The Verge

Fitbit’s Luxe comes in a few different finishes | Fitbit Fitbit has announced its new Luxe fitness tracker that looks like a more fashion-focused take on the Inspire 2. It leaked last week, but Fitbit is making it official with the news that the Luxe is available for preorder starting today, April 19th, for $149.95. This cost includes six months of the Fitbit Premium service, which usually costs $9.99 per month. The service recently launched the new Mindful Method program created by Deepak Chopra that packs in over 30 audio and video sessions on mindfulness and wellness.A specific release date for the Luxe hasn’t been shared, but the company is aiming for a spring launch, so it shouldn’t be too long of a wait.The Luxe was designed for “a diverse range of wrist sizes and skin tones for 24/7... Continue reading…

Toyota, an early pioneer in electrification that has since fallen far behind its competitors, finally announced an electric vehicle strategy that will result in 15 new battery-electric vehicles released by 2025.The company, which helped pave the way for companies like Tesla and others by proving that vehicles with alternative powertrains could be immensely popular, also unveiled a new concept EV at the Shanghai Motor show called the BZ4X. The electric SUV concept will serve as a starting point for other models with the BZ (which stands for “Beyond Zero”) branding in the future. Toyota did not reveal any details or specifications for the BZ4X, but it did say the vehicle would be released in China and Japan later this year.Toyota said... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU) has filed a formal objection to the results of a union election at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, alleging the e-commerce company threatened to lay off workers. The employees voted against unionizing in an April 9th vote, but the RWDSU is arguing that the results should be set aside because Amazon “created an atmosphere of confusion, coercion and/or fear of reprisals and thus interfered with the employees’ freedom of choice,” the union said in a news release.“Amazon has left no stone unturned in its efforts to gaslight its own employees,” RWDSU president Stuart Appelbaum said in a statement Monday. “We won’t let Amazon’s lies, deception and illegal activities go... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Faraday Future was investigated by the Department of Labor in 2020, though the electric vehicle startup says the matter was “resolved,” according to a previously unreported passage in a recent regulatory filing.The startup didn’t say what the investigation was about or how much it paid to resolve the legal matter. Faraday Future’s former chief lawyer has claimed in a lawsuit that the company was previously inspected by the Department of Homeland Security’s United States Citizenship and Immigration Services division in 2018, though the startup denied this in court filings. A spokesperson for Faraday Future declined to comment on the investigation.The regulatory filing, known as the S-4 “registration statement,” was published as part... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Apple will allow Parler to return to its App Store, according to a letter first reported by CNN on Monday.In the letter addressed to Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), Apple said “Parler has proposed updates to its app and the app’s content moderation practices” that would bring the app into compliance with the App Store’s rules. Now, Parler is allowed to return once it reintroduces the app to the store.

Image: Reddit Reddit unveiled its take on a Clubhouse-like social audio product on Monday, called Reddit Talk. The company is billing Monday’s announcement as a “sneak preview,” since the feature isn’t widely available yet. Moderators that want to try the feature out in their subreddit can add themselves to a waitlist for access.Based on Reddit’s description and images shared by the company, Reddit Talk appears to look a lot like Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces, and other social audio products. Talks will “live” within subreddits, according to Reddit. Image: Reddit Reddit’s new Talk feature. During the initial tests, only subreddit moderators will be able to initiate a Talk, and Talk hosts will have the ability to invite, mute,... Continue reading…

Photo by Paul Hennessy / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images Amazon bought nine launches from the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance to send its internet-beaming Kuiper satellites into space, the companies announced. It is Amazon’s first launch agreement.The deal is for ULA’s workhorse Atlas 5 rocket. An Amazon spokesman declined to say how many satellites each launch will carry or how often they will launch.Amazon pledged to invest $10 billion into the Kuiper program last yearAmazon is planning to build a so-called constellation of 3,236 satellites in space to bring internet to rural parts of the world that have little to no connectivity. It’ll also serve as a major infrastructure boost to its mammoth cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services. But details on the network... Continue reading…

