The Verge

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images A Florida internet law is on hold while a lawsuit contesting it continues. Judge Robert Hinkle has issued a preliminary injunction blocking nearly all of SB 7072, a controversial and sweeping regulation of social media platforms.“The legislation now at issue was an effort to rein in social-media providers deemed too large and too liberal. Balancing the exchange of ideas among private speakers is not a legitimate governmental interest,” Hinkle wrote his order. Moreover, the law “discriminates on its face among otherwise identical speakers,” partly thanks to an eyebrow-raising exemption for companies that operate a theme park. That raises the bar for evaluating whether the law violates the First Amendment — and in Hinkle’s estimation, it... Continue reading…

A digital COVID vaccine card in Android. | Image: Google Google is opening up Android’s built-in passes system to let Android users store a digital vaccine card, which it calls a COVID Card, on their phone. The feature will initially roll out in the US, and it will rely on support from healthcare providers, local governments, or other organizations authorized to distribute COVID vaccines. The feature will also support storing COVID test results.For vaccinations, your COVID Card will show info on when you were vaccinated and which vaccine you received, according to a Google support page. The card can be saved from your healthcare provider’s app or website as well as from texts or emails sent to you.Google recommends that you add a shortcut to the card on your home screen and will offer the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In March, Twitter said it would soon let you use a security key as your only two-factor authentication method, and on Wednesday, it announced that feature was live on both mobile and web.Being able to use a security key as one of your two-factor authentication methods isn’t new, but now you can make it the only one, if you want to. Physical security keys have advantages over other two-factor methods like an authenticator app or SMS because they don’t rely on a code that a bad actor could intercept.

Image: Netflix Netflix has shared the first five minutes of its upcoming horror movie trilogy Fear Street, inspired by R.L. Stine’s Fear Street series of young adult novels. The film trilogy, which will be released over three Fridays starting on July 2nd, is also split across three separate time periods: 1994, 1978, and 1666. Teens fleeing for their lives is universal, regardless of the year, it seems.Here’s Netflix’s synopsis for the films:

Way back in 2005, Apple released Mac OS X Tiger, and with it, the original implementation of widgets on the Mac through its Dashboard software. One of those widgets was a now-defunct iTunes media player — but thanks to the efforts of programmer Mario Guzman, who’s recreated an exact replica of the widget for modern Macs, you can once again enjoy your music in retro OS X style.Ironically, the new Music Widget isn’t actually a widget (at least, not in the current style of widgets introduced in last year’s macOS Big Sur,) but rather a standalone app that mimics the look of the original iTunes widget from 2005. The app is fully functional, offering the same controls as the original. Music Widget only works with the Apple Music app, though—... Continue reading…

iOS 15 comes with a number of new features and tweaks | Image: Apple Beta versions of new software are great to try out, but sometimes you realize that they’re not so good for day-to-day usage. If you’ve upgraded your iPhone to the iOS 15 beta, which is now available to the public, and you realize that you need to go back to the stable world of iOS 14.6, you can do that.The simplest way to go back to a stable version is to delete the iOS 15 beta profile and wait until the next update shows up:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram appears to be exploring a new feature that shares some similarities with Twitter’s Super Follows, according to TechCrunch. Called “Exclusive Stories,” the possible future feature, spotted by developer Alessandro Paluzzi, allows creators to post exclusive content to their Instagram story that’s presumably only available to subscribers.Based on the screenshots Paluzzi shared, exclusive stories are differentiated in your feed with a purple tag (similar to how Close Friends posts have a green one). When you try to watch an exclusive story without being a fan of the person sharing, you’re prompted with a pop-up that says only fans can watch.

Image: Instagram Instagram is no longer a photo sharing app, according to Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram. In a video posted to his Instagram and Twitter accounts, Mosseri said the company is looking to lean into entertainment and video after seeing the success of competitors like TikTok and YouTube.He describes some upcoming changes and experiments that Instagram will be doing, including showing users recommendations for topics they’re not following and making video more immersive by offering a full-screen experience.

