new data backs up their experience. The number of messages increased by over 150 percent at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the levels stayed high over the course of 2020, according to an early look at data from the electronic health record company Epic.“They want to be responsive to the patient needs,” says A Jay Holmgren, an assistant professor in the Center for Clinical Informatics and Improvement Research at the University of California San Francisco, who collected the data and posted it on Twitter this week. But there aren’t good systems in place to help doctors to manage the influx.There are few reasons... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Android 11’s auto-resetting permissions, where the operating system will restrict an app’s permission to access sensitive phone features like its storage or cameras if it hasn’t been opened for several months, are coming to older devices, Google has announced. The feature originally launched with Android 11 last year, but soon it’ll be available on any phones running Android 6 and above with Google Play services, which Google says should cover “billions” of Android phones released since 2015.The feature is designed to help protect your privacy by preventing older apps from having unfettered access to your phone if you haven’t used them in months. You might be happy to give a novelty camera app access to your storage while it’s all the... Continue reading…

A sample photo captured using the Hasselblad XPlan Mode, on the OnePlus 9 Pro. | OnePlus OnePlus is finally putting its camera partnership with Hasselblad to good use — by bringing the look and feel of Hasselblad’s cinematic XPan camera to the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro, via a software update.This is a happy surprise because the 9 Series’ cameras did not initially live up to the hype surrounding OnePlus’ multiyear collaboration with the historic camera brand. Although Hasselblad’s contribution to these phones was limited to helping OnePlus tune its camera colors and providing input on its interface earlier this year, as Allison Johnson noted in her OnePlus 9 review, “the Hasselblad color tuning is fine but nothing remarkable.”This update adds an XPan Mode for the OnePlus 9 Series camera, alongside some much needed practical... Continue reading…

The new photos app for Windows 11. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft has started testing a new photos app for Windows 11. Like many other parts of Windows, the photos app has been redesigned to match the new operating system, with subtle improvements that help when you’re flicking through a collection of photos or videos.The biggest addition is a new filmstip at the bottom of the photo viewer that shows small thumbnails of all the photos in a particular folder, collection, or album. It makes it easier to jump between them, or select multiple photos to enter the new “multi-view” UI. Image: Microsoft The new filmstrip UI in the Windows 11 photos app. Multi-view is the best addition for me personally, as you can compare a bunch of photos in a single window. This is great... Continue reading…

Ikea’s gaming range consists of over 30 products. | Image: Ikea Ikea’s lineup of gaming-themed furniture and accessories now has official pricing and a global release date: October. The lineup first came to China earlier this year as a collaboration with Asus and its Republic of Gamers (ROG) brand.Pricing for the lineup ranges from cheap desk accessories like a $10 cup holder or $12.99 mouse bungee, all the way up to gaming chairs costing between $69 and $349, and a $599 standing desk. Oh, and that wooden hand designed to gently cradle your headphones and other accessories? That’ll set you back $24.99. Image: Ikea A mouse bungee to tidy away your mouse’s cabling. Image: Ikea A ring light to keep you lit, plus a phone holder to keep you in frame. T... Continue reading…

Oppo has announced ColorOS 12, the latest version of its Android-based operating system. The update will come to OnePlus phones as well as Oppo’s own phones in China, where OnePlus has used ColorOS since early this year. OnePlus recently announced that it would be combining the codebase of its OxygenOS with ColorOS due to the two companies merging several operations.ColorOS 12 doesn’t look hugely different to 11, but it makes more use of contrasting colors and white space, with lower information density across many screens. Icons have been subtly redesigned to make more use of depth and texture. Oppo says it’s improved more than 300 animations throughout the UI while also making use of an AI engine to reduce lag and stuttering. ... Continue reading…

Image: Searchlight Pictures Guillermo Del Toro’s next film Nightmare Alley is a bit of departure for the director. The new teaser trailer released by Searchlight Pictures on Thursday sees the Oscar award-winning filmmaker trading in his fascination with the supernatural for an R-rated noir set in and around a carnival.Nightmare Alley stars Bradley Cooper as Stanton Carlisle, a nightclub mind reader who becomes tangled up with Cate Blanchett as Dr. Lilith Ritter, a psychiatrist out to debunk him as a fraud. The teaser trailer itself manages to be plenty tense without Del Toro’s usual monsters, featuring carnival sideshows, Willem Dafoe as some kind of ringleader, Blanchett as an obvious femme fatale, and what looks like a live electrocution. You can see for... Continue reading…