In January, the future looked bright for net neutrality. After a surprise victory in the Georgia special elections, Democrats gained a majority in the Senate, opening the door for aggressive new Federal Communications Commission leadership that could reinstate net neutrality by regulatory order. There was even talk of passing a bill that would enshrine net neutrality in law.In the three months since then, not much has happened. Preoccupied with the pandemic, the Biden White House has focused on shepherding through its relief and rebuilding efforts, a pair of massive spending bills that require every bit of political capital Democrats can spare. As a result, even basic measures like appointing a new FCC chair have taken a back seat to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has dispatched a team to investigate the fatal Tesla crash in Texas, in which two people were killed after their vehicle crashed into a tree with no one behind the steering wheel.A spokesperson from the NHTSA said the agency is coordinating with local law enforcement to learn more about the incident and will “take appropriate steps” when investigators have gathered more information. The spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up question about whether that would include a recall of Tesla’s Autopilot feature that was likely involved in the crash.“take appropriate steps”So far, the investigation appears to involve only officials from the NHTSA, and not its sub-agency, the... Continue reading…

Image: Nvidia The British government has ordered an investigation of Nvidia’s proposed $40 billion acquisition of UK-headquartered chip designer Arm. The country’s competition regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), will prepare an initial report on the takeover by the end of July, which will cover potential national security issues, as well as competition and jurisdictional issues created by the deal.“I have today issued an intervention notice on national security grounds,” the UK’s digital secretary Oliver Dowden said in a statement. “The UK’s independent competition authority will now prepare a report on the implications of the transaction, which will help inform any further decisions.”“It is appropriate that we properly consider... Continue reading…

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings has gotten its first trailer, showing off the high-flying martial arts action and a new hero for the interconnected universe of Marvel films and shows: Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), who’s known in the comics as Marvel’s preeminent master of martial arts.The trailer serves as a short introduction to Shang-Chi as he faces off against the mysterious Ten Rings organization and its true leader, the Mandarin. The Ten Rings have been a figure lurking in the background for the entirety of the MCU, first introduced in 2008’s Iron Man (and notably spoofed by a copy-cat group in Iron Man 3), but Shang-Chi promises to reveal the actual group for the first time.The upcoming film also takes some inspiration from... Continue reading…

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images Facebook says it’s taking extra moderation measures around the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer accused of murdering Minneapolis man George Floyd last year. As a verdict in the trial approaches, Facebook has designated Minneapolis a “high-risk location” where it will seek and remove calls to bring weapons to events. It will also remove content that “praises, celebrates, or mocks George Floyd’s death.”Facebook content moderation VP Monika Bickert outlined preparations for a verdict in a blog post this morning. “We want to strike the right balance between allowing people to speak about the trial and what the verdict means, while still doing our part to protect everyone’s safety,” Bickert writes. Users can “discuss,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Discord has loosened its ban on accessing NSFW servers from its iPhone and iPad apps. Now, only servers focused on “explicit pornographic content” will be fully blocked from being accessed through the apps. Other NSFW servers will still be blocked by default, but users will be able to opt in to viewing them.The changes walk back a stricter ban on NSFW content that Discord put in place last week. On April 12th, Discord said it would require server owners to mark their community as NSFW if it was “organized around NSFW themes.” Under the original plan, any server marked NSFW would have been inaccessible on iOS.Users were frustrated with the changes, though, since it limited their ability to communicate with others and moderate servers... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you’re hunting for an Oculus Quest 2 VR headset, Newegg has an appealing sale happening on bundles that will net you a free accessory. For $350, you can get the 64GB headset (normally $300 by itself) with Logitech’s G333 VR wired earbuds and the Oculus Elite strap. Both accessories would usually add $100 to the total, but with this bundle, you’re saving $49, so it’s like you’re getting the ever-useful and comfortable Elite strap for free.Newegg has other bundles that might appeal to you more. It has one that includes the headset with the Logitech earbuds and the Oculus Quest 2 zip-up carrying case instead of the Elite strap. This one costs a total of $359, so you’re paying just $10 for the case instead of $50. The other great bundle... Continue reading…

Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) will officially arrive on iOS and PC tomorrow, April 20th. The service will arrive on devices via browsers, allowing Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers to play Xbox games on iPhones, iPads, and PCs. Microsoft is keeping this beta rather limited, though, and requiring players to be invited to participate in the testing phase.The service will be accessible at www.xbox.com/play, where Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers who have been invited to the beta will be able to play Xbox games through Edge, Chrome, or Safari browsers. More than 100 games will be available, and testers will be able to use a compatible Bluetooth or USB-connected controller or simply use custom touch controls.A limited beta... Continue reading…