Messaging app Discord has added the ability to customize your profile just a little bit more than you could before: you can now fill in a short “About Me” blurb, and, if you have Discord’s premium Nitro subscription, you can add a banner image to your profile. I noticed the change in the Mac version of Discord on Wednesday, but I haven’t opened the app for a little while, so it may have been added sooner.To make the changes, at least on the Mac version of the app, click on the User Settings gear, then the “User Profile” section. (That section had a bright red “New!” alert on it when I first opened up Discord settings.) From there, you can write a 190-character blurb about yourself (which can include markdown and links if you want), and... Continue reading…

Volvo unveiled a new concept car that forecasts the Swedish automaker’s all-electric future. The vehicle was revealed during a “Tech Day” event held Wednesday during which Volvo laid out an extensive roadmap to becoming an EV-only carmaker by 2030.The vehicle, called “Concept Recharge,” features suicide doors that open up to a roomy interior, where the lack of an internal combustion engine means more space for the driver and passengers. The sleek exterior design and minimalist interior certainly evoke Tesla but also are reminiscent of other EVs on the market, such as the Ford Mustang Mach-E.But the concept won’t necessarily appear in this form as a production vehicle. Henrik Green, chief technology officer at Volvo, said it was... Continue reading…

Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images The latest mega-auction of an NFT tied to a piece of internet history is complete, with Sir Tim Berners-Lee selling a digital item representing source code to the original web browser for $5,434,500. Berners-Lee is credited as the creator of the world wide web that this site is published on, and the NFT includes a time-stamped signed archive including 10,000 lines of the source code that initially made it possible to display an HTML document, among other things.For comparison, the highest price for an NFT remains the $69 million or so MetaKovan paid to own Everydays: the First 5000 Days by the artist Beeple, while Jack Dorsey’s digital collectible representing the first tweet on Twitter sold for a little less than $3 million.“I’m... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge T-Mobile announced on Wednesday that it is fully compliant with the FCC’s new anti-spoofing protocol, telling the FCC that its now certifying that calls from its network are protected against impersonation by scam callers using the STIR/SHAKEN protocol.Verizon also announced that it’s verifying that the number that shows up on your caller ID is actually the number that’s calling you, using the same STIR/SHAKEN protocol. The two major carriers announcing their progress on the same day isn’t a coincidence — Wednesday, June 30th, is the deadline the FCC set for major carriers to implement STIR/SHAKEN. An AT&T spokesperson told The Verge that the carrier also met the deadline, as it filed on the 29th.The protocol works to prevent scam and... Continue reading…

Iketsj/YouTube Have you ever been using a recently updated Mac computer and thought, “Man, I would love to use this operating system with a really tiny keyboard and a really tiny screen?” Okay, me neither, but I certainly would love the opportunity to carry a MacBook around in my pocket and whip it out on command.Apparently, YouTuber Ike T. Sanglay Jr., or “Iketsj,” has had this thought as well. In this eight-minute vlog, the YouTuber builds a tiny handheld PC that can run macOS Big Sur, and it’s very fun.The PC includes a LattePanda Alpha SBC (single board computer) with an Intel Core m3 CPU and 8GB of RAM, as well as an Arduino Leonardo microcontroller board, a 240GB SATA SSD with the operating system preinstalled, and a 3D-printed case (of... Continue reading…

Dozens of satellites launched to space on Tuesday in SpaceX’s second in-house “ride-share” mission from Florida, bringing the total number of orbital objects carried by Elon Musk’s space company this year to nearly 900. A reused Falcon 9 rocket launched 88 satellites total for the “Transporter-2” mission, including the first five for a new Pentagon agency and dozens more for various companies, countries, and schools.SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 3:31PM ET from Cape Canaveral, Florida, marking the company’s 20th launch this year and the eighth flight for the rocket’s first stage booster. That booster returned to Earth about 10 minutes later at SpaceX’s Landing Zone 1, a pad of concrete that hasn’t been used for rocket landings... Continue reading…