Cameo is adding a new live calls feature into its app. Cameo is perhaps most well-known for letting you pay for pre-recorded video messages from celebrities, but the new feature, called Cameo Calls, will let you have short video conversations that are designed to be like meet-and-greets. (The app even sets up a photo op at the end of the call.)The Cameo Calls page has a full list of whose available for conversations and how much it costs for a certain amount of their time. Cameo says that calls can last up to 15 minutes and that the average price for a call is $31. When I looked, I saw that most people offer two or three minutes per call, and prices ranged dramatically. (The highest fee I saw was $225 for a 10-minute call with Vanessa... Continue reading…

Things looked bad for Locast before, and they just got even worse. A judge this week permanently prohibited streamer Locast from continuing operations of its business, a decision that follows a yearslong legal standoff between major broadcasters and the scrappy streaming provider.A permanent injunction order signed by Judge Louis L. Stanton this week stated that Locast founder David Goodfriend and his nonprofit Sports Fans Coalition NY, which operates the Locast service, “are permanently restrained and enjoined from operating” the free TV streaming service.The injunction follows a series of rapid-succession developments that have led to Locast’s apparent demise, after the big four broadcasters suing the company — ABC, CBS, Fox, and... Continue reading…

Yes, Apple really did type “copy” into its own keyboard during the event. Apple allegedly offered to buy his app; instead, it’s being Sherlocked Continue reading…

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images T-Mobile announced that 500 of its retail stores would start offering repair services starting on November 1st. The company says technicians will provide same-day fixes using manufacturer-approved parts to customers who subscribe to its Protection<360> service, which also includes device replacement in case of loss or theft.T-Mobile is also improving that device protection plan by letting customers make five claims in a 12-month period, up from the previous limit of three. The claims are handled by Assurant and come with a deductible based on what kind of phone you have and what kind of claim you’re making. Still, it’s likely to be cheaper than buying five new phones if you wind up having an 18-karat run of bad luck.Assurant... Continue reading…

A traditional blood pressure meter lies on a doctor’s desk. | Photo by Adam Berry/Getty Images Cardiologists are looking forward to the future of blood pressure tech — but the field still needs to catch up Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In the shadow of the iPhone 13, and an aggressive new “Forever Upgrade” plan to sell them, T-Mobile executives are complaining about Samsung’s phones, Fierce Wireless reports. Specifically, the lack of them.“Samsung has really fallen behind the eight ball relative to other OEMs on the global supply chain issue,” T-Mobile chief financial officer and executive vice president Peter Osvaldik said at an BofA Securities investor event on Tuesday. The issue seems to be that a majority of T-Mobile’s customers are “very significant Samsung lovers,” according Osvaldik, and that Samsung “discontinuing” the Galaxy Note — which “customers just loved” — and a shorter supply of S-series phones have had an impact on the carrier.T-Mobile customers... Continue reading…

A screenshot from Battlefield 2042. | Image: EA Battlefield 2042, Dice’s upcoming entry in the Battlefield series, has been delayed by nearly a month, Dice parent company EA announced Wednesday. The game’s release date has been pushed from October 22nd to November 19th.“Building the next generation of Battlefield during a global pandemic has created unforeseen challenges for our development teams,” Oskar Gabrielson, studio GM at Dice said in a statement on behalf of the Battlefield 2042 team. “Given the scale and scope of the game, we had hoped our teams would be back in our studios together as we move towards launch. With the ongoing conditions not allowing that to happen safely, and with all the hard work the teams are doing from home, we feel it is important to take the extra... Continue reading…

Photo: Sundar Pichai / Twitter Google is set to debut its first in-house smartphone chipset, the Tensor SoC, in its upcoming Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro phones. And if the latest report from XDA is correct, the Tensor’s rumored CPU setup could be very, very weird — even by Google standards.So far, Google has largely been hyping up the Tensor SoC’s AI performance; but it hasn’t revealed any information on the basic CPU and GPU specs of the chip. Google’s Rick Osterloh would only tell The Verge that “the standard stuff people look at will be very competitive and the AI stuff will be totally differentiated.”Some aspects of the Tensor’s components have already come to light. An earlier XDA report notes that the Pixel 6 will likely use an off-the-shelf Arm Mali-A78 GPU... Continue reading…