Roku’s new $30 remote has upgrades like a rechargeable battery and hands-free voice commands Continue reading…

The Akili Interactive video game. | Photo by Dina Rudick/The Boston Globe via Getty Images A research team is testing a prescription video game to see if it can help people who have lingering memory and attention problems after recovering from COVID-19. Many people who survived the disease say that they’re often confused and have difficulty focusing, and research studies show that the symptoms can stick around for months after they recover.Faith Gunning, a neuropsychologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, thinks the EndeavorRX video game might be able to treat some of those symptoms. The game, made by Akili Interactive, made history last summer when it became the first video game to get the Food and Drug Administration’s sign-off to be prescribed as a medical treatment. It’s cleared as a treatment for kids between the... Continue reading…

Volvo will provide vehicles for Didi Chuxing’s self-driving taxi fleet, according to a new deal between the two companies. The Swedish automaker, which is owned by China’s largest private automaker Geely, will supply XC90 SUVs to Didi Autonomous Driving, the self-driving technology division of China’s vehicle-for-hire company.Didi said it would use Volvo’s SUVs when it eventually launches a commercial robotaxi operation at a later date. The company has been testing its autonomous technology in Shanghai since 2019 as part of a pilot approved by the Chinese government.It’s an interesting twist, considering Volvo used to be a partner in another global ride-hailing firm’s autonomous ambitions. Volvo had an agreement with Uber to deploy a... Continue reading…

Facebook is rolling out a new feature today, allowing users across the globe to have the option to archive their posts and notes created on the social media site and transfer a copy of that data onto Google Docs, WordPress, or Blogger. It’s expanding on a similar tool the company released last year that allows you to transfer photos from its platform onto Google Photos. In both cases, the tool allows users leaving Facebook to preserve a version of the content associated with their account.Users can access the tool by opening Facebook settings and clicking on “Your Facebook Information,” then selecting “Transfer a Copy of Your Information.” There, you can select which destination to transfer the data to (Google Docs, WordPress, or... Continue reading…

The first image from Ingenuity’s historic flight on Mars, showing the helicopter’s shadow as it hovers midair. | Image: NASA / JPL NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter nailed a successful debut test flight on Mars, engineers confirmed early Monday morning. The tiny spacecraft lifted itself 10 feet off the Martian surface for 39 seconds, marking the first powered flight on another world. The historic demonstration opens up tantalizing possibilities for a new mode of planetary travel that could send future rotorcraft far beyond the reach of traditional rovers.The four-pound Ingenuity helicopter lifted its tissue box-sized body at 12:34PM Mars time (3:34AM ET, Earth time), spinning its twin rotor blades to achieve its first flight in the ultrathin atmosphere of Mars. Those blades spun faster than 2,500 rpm — much faster than the roughly 500 rpm helicopters need to fly on... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is testing out a new performance mode for its Edge browser. The new mode is available to some testers using the Microsoft Edge Canary version of the browser, and others can enable it manually with a flag. “Performance mode helps you optimize speed, responsiveness, memory, CPU and battery usage,” says Microsoft. “Performance improvements might vary depending on your individual specifications and browser habits.”It’s not clear exactly how the performance mode changes Edge, but it does affect the Sleeping Tabs feature. If you enable performance mode then the Sleeping Tabs timeout will be locked to five minutes. Microsoft introduced sleeping tabs in Edge earlier this year, allowing the browser to automatically release system... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Andrew Bosworth, VP at Facebook’s Reality Labs, has given some more hints as to what’s in store for future Oculus hardware. In an audio Q&A with John Carmack on Twitter Spaces transcribed by UploadVR, Bosworth suggested that while last year’s Quest 2 will be sticking around for some time yet, the company is working on headsets with greater capabilities.“People are also asking about the Quest 3, which doesn’t exist yet, and [for] everyone who is listening to us who is a reporter — there isn’t a Quest 3, there’s only a Quest 2.” Bosworth said. “But I did hint at an AMA earlier this year about Quest Pro because we do have a lot of things in development where we want to introduce new functionality to the headset along the kinds that people... Continue reading…