Amazon is pushing back against Lina Khan, the newly confirmed chair of the Federal Trade Commission, by filing a recusal motion against the longtime antitrust advocate, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The petition asks Khan to restrict herself from any proceedings involving Amazon on the basis of her past statements about the company, including claims that Amazon is a monopoly and should be broken up.“[Federal ethics rules] require recusal when a new Commissioner previously has expressed views that go beyond general policy commentary and has made statements about specific factual and legal issues relating to a particular company,” the petition reads. “Chair Khan has made numerous and highly detailed public pronouncements... Continue reading…

The newest Revvl phone offers 5G, a massive 6.8-inch screen, and a rear-facing triple camera. | Image: T-Mobile The year of cheap 5G phones is upon us, and T-Mobile is offering its customers yet another low-cost 5G phone with today’s announcement of the Revvl V Plus 5G. The T-Mobile-branded device will cost $199, with a huge 6.8-inch 1600 x 900 display and 5,000mAh battery. It’ll go on sale first through Metro by T-Mobile starting on July 12th, with sales through T-Mobile starting on July 23rd.The Revvl V Plus 5G comes with Android 11 and uses a MediaTek Dimensity 700 processor designed with inexpensive 5G phones in mind. It’s paired with 4GB of RAM plus 64GB of built-in storage, which is expandable via microSD. It offers a main 16-megapixel rear-facing camera along with two more unspecified 5-megapixel and 2-megapixel sensors on the back as well... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced on Wednesday that it’s fining Robinhood almost $70 million to settle charges over issues it identified with the company’s stock trading service. The authority claims that the financial app company neglected its duty to supervise trades, maintain its own technology, and protect its customers. The fine is the largest in FINRA’s history and Robinhood has agreed to pay.FINRA says since 2016 Robinhood has periodically provided false and misleading information on topics like whether customers were able to place trades on margin (using credit from Robinhood to buy shares), including displaying inaccurate information in its app on how much cash was in customers’ accounts.Robinhood’s... Continue reading…

Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images Right now, you could wake up and turn on Wimbledon. By the afternoon, there will be EuroCup matches. And then, in the evenings, we’ve had some thrillingly chaotic basketball — both men’s and women’s, plus hockey and baseball. What a time to be alive (and working from home)! Best of all: it’s all streaming, and I think finally, in 2021, we’re in a place where it’s relatively effortless to watch sports without being tethered to the dregs of convoluted cable packages. Is this the golden age of watching sports during the workday?I mean, I wouldn’t know. Because I, like all staffers at The Verge, am an extremely diligent employee and would never do anything that would distract me throughout the entire workday. Bosses, if you’re reading this,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The state of Maine now has the most stringent laws regulating government use of facial recognition in the country.The new law prohibits government use of facial recognition except in specifically outlined situations, with the most broad exception being if police have probable cause that an unidentified person in an image committed a serious crime, or for proactive fraud prevention.Since Maine police will not have access to facial recognition, they will be able to ask the FBI and Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) to run these searches.Crucially, the law plugs loopholes that police have used in the past to gain access to the technology, like informally asking other agencies or third parties to run backchannel searches for them. Logs... Continue reading…

Image: Disney Disney’s IP has once again fully synergized with the arrival of a new Marvel-themed Simpsons short titled “The Good, The Bart, and The Loki.” Disney very much appears to be putting that $71 billion investment in IP from 21st Century Fox to work.The company announced Wednesday that the special will debut July 7th exclusively on its streaming service Disney Plus. Tom Hiddleston, who plays Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, will also voice Loki in the Simpsons adaptation.Because Disney owns everything and we’ve evidently reached peak content, the key art for the animated short is styled similarly to that of Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame — which is not even the first time Disney has done this. But Lisa as Thor and Ralph Wiggum as Hulk... Continue reading…