Miss Phyllis Omido, a Kenyan environmental activist and Goldman Environmental Prize Winner. In a groundbreaking judgement Kenya’s Environment and Land Court ordered the government and two private investors to pay Kenya Shillings 1.3 billion (12 million USD) as a compensation to the residents of Owino Uhuru affected by lead poisoning. | Photo by James Wakibia/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Climate change was a big theme in Time Magazine’s 2021 list of “Most Influential People,” with a handful of climate scientists and environmental advocates making the list along with celebrities like Dolly Parton and Naomi Osaka.2021 isn’t the first year rock star environmentalists have made Time’s list. Teen activist Greta Thunberg was Time’s “Person of the Year” in 2019. Green New Deal champion Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was also among the “most influential” that year. This year’s honorees may not be as widely known, but they’ve had a huge impact on how the world grapples with an existential crisis.“Possibly the greatest challenge humanity has faced”Tackling climate change is “possibly the greatest challenge humanity has faced,” one... Continue reading…

The official Among Us costumes. | Image: Amazon Halloween is just around the corner, and if you still need a costume (smh if you haven’t gotten one yet, Halloween is 46 days away, what are you doing?) might I recommend the new official Among Us crewmate costumes?If you get one of these ridiculous inflatable outfits, you’ll surely fool everyone around you into believing you’re not suspicious in any way whatsoever. Definitely not an impostor, nope. Just see for yourself:

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Whether you’re trading in your old iPhone for a discount on a new one, selling it, giving it away, or recycling it, you’re going to want to erase all of your data first. Not only do you want to keep personal information from falling into the wrong hands, but let’s face it: nobody’s going to want a phone with your old selfies on it.After you’ve transferred all of your data to a new phone (or, if you’re not getting a new phone, backed your data up), here’s how to wipe your iPhone:Get rid of a few identifiable features

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Did the Nintendo Switch’s surprise Bluetooth audio update yesterday make your handheld worse instead of better? That’s what happened to me: instead of inviting me to the magical world of wireless audio, it repeatedly failed to detect my headsets and connect to them reliably.Worse, it suddenly took more than 30 seconds to wake my Switch from sleep! That’s a huge pain in the ass, considering one of the Switch’s single greatest strengths is how you can instantly jump back into a game.But after a whole bunch of testing, I think I know what’s going on — and if you’re seeing the same thing, a full Switch shutdown seems to offer a partial fix.It’s not quite that simple, though, so read on for the details.The Nintendo Switch Bluetooth... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The refreshed Apple TV 4K hit shelves in April, but the anticipated tvOS 15 update that introduces exciting updates to the Apple TV experience was previously only available in beta. That will change next week: Apple has confirmed tvOS 15 will become widely available to everyone on September 20th.Apple confirmed to The Verge that the tvOS 15 update will go live the same day as its other operating system updates, which include iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and watchOS 8. The tvOS 15 update brings a number of new features to the Apple TV experience. SharePlay is arguably the most exciting addition to the experience and will allow FaceTime users to stream titles together in sync across their Apple devices, including on Apple TV. However, Apple c... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A University of California San Diego student named Richard Yuan Li was indicted on August 26th for a SIM swapping scheme that involved stealing phone numbers and accounts and extorting at least 40 people for cryptocurrency and other payments, according to a new release the US Department of Justice shared on Monday.According to the indictment (PDF), Li convinced Apple customer service in 2018 to send him a replacement iPhone 8 for one he claimed was lost in the mail. Li and others then convinced carriers to port victims’ phone numbers to the iPhone 8 to take control of their accounts — and in some cases, drained their crypto wallets directly.A phone number could give you access to many different accounts“Li and his co-conspirators... Continue reading…

Photo by Chaim Gartenberg Apple’s iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 are launching officially on September 20th, 2021, but you can test them in the public beta right now if you’re willing to risk encountering possible bugs. Here, we walk you through the steps for installing the software. It’s a similar process for the iPhone and iPad, but we’ve made separate sections for each OS.As expected, Apple announced the release date at its September event, where it also showed off the new iPhone 13, iPad Mini with USB-C charging, and more.Before we get started, here’s the usual word of warning about installing unfinished beta software: these releases may seem stable for general use, but they could contain some bugs. Your experience may differ from others depending on the apps you... Continue reading…

A powerful, impressive cargo bike in its own right, but it’s really all about the accessories Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Two top lawmakers on the Senate Commerce Committee’s panel over consumer protection said they were launching a probe into Facebook after The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the company was aware of the harm Instagram can cause to teenage girls.Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) announced their investigation into Facebook in a statement released Tuesday. The senators said that they were in touch with “a Facebook whistleblower” and would seek new documents and witness testimony from the company related to the reporting.“It is clear that Facebook is incapable of holding itself accountable”“It is clear that Facebook is incapable of holding itself accountable. The Wall Street Journal’s reporting reveals... Continue reading…