Images: Audi Audi has debuted a concept version of an all-electric A6 sedan, which is coming to all major global markets and will be built on a new EV platform the company is co-developing with Porsche. A production version won’t be revealed until at least the second half of 2022, but the German automaker is targeting around 700 kilometers (more than 400 miles) of range for the new car, which will be called the A6 E-Tron.The A6 E-Tron concept Audi showed off on Monday at Auto Shanghai 2021 is pretty straightforward as far as concepts go, which is in keeping with how the automaker has handled these reveals lately. To wit, the Q4 E-Tron electric SUV that Audi debuted just last week is a dead ringer for the “concept” version it first showed off at the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook, Twitter, and Snap are among the companies that will assist with the Biden administration's promotional campaign for vaccine eligibility, Axios reported. The White House had set a date of May 1st for states to open coronavirus vaccine eligibility to all adults, but later pushed it to April 19th.The White House is hoping to reach populations who may have higher rates of vaccine hesitancy with the effort. Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, will do video clips on Snapchat, according to Axios, and Facebook and Twitter will send out push alerts to notify users that they’re eligible to receive the vaccine. Vice President Kamala Harris will also be involved with the social media push.Half of all US adults have r... Continue reading…

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter stands prepped and set for its debut flight on Mars. | NASA/JPL NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter is slated to attempt the first-ever powered flight on another world at 3:30AM ET on Monday. The twin-blade rotorcraft will try to ascend 10 feet above ground and hover in place for 30 seconds while cameras on NASA’s Perseverance rover record the historic attempt from a distance.The four-pound Ingenuity copter landed on Mars February 18th attached to the underbelly of Perseverance, NASA’s latest Mars rover whose main mission is to search for signs of ancient Martian life. Perseverance has set aside time to witness Ingenuity’s flight attempt and report the results back to Earth. Ingenuity’s Monday flight test is the first of five planned within a 31-day window that kicked off last week. If all goes well,... Continue reading…

Here come the zombies in Army of the Dead | Netflix I finished This is a Robbery, and I won’t spoil the ending but if you’re thinking there will be a huge reveal at the end, well, you might be disappointed. What I found interesting throughout the four-part series was how the storyline relied on the voices of newspaper reporters who have covered the heist —and its aftermath —over the years. Considering the filmmakers are Colin and Nick Barnicle, sons of longtime Boston Globe columnist and current MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle, it makes sense they’d center journalists in the story. Go watch it, Boston looks absolutely beautiful and the Boston accents are more authentic than anything else you’ll watch this year. Plus, if you can figure out the central mystery of the series there’s a $10... Continue reading…

KPRC2 Houston Authorities in Texas say two people were killed when a Tesla with no one in the driver’s seat crashed into a tree and burst into flames, Houston television station KPRC 2 reported.The cause of the crash, which happened at about 9PM local time in Spring, Texas (near Houston), is under investigation. According to KHOU in Houston, first responders had to use 30,000 gallons of water over four hours to put out the fire, as the Tesla’s battery kept reigniting. Authorities tried to contact Tesla for advice on putting out the fire; it’s not clear whether they received any response.