Hands-on with the public betas Continue reading…

Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge Microsoft and Google have reportedly ended a six-year truce on legal battles. The Financial Times and Bloomberg are both reporting that Microsoft and Google formed an unusual truce in 2015, which expired in April. The pact was reportedly forged to avoid legal battles and complaints to regulators. It meant we haven’t seen Microsoft and Google complaining publicly about each other since the days of Scroogled, a campaign that attacked Google’s privacy policies.Now the gloves appear to be off once again, and we’ve seen some evidence of that recently. Google slammed Microsoft for trying to “break the way the open web works” earlier this year, after Microsoft publicly supported a law in Australia that forced Google to pay news publishers for... Continue reading…

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Google has announced a big change for developers who want to list their apps on Google Play that could have an impact on the Android app ecosystem. Right now, the standard format for app publishing is the APK, but starting in August, Google will require that new Play apps are published instead using the Android App Bundle.On a Google page about Android App Bundle, the company touts many potential improvements with the new format, such as smaller app downloads for users. But the format has a catch: Android App Bundles are a format that only Google Play uses, which could complicate app redistribution.The App Bundles requirement only applies to new appsThe timing of Google’s announcement also comes just days after Microsoft announced... Continue reading…

Photo by FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images The World Health Organization released a guidance document outlining six key principles for the ethical use of artificial intelligence in health. Twenty experts spent two years developing the guidance, which marks the first consensus report on AI ethics in healthcare settings.The report highlights the promise of health AI, and its potential to help doctors treat patients — particularly in under-resourced areas. But it also stresses that technology is not a quick fix for health challenges, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, and that governments and regulators should carefully scrutinize where and how AI is used in health.The WHO said it hopes the six principles can be the foundation for how governments, developers, and... Continue reading…

PUBG Mobile is currently one of Tencent’s biggest titles. | Image: Tencent Games Tencent’s sprawling games empire just grew one studio bigger. Uncapped Games is a new Los Angeles-based studio led by Blizzard veterans Jason Hughes and David Kim. Hughes is serving as the studio’s lead producer and has previously worked on Diablo III and IV, while Kim is its lead designer and has previously worked on StarCraft 2 and Diablo IV.The new studio’s focus will be on real-time strategy (RTS) games, with a focus on creating the “next great PC RTS,” Kim says. Although the RTS genre has remained consistently popular over the years, it continues to be dominated by ‘90s franchises like StarCraft, Age of Empires, and Command and Conquer. A fresh entry to the genre would be no bad thing.“Making the next great PC RTS has been my... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge AT&T and Google have announced that all Android phones on the network will use Google’s Android Messages app for SMS and RCS services. T-Mobile made the exact same partnership deal with Google in March, which leaves Verizon as the only US carrier who hasn’t committed to switching its customers to Android Messages by default.Along with the switch to Messages comes another important shift: real interoperability with RCS on other networks. AT&T has supported RCS for awhile now, but that support has been as haphazard as it was half-hearted. The new deal also means that AT&T customers will benefit from the rollout of end-to-end encryption for RCS that Google is rolling out to all customers this year (that rollout has already begun, in... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called for an investigation of Google’s alleged manipulation of the marketplace for online ads, opening the door for a new federal regulator for digital advertising markets.Warren’s letter focuses on a program called “Project Bernanke,” revealed in April as part of a lawsuit against Google led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Under that program, Google allegedly used historical Google Ads data to boost clients’ chances of winning auctions. The practice allegedly resulted in $230 million in additional revenue for the company.“The market for digital advertising has become perhaps the most actively traded commodity exchange in... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge The auto industry is holding its fire — for now — over the new requirement to report crashes involving vehicles equipped with partially and fully autonomous driving systems. But automakers are also distancing themselves from the company that appears to be the primary target of the new rule: Tesla.The rule, issued yesterday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, requires companies like Tesla and Alphabet’s Waymo to report incidents involving driver assistance and autonomous systems within one day of learning of a crash, a major change that signals a tougher stance by regulators.car companies are taking a wait-and-see approachSo far, car companies are taking a wait-and-see approach, mostly lauding NHTSA’s commitment to... Continue reading…

