The Verge

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge The world’s most popular podcast app gets subscriptions Continue reading…

Photos: XDA / Digital Chat Station (Weibo) It looks like Oppo will be the next company to throw its hat in the Bluetooth tracking tag game, with a leak of the company’s new Smart Tag appearing over on XDA (via Weibo leaker Digital Chat Station).Oppo’s tracker looks to distinguish itself in at least one key way from other major tracking tags by offering a USB-C port for recharging the tags, instead of requiring replaceable coin cell batteries (or even worse, nonremovable batteries, as is the case on some Tile trackers). That should make the new Oppo tags a bit more environmentally friendly, although it’s unclear what the impact on battery life will be compared to a more traditional battery system.And while details are slim on the Oppo Smart Tag, the leak does confirm that the... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Two Senate Democrats are urging federal regulators to take “corrective actions” against Tesla to prevent further misuse of the company’s advanced driver assist feature. The request comes in the aftermath of a fatal crash in which two men from Texas were killed after their Tesla Model S crashed with no one in the driver’s seat.In a letter sent to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Acting Administrator Steven Cliff, Senators Ed Markey (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) implored the agency to determine the exact cause of this recent crash to “better inform” future legislation around advanced driver assist systems like Tesla’s Autopilot.“We strongly urge you to conduct a complete investigation into Saturday’s fatal Tesla... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is making it easier for creators to change the name and profile picture on their channels. Creators will now be able to update their channel name and picture inside YouTube, and those changes will only impact their profile on YouTube.Until now, creators had to change their name and icon for their entire Google account — so their name on YouTube would be the same name they send emails from in Gmail. That didn’t necessarily make sense from a branding or professional perspective, and the new system should offer a bit more flexibility for creators who might prefer to send emails under their actual name instead of their channel name.There is one substantial caveat to the new feature, though: creators with a verification badge will... Continue reading…

Image: Alex Castro / The Verge Like hundreds of school districts across the country, Edgecombe County Public Schools in North Carolina had to move their coursework online to keep their students safe during the coronavirus pandemic. Worksheets became websites and school assemblies became Zoom conferences with outside speakers.But for students without a stable internet connection, teachers had to hand-deliver packets of homework that would normally have been put online. In assemblies, students are asked to turn off their cameras so their streams don’t cut out.“We tell the kids, it’s not your fault”“We just let the speakers know, our students are probably not going to be on camera. And it’s because we don’t have good internet speeds out here,” Arlane Gordon-Bray,... Continue reading…

CARLOS GONZALEZ/NETFLIX TikTok’s Hype House is getting a Netflix reality show that will follow the lives of some of the biggest creators on the social media platform.The new series is set to feature Kouvr Annon, Nikita Dragun, Sienna Mae Gomez, Chase Hudson, Larri Merritt, Thomas Petrou, Alex Warren, and Jack Wright — collectively some of the largest creators on TikTok, each with millions of followers — and promises “the stories of the most popular personalities on social media as they come into their own, fall in love and tackle the next stage of their lives.”The Hype House was founded in December 2019 and is a content collective similar to David Dobrik’s Vlog Squad or Jake Paul’s Team 10 — but with a focus on TikTok creators and content instead of YouTube.... Continue reading…

Marvel Meow, starring Chewie. | Image: Marvel and Viz Media Marvel and manga publisher Viz Media announced three Marvel-themed manga that will be released in English, and one of them features an adorable cat.The first manga will be Marvel Meow, starring Captain Marvel’s cat, Chewie. (If you follow Marvel’s Instagram account, you may have seen some comics starring the furry feline already.) Based on Viz Media’s description, it sounds like her primary goal is to annoy people in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which I approve.