Photo by Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images Charles “Chuck” Geschke, a co-founder of Adobe who helped develop the PDF, has died at age 81, the company said in a statement.“This is a huge loss for the entire Adobe community and the technology industry, for whom he has been a guide and hero for decades,” Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said in an email to Adobe employees.”As co-founders of Adobe, Chuck and John Warnock developed groundbreaking software that has revolutionized how people create and communicate,” Narayen said. “Chuck instilled a relentless drive for innovation in the company, resulting in some of the most transformative software inventions, including the ubiquitous PDF, Acrobat, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and Photoshop.”Geschke earned a doctorate from Carnegie Mellon... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Federal officials are investigating a security breach at software auditing company Codecov, which apparently went undetected for months, Reuters reported. Codecov’s platform is used to test software code for vulnerabilities, and its 29,000 clients include Atlassian, Proctor & Gamble, GoDaddy, and the Washington Post.In a statement on the company’s website, Codecov CEO Jerrod Engelberg acknowledged the breach and the federal investigation, saying someone had gained access to its Bash Uploader script and modified it without the company’s permission.“Our investigation has determined that beginning January 31, 2021, there were periodic, unauthorized alterations of our Bash Uploader script by a third party, which enabled them to... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Virtual gaming platform Roblox is developing content ratings for games and easier-to-use parental controls, the company’s chief privacy officer Remy Malan told The Wall Street Journal.Half of Roblox’s audience of more than 30 million daily users are kids under 13, but the platform has struggled at times to contain sexually explicit content. Age-inappropriate games sometimes surface up on kids’ “recommended for you” lists, according to the WSJ.The platform’s current system restricts kids to specific games, but under the new system, parents would have more information about what kids might find in a given game; until you play a game, it’s not always clear that it might have explicit or inappropriate content in it.Malan did not... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge An upcoming feature in Chrome 90 will allow users to create a link to a section of a website that they’ve highlighted. First launched as a browser extension called Link to Text Fragment last year, Google has now added the feature within Chrome itself.The new feature is still rolling out to users; I wasn’t able to get it to work even after I updated to Chrome 90. But the feature works just like the browser extension did, according to a blog post from Google product manager Kayce Hawkins: Visit a web page, highlight the text you want to create a link to, right click, and select “copy link to highlight.” A URL ending in a pound sign (#) is generated, which you can then share with others. When they open the link, they’ll be sent to the... Continue reading…

Amazon Game Studios has canceled a Lord of the Rings online role-playing game, Bloomberg reported. The company announced the project with Leyou-owned Athlon Games back in 2019, and planned it to be a free-to-play game for PC and consoles.The game was to be set “at a time long before the events of The Lord of the Rings, exploring lands, people and creatures never seen before by fans of the Tolkien universe,” according to an announcement from Athlon at the time. But Leyou was acquired by Tencent Holdings in December, and an Amazon spokesperson said in an email to The Verge that the company was “unable to secure terms to proceed with this title at this time.”The team from the LOTR project will work on other games for the company, the... Continue reading…

An artists’ rendering of the Ingenuity and its parent rover Perseverance | NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA has rescheduled the first flight of its Ingenuity Mars helicopter to April 19th at 3:30AM ET, the agency announced Saturday.The four-pound helicopter that arrived on Mars on February 18th with its parent rover Perseverance has seen its first flight delayed a few times. It touched the surface of Mars on April 4th, and has been undergoing tests and checkouts. It survived its first night alone on Mars’ frigid surface, passing a first test of its independence from Perseverance.The craft was scheduled to take flight April 11th, but last weekend NASA said data from a high-speed rotor test showed the test sequence ended early, as Ingenuity’s computer tried to switch from pre-flight to flight mode The date was pushed back again after... Continue reading…

Photo by Ethan Miller / Getty Images The Consumer Product Safety Commission on Saturday issued a warning about Peloton Tread Plus treadmills, saying the machines pose “serious risks to children for abrasions, fractures, and death.” In a March blog post by CEO John Foley, the company said it was aware that a child had died in an accident on the treadmill.The agency says it is aware of 39 incidents with the Tread Plus, including one death. “In light of multiple reports of children becoming entrapped, pinned, and pulled under the rear roller of the product, CPSC urges consumers with children at home to stop using the product immediately,” the CPSC bulletin states.The CPSC posted a video showing what could happen in a Tread Plus accident involving a child. It shows an... Continue reading…