J.J. Guest and G.C. Baccaris Does anybody else remember Excalibur? You know, Excalibur: the British TV show that ran for two seasons in the mid-1970s, mixing Arthurian legend with Aleister Crowley mysticism, interplanetary exploration, an undead (sorry, spoilers!) villain named Poseidon, and a deeply troubled production history? If so, that’s a little weird because it never existed — but if enough people remember it, maybe that could change.Excalibur is, in fact, an interactive fiction project made by J. J. Guest, G. C. Baccaris, and Duncan Bowsman. It’s a detailed “fan wiki” for the eponymous (and fictitious) BBC series, and clicking through it reveals layers of in-show plot summaries, behind-the-scenes cast and crew drama, and a running conflict between the... Continue reading…

Wing, the drone delivery arm of Google’s parent company Alphabet, has launched a free app in the US to help pilots fly their drones legally. OpenSky has been available in Australia since 2019 but is now available for both commercial and recreational pilots in the US to use for anything from conducting commercial surveys to filming and photography. It’s available now on both iOS and Android.OpenSky is based on Google Maps, Wing tells DroneLife, and it’s color-coded to show areas where pilots can and can’t fly. Green areas are a-okay, but pilots need to exercise caution in yellow areas, and shouldn’t fly at all in red areas. Perhaps its most useful feature is that it lets pilots submit requests to fly in controlled airspace and receive... Continue reading…

Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images Virgin Orbit is in the middle of its debut commercial mission from Southern California, five months after the company first reached orbit during a January test flight. Seven satellites from three different countries are loaded onto a rocket that blasted off in midair from Virgin Orbit’s modified Boeing 747 less than an hour after the plane departed the Mojave Air and Space Port.The carrier aircraft, a modified Boeing 747 named Cosmic Girl, took off at 9:53AM ET. Less than an hour later at 10:47AM, a 70-foot-long two-stage rocket called LauncherOne dropped from the plane’s left wing and ignited its single engine to zoom toward the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. The rocket is carrying the Netherlands’ first military satellite, four tiny... Continue reading…

This radical editing collective is unlearning what they know about film Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Microsoft’s first Windows 11 preview looks promising Continue reading…

Looking through a microscope, doctoral candidate Simón(e) Sun takes a tiny glass pipette and gently attaches it to a neuron in a petri dish. She’s taking recordings of synaptic activity, the electrochemical signals neurons use to communicate with each other. The data Sun gathers will be used to understand microprocesses in the brain.It will also be turned into music.Bridging science and art, Sun wrote a computer program that takes her data and converts it into song. And the ethereal MIDI sounds aren’t just nice to listen to — they can actually teach us a lot about how the brain works.Sun is studying something called “homeostatic plasticity,” which is how neurons regulate their activity. Her research has broad implications for the... Continue reading…

Photo by Urbanandsport/NurPhoto via Getty Images Sports streaming service DAZN announced today that it has acquired exclusive rights to stream the UEFA Women’s Champions League. As part of the deal, an overwhelming majority of the matches it streams over the next four seasons will be available for free on its YouTube channel.DAZN — best known in the US as a hub for boxing events — expanded to over 200 countries in December. It’s backed by billionaire Len Blavatnik who aspires to make DAZN the “Netflix of sport.” Former Disney exec Kevin Mayer joined DAZN as chairman in March to help make that happen, after Mayer abruptly quit TikTok due to Trump’s meddling. While at Disney, Mayer led the development of the wildly successful Disney Plus service and was widely believed to be Bob Iger’s... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge There’s a fantastic discount happening on the previous generation Sony WH-1000XM3 wireless, noise-canceling headphones at Best Buy. Originally $350 (but usually around $250 or so these days), you can get them for $190 new. While these lack some niceties found in the newer XM4 model (concurrent Bluetooth connections, auto play / pause when you remove them or put them on), the package is overall similar in terms of nailing the fundamentals. These have great battery life, USB-C charging, among the best noise cancellation effect around, and sound quality that’s tough to beat at this price. In addition, these come with a zip-up case that makes them easy to stow. I bought these in 2018 and am still patting myself on the back for that decision.... Continue reading…