Google’s MVNO wireless service adds another, more conventional plan option. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google Fi has announced a basic, less expensive unlimited plan called Simply Unlimited in addition to its current unlimited offering, now called Unlimited Plus. The new plan costs $60 per month for a single line and forgoes a couple of features available on the more expensive plan: international data and mobile tethering. It’s the second time the MVNO has introduced a new unlimited plan, each marking a step toward a more conventional wireless plan pricing structure.Simply Unlimited covers the expected basics of an unlimited cellular plan: unlimited data, calls, and texting in the US. While the newly dubbed Unlimited Plus (still $70 per month for one line) provides high-speed data and texting in over 200 countries for international... Continue reading…

A screenshot from Cyberpunk 2077. | Image: CD Projekt Red Despite Cyberpunk 2077’s disastrous and bug-filled December 10th launch, the title was “the largest game in CD Projekt Red’s history,” the studio said on Thursday (PDF). The game sold 13.7 million copies in 2020, according to CD Projekt Red.We already had a pretty good idea that Cyberpunk 2077 has been a major financial success for the studio. On December 9th, one day before the game’s launch, CD Projekt Red announced that Cyberpunk 2077 had accrued 8 million preorders. One day after the game’s release, CD Projekt Red said digital preorders had recouped all of the game’s development and marketing costs. And the studio said that the game had sold more than 13 million copies as of December 20th in a memo shared on December 22nd.Cyberpunk... Continue reading…

Microsoft is enabling its Xbox FPS Boost mode on 13 EA games, with 12 now supporting up to 120fps. The FPS Boost feature for Xbox Series X and Series S consoles is designed to make existing games run better. While Microsoft has improved frame rates with some backward-compatible games, FPS Boost specifically bumps performance to improve older games without developers having to put in any additional work.Titles like Battlefield V, Titanfall, Titanfall 2, and Star Wars Battlefront II are all getting support for up to 120fps today. These updates come just months after Microsoft enabled FPS Boost on a number of Bethesda games.Here’s the full list of games getting support for up to 120fps with FPS Boost:

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Consumer Reports said Thursday it was “easily” able to trick Tesla’s Autopilot system to operate without anyone in the driver’s seat. The publication’s test came amid questions about the safety of the company’s advanced driver assist system in the aftermath of a fatal crash in Texas in which authorities said there was no one behind the steering wheel.Using a weighted chain attached to the steering wheel to simulate the pressure of the driver’s hands, two Consumer Reports researchers were able to use the steering wheel dial on a Tesla Model Y to accelerate from a full stop, and then “drive” around on a closed-course test track for several miles — all while sitting in the passenger seat and backseat. They stopped the vehicle by again... Continue reading…

The new Windows 10 taskbar feature. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is starting to roll out its biggest change to the Windows taskbar in years. A new weather and news taskbar widget will be available in Windows 10 starting today, offering weather information directly in the Windows taskbar. The widget also expands to include a feed of news, stocks, sports, and weather information.The mini-feed of content only appears when you activate the widget, and it can be fully personalized with the latest sports news, headlines, and weather information. Microsoft is using its Microsoft News network to surface news and content from more than 4,500 sources, and the company will use AI to learn what news is relevant to you when you dismiss or like stories in the feed. Image: Microsoft ... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony will begin rolling out support for 1080p streaming with PlayStation Now beginning this week, upping the streaming quality from the cloud gaming service’s previous 720p cap.“The rollout will occur over the next several weeks across Europe, US, Canada, and Japan, where PlayStation Now is available,” Sony said in a tweet.

Following a leak yesterday, Sony confirmed that it is testing out a service called PlayStation Plus Video Pass, with a one-year trial in Poland that will allow subscribers to stream movies and TV shows, as the company looks at ways to expand its online subscription, Video Game Chronicle reports.Speaking with Polish website Spider’s Web, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s global services VP Nick Maguire said that the service would be a streaming app available to PS4 and PS5 owners with an active PS Plus subscription, at no additional cost. The service will include 15 movies and six TV shows owned by Sony Pictures, with more on the way every three months until the trial concludes.The service will include fifteen movies and six TV shows... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The Strategist’s Two-Day (Actually Good) Sale Continue reading…

Almost a great gaming gadget Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge How Nick ‘Nickmercs’ Kolcheff battled his way to the top of Twitch Continue reading…