Police caution tape blocks the entrance to the site of a mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis. | Photo by JEFF DEAN/AFP via Getty Images During a mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis on Thursday, a company policy barring some employees from having their cell phones on them while working prevented family members from being able to contact workers inside the facility, The New York Times reported.Authorities said the gunman, a former employee, fired into the warehouse killing eight people and wounding at least seven others, then fatally shot himself before police arrived. The incident began around 11PM Thursday and was over in a matter of minutes.Tami Campbell, whose husband works at the facility, said she didn’t know what had happened to him until he called her after his shift ended at 10AM Friday. “I called his phone a thousand times even though I knew he... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge It looks like problems on Twitter that began Friday night are persisting Saturday morning. People on the east coast of the US were reporting that while the page would load, they were unable to send tweets and DMs. As of 11 AM ET Saturday, the site was still experiencing issues for many users.There’s no official word on how widespread the outage is, but Twitter said Saturday it was “fixing an issue” with its servers.Twitter Support posted a brief message Friday night that it was looking into the matter, and updated it Saturday morning.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Peloton is resisting a request from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to recall its Tread Plus treadmill, which was involved with the death of a child last month, the Washington Post is reporting tonight. At the time of the incident, the CPSC issued a statement that it was investigating.The agency is reportedly planning on issuing a consumer alert about the Tread Plus and may do so as early as Saturday, according to officials who spoke to the Post. One official added that “this doesn’t happen with other treadmills.” The Post’s sources tell the paper that the CPSC is aware of “‘dozens’ of incidents involving Peloton’s treadmills, some involving pets or exercise balls and many of them resulting in serious injuries.”Bloomberg... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A judge in Australia found Google misled users about personal location data the company collected via Android devices, a violation of Australian law, the Associated Press reported.According to Federal Court Judge Thomas Thawley, the violations occurred between January 2017 and December 2018. Users creating a new Google account while setting up a new Android device were led to believe that the “Location History” setting was the only Google account setting that would determine if the company collected identifiable data about the user’s location. In fact, another Google account setting that was turned on by default — the “Web & App Activity” setting— allowed Google to collect and store personally identifiable location information when it... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google’s Project Zero, a team of dedicated security engineers tasked with reducing the number of “zero day” vulnerabilities around the entire internet, says it will give developers an extra 30 days before disclosing vulnerability issues, in order to give end-users time to patch their software.Developers will still have 90 days to fix bugs, but Project Zero will wait another 30 days before it discloses the details of the bug publicly. If a flaw is being actively exploited in the wild, a company will have seven days to issue a patch, and a three-day grace period if requested. But Google Project Zero will wait 30 days before it discloses technical details.In 2020, Google announced a trial to allow developers 90 days to work on patch... Continue reading…

Traffic Jam Washington state lawmakers have passed a measure that would phase out the sale of gas-powered vehicles starting in 2030. The Clean Cars 2030 initiative passed Thursday as an amendment to a bill that requires state utilities prepare for an electric-vehicle future. The bill now awaits Gov. Jay Inslee’s signature.That’s five years earlier than planned gas vehicle bans in California and Massachusetts, and the first ban on gas cars passed by legislators, rather than by an executive order. The bill passed Washington’s Senate by a vote of 25-23 and a vote of 54-43 in the House. The bill bans the sale, purchase, or registration of non-EVs from model year 2030 and later, and would include vehicles bought in another state and brought into... Continue reading…

Have you ever wanted to watch a wolf hunt freshwater fish? Thanks to the Voyageurs Wolf Project from the University of Minnesota, you can see it on YouTube any time you like.The researchers with the project trapped V089, a lone wolf, sedated him, and then strapped on the Vectronic-Aerospace camera collar. The collar recorded video in 30 second bursts during daylight hours, for a total of 7 minutes a day. The wolf is a regular neckbeard, it turns out The footage is very cool, though some of it is obscured by V089’s fur. (“The wolf’s beard needed a little trim... lesson learned,” one video caption says.) They found that V089 was clever enough to hunt near a beaver dam, going after fish that were trapped by the... Continue reading…

Sarah Stacke / NYPL Today, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s NFT sold for about $5.4 million, or 2,224 ETH. The NFT is of an artwork that shows an image of Snowden’s face made from pages of a US appeals court decision that ruled the mass surveillance program Snowden exposed had violated US law.The image is called “Stay Free.”The profits won’t go to America’s most famous exiled whistleblower, however. Instead, the sale is meant to benefit the Freedom of the Press Foundation, where Snowden is the president. Its board includes actor John Cusack, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, and the writer Glenn Greenwald.