LG’s Mini LED use an array of thousands of tiny LEDs as a backlight. | Image: LG LG’s new range of Mini LED TVs, which it’s branding “QNED,” are releasing worldwide starting next month, the company has announced. The lineup consists of three sets, the 8K QNED99 and QNED95, and the 4K QNED90, ranging in size from 65- to 86-inches. LG says the TVs will launch first in North America, with additional regions following “in the weeks ahead.”Mini LED is a relatively new kind of display technology which uses an array of thousands of tiny LEDs as a screen’s backlight. Because there are so many (up to 30,000 in the case of the 86-inch QNED99), they can create a sharper contrast between light and dark areas of an image. LG says the technology, which has previously been used on some TVs from TCL as well as Apple’s latest... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple isn’t backing down from its hybrid work model that will require most employees to return to the office three days a week starting in early September. Fully remote positions will be extremely limited.“We believe that in-person collaboration is essential to our culture and our future,” said Deirdre O’Brien, senior vice president of retail and people, in a video recording viewed by The Verge. “If we take a moment to reflect on our unbelievable product launches this past year, the products and the launch execution were built upon the base of years of work that we did when we were all together in-person.”The news comes nearly a month after Apple CEO Tim Cook sent out an email telling employees the company was rolling out a new work... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Zoom has announced that it’s acquiring a company known as Kites (short for Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions), which has worked on creating real-time translation and transcription software. Zoom says the acquisition is a move to help it make communicating with people who speak different languages easier, and that it’s looking to add translation capabilities to its video conferencing app.According to its site, Kites began at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and its technology was originally developed to act as in-classroom translation for students who needed help understanding the English or German their professors were lecturing in.Zoom already has real-time transcriptions, but it’s limited to people who are talking in... Continue reading…

The Demi Lovato Show will debut July 30th. | Image: Roku The first of a dozen-plus Roku Originals to premiere on the Roku Channel will kick off July 30th with The Demi Lovato Show, a series that had originally been slated for a debut on Quibi.The show will now launch as Roku’s first “original” to land on the Roku Channel, the platform’s free and ad-supported streaming offering. While originally intended for Quibi, the show will be brand new to audiences when it arrives on the Roku Channel this week. Each episode will be 10 minutes long, feature a celebrity guest, and will cover topics as wide-ranging as UFOs, activism, mental health, gender identity, and police reform.In a statement, Lovato said that they have “never been one to shy away from speaking candidly about things.” The show had... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge WhatsApp’s Spanish language content moderators and customer service representatives are pushing the company for equal pay, according to an internal letter obtained by The Verge. They say they’ve been excluded from a $2 per hour premium paid to other bilingual contractors. The workers are employed by Accenture, a third-party contracting firm, in Austin, Texas.“For several years now, Accenture, Facebook, and Whatsapp have denied equal treatment and pay to Spanish language Contingent Workers,” employees say in the letter. “It is an insult for companies like Facebook and Accenture to publicly champion diversity, but yet fail to deliver this to its own workers.” Accenture classifies much of its workforce as contingent, meaning employees are... Continue reading…

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) speaks with reporters on her way to a lunch with Senate Democrats at the U.S. Capitol on June 22, 2021 in Washington, DC. | Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images Senator Elizabeth Warren is calling on the Federal Trade Commission for a thorough review of Amazon’s bid to acquire MGM, arguing that the deal could harm consumers and may have anticompetitive effects in the streaming space and beyond.In a letter addressed to newly sworn-in FTC chair Lina Khan and shared exclusively with The Verge, Warren urged the FTC to specifically and closely examine “the possible anticompetitive effects this deal will have on streaming services and entertainment products in addition to the broader impacts that this transaction may have on workers, small businesses, and competition overall as Amazon—which already dominates numerous markets—accelerates its aggressive monopolistic behavior.”The FTC is said to be r... Continue reading…