Image: Apple Okay, hear me out on this. I really would just like Apple’s next iPad Pro to be a laptop. Not a clamshell, but a Surface Pro type of deal: a tablet with laptop hardware and a laptop OS. I think there must be people at Apple who want this, too, so I’m now respectfully requesting that the company stop dilly-dallying and make it happen.Here’s my reasoning: at Tuesday’s Spring Loaded event, Apple finally unveiled a long-rumored update to its iPad Pro. While the device doesn’t look too different from iPad Pro models of years past, it’s a huge leap forward on the inside because it’s powered by Apple’s eight-core M1 processor. That’s the same processor that powers its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro (as well as the Mac mini), and it’s... Continue reading…

New apps coming to the Epic Games Store. | Image: Epic Games Epic is adding five new PC apps to its Epic Games Store launcher today, in a fresh bid to offer more than just games. Indie game store Itch.io is arriving on Epic Games Store today, alongside open-source browser Brave, streaming radio app iHeartRadio, 3D model tool KenShape, and open-source painting app Krita. These are Epic Games Store’s first new PC apps since Spotify launched in December.Epic Games is promising to add more PC apps in the future, including communications app Discord. There’s even a new section in the Epic Games Store dedicated to PC apps, so it’s clear Epic has ambitions to run its own Windows store here. That’s not entirely surprising, as Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has long called for open app models and stores on Windows.... Continue reading…

R2-D2 — everyone’s favorite droid from the Star Wars movies, unless you’re Anthony Daniels — is getting an updated $200 Lego collector’s set, and it’s the biggest and most accurate Lego model of the astromech droid yet.The 2021 R2-D2 set is roughly the same in terms of physical size (about a foot tall) and piece count (2,314 pieces on the new model, versus 2,127) as the 2013 model. But Lego has taken the intervening years to polish its craft considerably. The new R2-D2 does away with the exposed studs on the blocky head of the original for a smoother look. Lego also rounded the body of the droid to make the whole thing more cylindrical and improved the detail on R2’s “face” for a more screen-accurate (and friendly) look.The updated... Continue reading…

Image: Canoo The new executive chairman of electric vehicle startup Canoo, Tony Aquila, has taken over the role of CEO at the company. Existing CEO and co-founder Ulrich Kranz is resigning and so is Canoo’s chief lawyer, Andrew Wolstan. It’s another major shake-up for the startup, which just became a publicly traded company as part of a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).The departure of Kranz and Wolstan comes just weeks after Canoo’s chief financial officer resigned, and it lost its head of corporate strategy. The startup’s head of powertrain development and another one of the people who helped found Canoo in late 2017, Phil Weicker, also left at the beginning of this year, The Verge has learned.Aquila took over as Canoo’s... Continue reading…

This is a mockup of what ads might look like in Reels. | Instagram Instagram puts ads just about everywhere in its app, and now, they’re coming to Reels. The company says today it’ll start testing ads in its TikTok copy product in India, Brazil, Germany, and Australia. The plan is to then expand that group in the coming months. The ads can be up to 30 seconds long, like Reels, and will look similar to the ones you see in stories in that they’re vertical and full-screen. Unlike those story ads, though, people can comment on, like, view, save, share, and skip them in Reels.The broader Facebook company also previewed its new sticker ads for Facebook Stories, which will be tested with select advertisers and creators over the coming weeks. The company announced them last month with the idea being that the... Continue reading…

An AirTag and the Find My app They work super well, and they’re one more thing keeping you on the iPhone Continue reading…

Image: EA The Battlefield series is headed to mobile devices. The hugely popular shooter franchise will make its debut on smartphones and tablets in a new game that’s set to release in 2022. The game will be developed by Industrial Toys in partnership with longtime Battlefield developer DICE, which is owned by Electronic Arts.“Make no mistake, this is a standalone game,” Oskar Gabrielson, the general manager of DICE, said in a blog post. “A completely different game from the one we’re making for console and PC, designed specifically for the mobile platform. It’s being built from the ground up by iToys to make Battlefield-on-the-go a reality and you can expect a fully-fledged, skill-based experience.”Shooters are some of the biggest hits on... Continue reading…