Image: USPS EV startup Workhorse has abandoned its lawsuit protesting the United States Postal Service’s decision to let Oshkosh Defense build the next-generation mail truck. The court accepted Workhorse’s voluntary dismissal late Tuesday — just one day before the first oral arguments were scheduled to begin regarding the USPS’s attempt to dismiss the case.Workhorse filed the protest in the US Court of Federal Claims in mid-June, nearly four months after the USPS announced that it had awarded the contract to build the next-generation mail truck to defense contractor Oshkosh, ending a contest that started in 2015.“We are pleased to learn that Workhorse Group has withdrawn its bid protest of the award of the United States Postal Service Next... Continue reading…

Inspiration4 / John Kraus SpaceX is set to launch the first fully private crew of passengers to space on Wednesday. The Inspiration4 crew, three ordinary people and a billionaire philanthropist who’s funding the mission, will board SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule on Wednesday afternoon and lift off at 8:02PM ET atop a Falcon 9 rocket, speeding toward an orbit 360 miles above the ground — farther from Earth than the International Space Station.If all goes according to plan, the mission will mark a new milestone in the budding commercial space industry, where companies owned by billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have been racing to normalize space travel for people other than government astronauts. The mission also aims to raise $200 million for St. Jude... Continue reading…

Image: Carolina Panthers This past weekend marked the first Sunday of the 2021 NFL season, and while it was full of exciting highlights, one may have towered over them all: the Carolina Panthers’ viral video of a giant virtual panther leaping around Bank of America Stadium.The video is ridiculous. A big virtual cat jumps into the stadium, paces around the field, shreds a New York Jets flag (the Panthers’ Sunday opponents), and hops away with a menacing roar. It’s proved to be hugely popular, with 5.6 million views on Twitter.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Facebook reportedly fielded complaints from political parties saying a major News Feed change pushed them toward negative, polarizing posts. Today, The Wall Street Journal posted leaked reports from Facebook after it boosted “meaningful social interactions” on the platform. While Facebook framed the move as helping friends connect, internal reports said it had “unhealthy side effects on important slices of public content, such as politics and news,” calling these effects an “increasing liability.”The news is part of a larger Wall Street Journal series based on internal Facebook research. Today’s report delves into the fallout of a 2018 decision to prioritize posts with lots of comments and reactions. Facebook allegedly made the change... Continue reading…

Image: Apple If you’ve just upgraded — or are planning to upgrade — to Apple’s new iPhone 13, congratulations! You’re going to want to try out your snazzy new phone as soon as you open that box. But first, you need to get all of the apps and data from your old iPhone onto your new one.It’s actually very easy — in fact, if you haven’t upgraded for a while, you’ll find it easier than ever. The process of moving your data used to require restoring it from an iCloud or iTunes backup. Now, you don’t have to bother with that backup (although backing up your stuff is always a good idea). You can move your apps, data, and ID over to the new phone directly with what Apple calls iPhone migration. (However, if you prefer, you can still restore it from iCloud.)... Continue reading…

Image: Apple Apple’s new iPhone 13 and 13 Mini mark the official end of the 64GB iPhone era: the company has effectively doubled the storage capacities for its 2021 models while keeping prices the same, so the new smartphones now start with 128GB of storage with options for 256GB and 512GB. (For those who require more space, the iPhone 13 Pro models offer up to 1TB.)While 64GB capacities will still stick around on the legacy iPhone 12, iPhone 11, and iPhone SE models, Apple’s newest hardware will come with a minimum of 128GB now.To which I say, goodbye and good riddance. This change was long overdue. Just 64GB wasn’t enough to cut it in 2018, and the issue has only grown as apps, photos, videos, and games continue to grow in size. Though Apple has... Continue reading…

Sony The Pulse 3D Audio wireless headset that Sony made to take advantage of the PS5’s 3D Audio tech is getting a new color option. It’ll be available in midnight black in addition to white, just like its DualSense controller, for the same $99.99 price that it debuted at last year. Most of the white headset colorway was black already, but now there’s simply more of it, covering the headband in black detailing. You can preorder it now through Sony’s site, and it’ll be available on October 22nd, 2021, but more retailers will likely stock it as well.In the PlayStation Blog, Sony says that this announcement coincides with a new PS5 update that gives Pulse 3D Audio headset owners some new settings to customize the sound. You’ll have three audio... Continue reading…