Image: United United Airlines is adding a long-awaited feature to the in-flight entertainment seatback screens of its new Boeing 737 Max 8 jets — support for Bluetooth headphones. The company is making the upgrade as part of “United Next”, a new plan to expand and modernize its fleet with what it says are larger, fuel-efficient jets and a more comfortable in-flight experience.I haven’t flown in the last two years — for reasons that are hopefully obvious — but the thing that grinds most of my past flying experience to a halt is dealing with the bizarre two-pronged audio jacks airplanes use for inflight audio. Having headphones with a 3.5mm audio jack isn’t hard, but it doesn’t reflect the Bluetooth audio lifestyle, Apple, and plenty of other tech... Continue reading…

Our friend, for whom we feared the worst today. Twitter has fixed a bug that left some of us horrified when we opened the site (as is often the case, but for different reasons) — those viewing the social network in a web browser found that they no longer had the option to switch between the algorithmic view and the reverse-chronological one. The algorithmic view, which shows tweets out of order, has been much maligned since it first appeared, and the bug on Tuesday had people worried that Twitter was finally starting to force it on everyone.Twitter’s support account says that web users should be able to change their timeline order again, and a few of us at The Verge have confirmed that the button is back on our timelines. Twitter product lead Kayvon Beykpour called the toggle’s... Continue reading…

Last week, a pair of YouTube’s most popular creators was set to spar in the marketplace of ideas in a debate over the government’s simple, common sense advice to wear masks during a global pandemic to stop the persistent spread of COVID-19.The spat grew from a series of videos between right-wing provocateur Steven Crowder and the host of the H3 Podcast, Ethan Klein, calling one another out for their purported bad takes on mask-wearing. In March, Crowder called out Klein for saying that “you shouldn’t think about” what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells you and just wear the mask, rather than criticizing the agency and its scientists.Crowder, who is widely known as the face of the “change my mind” meme, has challenged... Continue reading…

Photo by Joan Cros / Corbis via Getty Images SpaceX’s satellite internet network, Starlink, should have roughly 500,000 users within the next 12 months, Elon Musk said at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) conference on Tuesday. SpaceX’s current goal, Musk said, is to beam broadband internet to most of the planet by August.The internet network, in the midst of an open beta phase, has launched more than 1,700 satellites to low-Earth orbit since 2018 and recently surpassed a “strategically significant” benchmark of 69,420 active users, Musk told MWC. He said Starlink is already running in 12 countries and expanding. “We’re I think on our way to having a few hundred thousand users, possibly over 500,000 users within 12 months,” he added.Reaching half a million users in the next year... Continue reading…

Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has revealed near-total lack of accountability from federal agencies using facial recognition built by private companies, like Clearview AI.Of the 14 federal agencies that said they used privately built facial recognition for criminal investigations, only Immigration and Customs Enforcement was in the process of implementing a list of approved facial recognition vendors and a log sheet for the technology’s use.The rest of the agencies, including Customs and Border Protection, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, had no process in place to track the use of private facial recognition.This GAO report greatly expands the public’s... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Bloomberg’s Lauren Etter on the rise and decline of an e-cigarette upstart Continue reading…

There’s a crowd for a mini Xbox controller, but this one doesn’t get everything right Continue reading…

The WD My Book Live and My Book Live Duo | Image: WD It looks like there may have been more than one exploit used to cause the mass deletion of data from WD My Book Live NASes last week, according to a report from Ars Technica. When news broke that people were finding that their data was missing, some (including WD itself), pointed to a known exploit from 2018, which allowed for root access of the device. However, it appears as though there’s more going on than was initially suspected.If you have one of these devices, you should unplug it from the internet before reading any further — it’s clear at this point that your data is at risk if the device is online.The second exploit, reported by Ars Technica, doesn’t give an attacker full control over the device like the other exploit. It... Continue reading…