A purple iPhone 12 Apple managed to surprise us during its live stream event earlier this week by announcing a new iPhone. Well, a new color for the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini: purple. Apple sent one to us along with some sample AirTags and so we have duly taken some photos of this, a purple iPhone 12.It’s a lightish shade of purple. One might be tempted to call it lavender, but to me it’s a bit more like a lilac or maybe a wisteria. It lacks the redness you’d expect in a mauve or the blue tones you’d see in a violet. There are many shades of purple, but this one is what Apple went with and I like it. It’s unmistakable even at a distance, whereas the light green iPhone 12 models could be mistaken for off-white in certain light. I am also glad it doesn’t... Continue reading…

Apple announced a new iPad Pro this week with a beefy M1 chip. Can new software take advantage of this processibng power? | Image: Apple Apple is getting ready to announce a raft of software updates for the iPhone and iPad in June according to a new report from Bloomberg, including “the most significant update to the [iPad’s] Home Screen since first launching the product in 2010.”The new versions of iOS and iPadOS — iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 — will be unveiled at Apple’s upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 7th, says Bloomberg. Last year’s iOS 14 update was announced at WWDC on June 22nd, before becoming available for download on September 16th in time to accompany the iPhone 12 release.Bloomberg’s story has a host of details about what to expect from the latest versions of Apple’s mobile software, but here are the biggest points:

Apple’s new TV calibration feature, which uses the iPhone’s front-facing sensors to sense and tweak the output of the Apple TV, works with the company’s older streaming boxes, 9to5Mac reports. The new feature will arrive with tvOS 14.5, which is due to release “early next week” for the 2017 Apple TV 4K and 2015 Apple TV HD. Apple says viewers will see “much more accurate colors and improved contrast” after calibration.The calibration feature was announced alongside the new Apple TV 4K. It works by having you hold up the front of your iPhone to your TV, so it can sense how the screen is outputting different colors. If the phone’s light sensor sees that color is being outputted inaccurately, the Apple TV can adjust its output to... Continue reading…

Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge Hundreds of foldable electric bikes made by UK firm Brompton have been recalled for repair by the US government. A software fault is causing the bikes’ electric motors to deliver “forward momentum” when the rider is not pedaling. It’s an issue that poses “fall and injury hazards,” according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), but can be remedied by a free software upgrade performed at certain Brompton dealers.The problem affects roughly 600 bikes sold by Brompton’s US dealers between June 2020 and March 2021, with the bicycles themselves retailing for between $3,500 and $3,800.“the risk of an accident occurring is very low,” say bromptonOwners can check if their bike is one of those affected by entering the... Continue reading…

Apple’s new Magic Keyboard has a Touch ID sensor on the top right. | Image: Apple The Touch ID sensor in Apple’s new Magic Keyboard, which debuted alongside the updated iMac earlier this week, works with any Mac fitted with Apple’s M1 processor, Rene Ritchie and MacRumors report. However, the sensor won’t work with the new iPad Pro, which also uses the M1 chip. For now, the new keyboard is only sold with the new M1-equipped iMac, which is available to preorder from April 30th.Apple has been shipping MacBooks with built-in Touch ID for a while now, but this is the first time it’s been available in an accessory. The biometric security method can be used for logging into the device, as well as authorizing purchases and signing into some third-party apps. The new Touch ID keyboard is available with a compact layout, as... Continue reading…

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about climate change issues in the State Dining Room of the White House on January 27, 2021 in Washington, DC. President Biden signed several executive orders related to the climate change crisis on Wednesday, including one directing a pause on new oil and natural gas leases on public lands. | Photo by Anna Moneymaker-Pool/Getty Images President Joe Biden announced a new goal to sharply cut down US greenhouse gas emissions this decade. The country’s new mandate is to reduce planet-heating gases by 50 to 52 percent of what the US emitted in 2005. It significantly ramps up a previous commitment under the Paris climate agreement made by former President Barack Obama, who pledged to slash emissions between 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.The US hopes to regain respect on the international stageThe urgency for the US to gut its climate pollution has only grown since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015. Global carbon dioxide emissions need to drop by half this decade and reach close to zero by the middle of the century in order to hit the goals of the Paris... Continue reading…