Peak Design has announced it is delaying shipment of products in its Kickstarter campaign for Mobile, a broad range of phone accessories designed to make it easy to mount your phone on everything from a motorcycle handlebar to a simple dock on your desk. It is meant to be compatible with iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones. Originally targeted for May, the company now expects to be able to begin shipping in August, though some products will also come later. To make up for it, Peak is offering either full refunds for cancellations or discounts on other Peak Design products.Peak Design has used Kickstarter to launch everything from camera-focused backpacks to tripods and its original product, an innovative camera mounting clip. But this new... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Yesterday and today, the enthusiasm for joke cryptocurrency Dogecoin overwhelmed Robinhood, leading to “sporadic crypto order failures and delayed notifications for some customers,” Robinhood wrote in a blog post.“These interruptions aren’t acceptable to us,” Robinhood wrote in its post. “We believe we’re the most intuitive crypto platform for Dogecoin traders and we’re proud to be a top choice for this community.”Robinhood has a history of exactly this kind of whoopsie. In March 2020, there were three huge outages which Robinhood has said were due to “stress on our infrastructure.” And infamously, in January, Robinhood limited trades on GameStop, pissing off the entire internet and getting itself hauled in front of Congress in the... Continue reading…

There’s an Apple event next week, and it’s looking fairly likely that we’ll see updated models of the iPad Pro and perhaps the iPad Mini.Which is great, because it made me think about the Eee PC, which was either one of the greatest short-lived success stories in tech history or a collective delusion shared by a handful of late 2000s tech bloggers that never actually happened. The Eee PC 701SDX. It had an SD card slot, and an X. There were two products that arrived in 2007 that fundamentally changed computing: one, of course, was the iPhone. The second, obviously more important product was the $399 Eee PC 701. It originally ran a custom Linux operating system that reviewers loved (Laptop Mag’s Mark Spoonauer said it... Continue reading…

Photo credit should read Costfoto/Barcroft Media via Getty Images SpaceX’s new Starlink satellite internet service is in a very limited beta testing period right now, but the company is already thinking ahead: as first noted by CNBC, SpaceX has filed an application with the FCC for Starlink components that would allow the service to work on moving vehicles. Big moving vehicles, that is — Elon Musk tweeted that the existing Starlink terminals are too big for Tesla’s vehicles, and the idea is targeted at planes, RVs, trucks, and ships.

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Internet should become a lot more affordable in New York after Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that requires all Internet Service Providers operating in New York state to offer a $15 a month broadband option for low-income consumers.According to NY Assembly member Amy Paulin (via Bloomberg), the average price of broadband in New York is currently $50. This new bill caps the price at $15 for regular broadband and $20 for high-speed broadband, but only for those who qualify as low income. That’s still over 7 million people in 2.7 million households according to a press release from Cuomo’s office.This is a remarkable move toward making broadband internet the affordable utility most people treat it as. Cuomo’s office told The Verge... Continue reading…

Google appears to be preparing to add a feature to Android devices that has long been a part of more traditional desktop operating systems: a trash bin (or, if you prefer the way Windows names it, a recycle bin). XDA-Developers has been digging into the code for Android 12 to uncover features that Google hasn’t officially announced yet, and the latest is a line in the main Settings app for “Trash.” When you tap “Trash,” Android 12 should pop up a dialog box telling you how much storage deleted files are taking up on your system and giving you the option to empty it. It looks like it should work just like it does on Windows or a Mac, but in practice it’s likely to be much more complicated for a variety of reasons.Android actually got a... Continue reading…

A real estate broker named Shane Dulgeroff decided to take advantage of the NFT hype. He’s selling a house at 221 Dryden Street, in Thousand Oaks, California along with an NFT of a psychedelic-flavored video of the house.The artwork and house are up for auction on OpenSea, with a minimum bid of 48 ETH, or almost $117,000. No one has bid yet, and the auction closes in seven days. The house previously sold at $746,000, according to real-estate platform Zillow.“It’s less about the significance of the art as it is the significance of us using a platform like this to sell a home,” Dulgeroff told Fast Company. “The significance that the art will carry, it’s going to be stored in your digital wallet forever as living proof that you... Continue reading…

The gold necessary to finance the first season of The Lord of the Rings The first season of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings TV show is reported to cost the retail giant a frankly difficult to imagine $465 million to produce. Just to save you from having to re-read that, this price tag is for just one season, and that there is not a missing decimal in the above number. “This will be the largest television series ever made,” New Zealand’s Minister for Economic Development and Tourism said.But this honor was already something of a known quantity, after Amazon spent $250 million to secure the rights to the franchise in 2017, kicking off a round of stories declaring the not-yet-produced show “the most expensive” television production in history, with the big B number circulating its rumored five-season run. This... Continue reading…