Tesla’s solar roof. | Image: Tesla Tesla’s solar products will soon only be sold together with the company’s Powerwall battery, CEO Elon Musk announced on Twitter. Integrating them into a single product will making installations easier and home backup more seamless during outages, according to Musk. The change will affect both Tesla’s Solar Panels (which sit on top of an existing roof), and Solar Roof (which replaces a home’s existing roof slats).The new policy was announced just hours after Musk responded to a tweet from Ark Investment Management’s director of research Brett Winton, who had complained that his Tesla solar panels hadn’t generated any electricity since installation because he was waiting on his local utility company to approve the connection.

Fujifilm and Nintendo have announced a new collaboration. The camera company is releasing a new Switch-themed version of its Instax Mini Link photo printer, as well as a new app that’s designed to let you edit Switch screenshots and print them out onto Fujifilm’s Polaroid-style Instax film, or add Nintendo characters to your photos.You can transfer screenshots from your Switch to the new “instax mini Link for Nintendo Switch” app with a QR code. The app contains filters and 59 new frames from games like Super Mario, Animal Crossing, and appropriately enough the upcoming New Pokémon Snap. Here’s how some of the frames look: The actual printer hardware itself is identical to the existing Instax Mini Link,... Continue reading…

A screenshot from Gran Turismo 7. | Image: Sony The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced a new series of virtual sporting events that will take place ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, called the Olympic Virtual Series. No, this doesn’t mean that League of Legends just became an Olympic sport — what’s happening is that the IOC is partnering with five international sports federations to host virtual competitions in games featuring their sports.The Olympic Virtual Series will kick off on May 13th and will run through June 23rd. Here’s the lineup of federations and what games they’ll be hosting events for, as we know it so far:

The original Reon Pocket. Sony has announced a follow-up product to the Reon Pocket, the app-controlled “wearable air conditioner” it released last year after crowdfunding it on the company’s own platform. The Reon Pocket 2 looks more or less the same as the original model, but the newly designed internals can achieve up to twice the level of heat absorption, according to Sony, resulting in more powerful cooling performance. Sony also says that it’s improved the sweat-proofing in the Reon Pocket 2, making it more suitable for light exercise situations.The prior model was mostly marketed as something to wear with a special undershirt to make summer commuting more bearable, but this time around Sony is emphasizing more versatile use cases — particularly golf. The... Continue reading…

Image: Apple The Apple AirTags have finally been announced, and with them come a ton of accessories to make them easier to use (so much easier than if it had, say, a built-in way to attach it to things). While a small tracking puck could be carried in a bag, there are a variety of other things that you may want to put an AirTag on that require some sort of holder or the judicious use of tape.These are all the accessories we could find that are either listed for preorder on the maker’s site or have a page on Apple’s store. We don’t have official ship dates for most of them, but it’s probably a safe bet that the ones on the Apple Store will become available when the AirTags do, on April 30th. Image: Apple Belkin’s AirTag... Continue reading…

Photo: Sony Pictures Entertainment Disney and Sony Pictures have signed a multi-year “content licensing agreement” that will bring new Sony theatrical releases, starting with its 2022 films, to Disney-owned platforms. The deal also gives Disney the rights to many of Sony’s older films, including Spider-Man titles — meaning that movies starring the web-slinger, which are notably absent from Disney Plus’ collection of Marvel films, could eventually make their way to the streaming service.Sony’s theatrical releases from 2022 through 2026 are included in the deal, and Disney will get access to them following their “Pay 1 TV window.” Starting in 2022, that window, which follows a film’s theatrical and home video runs, will be owned by Netflix, thanks to a deal announced... Continue reading…

Capcom Facebook Reality Labs has offered more detail about a virtual reality remake of Resident Evil 4, following Capcom’s original announcement last week. The game will launch later this year exclusively on Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2 headset, although the exact date is still a mystery. As Capcom’s first trailer indicated, it’s a first-person VR adaptation of the 2005 third-person game, with a focus on making weapons and movement feel more natural with Oculus Touch motion controllers.Resident Evil 4 for VR uses the game’s original levels and animations, revamped with remastered textures, and Oculus says cutscenes will be rendered “in their original format.” But developer Armature Studio has added VR-friendly locomotion options like the ability... Continue reading…

US President Joe Biden prepares to sign executive orders after speaking about climate change issues in the State Dining Room of the White House on January 27th, 2021, in Washington, DC. Biden signed several executive orders related to the climate change crisis. Also pictured, left to right, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry and US Vice President Kamala Harris. | Photo by Anna Moneymaker-Pool / Getty Images The US plans to officially ratchet up its climate commitments going into Earth Day tomorrow, but many advocates are skeptical that it will be ambitious enough to balance out the nation’s inordinate role in creating the climate crisis.“No possible ethically justifiable story in which the United States does not do more”Biden is expected to commit the US to slashing its greenhouse gas emissions by at least half compared to what they were in 2005. That’s already a significant ramp-up compared to the trajectory the US was on before. (Barack Obama committed the US to a roughly 27 percent cut by 2025.) But there’s still somewhat of a mismatch between what the US is willing to commit to and what some say it owes to the rest of the world.“... Continue reading…

Nelson smiles for cameras before his Senate confirmation hearing to be NASA’s 14th administrator. President Biden’s pick for NASA administrator, former Sen. Bill Nelson, breezed through his Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday, as expected. Facing questions from his “old buddies” about NASA’s commercial partnerships, climate change, and workforce diversity, Nelson’s hearing was uneventful and garnered bipartisan praise. He backed the agency’s current plan to send its first crew of astronauts to the Moon on a SpaceX rocket and emphasized NASA’s role in studying climate change.Just over a month after being tapped by Biden for NASA chief, Nelson told lawmakers he supported the president’s 2022 summary budget request for NASA and defended the $2.3 billion it set out for the agency’s Earth sciences wing — a 15 percent increase from... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple’s App Store was in the hot seat of Wednesday’s hearing Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Hyundai is discontinuing its first mass-market electric SUV, the Kona EV, in South Korea following a massive recall due to a fire risk in the battery pack, the Yonhap news agency reports. The automaker will instead turn its focus to the forthcoming Ioniq 5 (and the EVs that will follow it), though Hyundai will still sell the Kona EV in the United States, according to Roadshow.More than a dozen reports of fires in Kona EV battery packs have been documented since 2019, and so this February, Hyundai finally decided to spend nearly $1 billion to recall 76,000 Kona EVs across its home country (though battery supplier LG Chem is contributing a big portion). It also recalled some Ioniq sedans and electric buses that used the same battery... Continue reading…

Image: Activision In the battle royale of battle royale games, there doesn’t need to be a single winner. Call of Duty: Warzone now has 100 million players, the same number Apex Legends achieved just a week ago.They can share a victory royale with Fortnite, with its 350 million-plus players (as of May 2020), as well as the original PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, which has sold north of 70 million copies on console and PC, and its free-to-play PUBG Mobile variant reportedly raked in $5 billion last year ($7.4 million per day).

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has been targeted in a $50 million ransomware attack following the theft of a trove of engineering and manufacturing schematics of current and future products from Quanta, a Taiwan-based company that manufactures MacBooks and other products for Apple.The leak, first reported by The Record, was carried out by REvil, a Russian hacking group that’s also known by the name Sodinokibi. The group had already begun posting the stolen images on April 20th, timed specifically to coincide with Apple’s latest “Spring Loaded” event, after Quanta refused to pay the $50 million ransom for the data. The group is now hoping to get Apple itself to pay up by May 1st, promising to continue to post new images from the leak daily until it does.Quanta... Continue reading…

Brydge is announcing a keyboard and trackpad accessory for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (via 9to5Mac). Like the company’s previous accessories, the Brydge 12.9 Max Plus will let you take your iPad from being a tablet to a laptop, just by connecting it to the accessory. With Apple’s new M1-powered iPad Pro, some might already be thinking about using it to make a MacBook replacement, while others may just be excited for the way you can now neatly attach it via magnets.The answer to whether this will help replace your MacBook with an iPad is more or less what it’s always been: it depends on whether you can do all your work with what’s available on iPadOS. The iPad Pro has been more powerful than a lot of MacBooks for years, but hardware is only... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google’s AI leadership came under fire in December when star ethics researcher Timnit Gebru was abruptly fired while working on a paper about the dangers of large language models. Now, new reporting from Bloomberg suggests the turmoil began long before her termination — and includes allegations of bias and sexual harassment.Shortly after Gebru arrived at Google in 2018, she informed her boss that a colleague had been accused of sexual harassment at another organization. Katherine Heller, a Google researcher, reported the same incident, which included allegations of inappropriate touching. Google immediately opened an investigation into the man’s behavior. Bloomberg did not name the man accused of harassment, and The Verge does not know... Continue reading…

Photo by Cliff Welch/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images NFL fans will have another place they can watch NFL RedZone and the NFL Network next season, as both channels are coming to the Hulu with Live TV plan by August 1st. NFL Network will be included in the base package, while NFL RedZone will be offered at an additional cost, Hulu tells The Verge.Hulu isn’t the only streaming service where you can get the NFL channels, as they are also available on YouTube TV, Sling, and fuboTV. And similarly, only NFL Network is part of the base subscriptions for these services — you’ll have to pay for sports-focused add-ons to get access to NFL RedZone. But if Hulu with Live TV is your preferred live TV streaming service, now you don’t have to go somewhere else to get your NFL channel fix.The NFL’s deal... Continue reading…

Microsoft Microsoft is releasing a new stylus for classroom use: the Classroom Pen 2. The pen will be available on April 27th and will be sold directly to schools.The company launched its first Classroom Pen in 2019. That stylus sold for $39.99 per unit. It was compatible with any device that supported the MPP protocol (including a number of non-Surface Windows devices).Microsoft is going even more budget with this release. The Pen 2 will be sold to schools in packs of 20 for $399.80, which works out to $19.99 per pen. Per Microsoft’s blog post, however, it seems like this pen may only be optimized for Microsoft’s own Surface Pro and Surface Go devices — other Windows devices aren’t mentioned.Microsoft claims that the device has an “improved... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Get ready for Twitter to start looking a whole lot crisper — starting today, the company is letting all users tweet (and view) pictures in 4K on iOS and Android.Twitter’s web app already supports higher-resolution images (at up to 4096 x 4096 resolution), but the mobile apps had been limited to just half that, with a maximum resolution of 2048 x 2048. The company had previously started testing the 4K image upload option for mobile users earlier this year, and it seems those tests went well, as its now rolling out the feature to all users starting today.

Amazon One is expanding to its biggest area yet: the company is now testing its palm-scanning payment technology in Whole Foods, starting with a single store in Amazon’s home city of Seattle.The company has been using Amazon One payment technology in its Amazon-branded stores in the Seattle area (including Amazon Go and Amazon Books), but the Whole Foods rollout will make the most substantial expansion of the technology yet. The company says that thousands of customers have already signed up with Amazon One.According to an Amazon FAQ, the palm-scanning technology analyzes “the minute characteristics of your palm — both surface-area details like lines and ridges as well as subcutaneous features such as vein patterns” in order to... Continue reading…

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge Google has announced some new features coming to Chromebooks, including the company’s Live Captions feature that will be added to Chrome on “most” Chrome OS devices in the coming weeks. Once Live Captions are available, users can flip them on in the accessibility settings to get captions for any media with audio right inside their browser. The feature rolled out to Chrome on Windows, Mac, and Linux in March.Google is also beefing up the Chrome OS Launcher, which lets you search for files and apps, with some new capabilities, allowing you make simple calculations and check the weather, the definition of a word, and stock prices. Image: Google Searching for weather in the Launcher. The search giant is also... Continue reading…