The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass platform received a huge boost with the addition of 20 new Bethesda Softworks titles across Xbox consoles, PC, and xCloud last week. And now, a quarter of those games are getting performance boosts on the next-gen Xbox consoles in a new update.The performance gains are in frame rate, thanks to an appropriately named new feature Microsoft revealed last month called FPS Boost, which can roughly double frame rates of older games using new Xbox hardware without requiring developers to do any manual work.The games seeing performance boosts with frame rate jumps up to 60 frames per second include Arkane Studios’ Dishonored: Definitive Edition and Prey and Bethesda Game Studios’ The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special... Continue reading…

Zoom Escaper offers a range of sound effects to help with self-sabotage. | Image: Zoom Escaper Had enough Zoom meetings? Can’t bear another soul-numbing day of sitting on video calls, the only distraction your rapidly aging face, pinned in one corner of the screen like a dying bug? Well, if so, then boy do we have the app for you. Meet Zoom Escaper: a free web widget that lets you add an array of fake audio effects to your next Zoom Call, gifting you with numerous reasons to end the meeting and escape, while you still can.You can choose from barking dogs, construction noises, crying babies, or even subtler effects like choppy audio and unwanted echoes. Created by artist Sam Lavigne, Zoom Escaper is fantastically simple to use. All you need do is download a free bit of audio software called VB-Audio that routes your audio through... Continue reading…

General Motors has decided to make some 2021 full-size pickups without a certain fuel management module because of the ongoing microchip shortage. As a result, those trucks will get around one fewer mile per gallon of gas, meaning they’ll burn more fuel to go the same distance, releasing more carbon emissions into the atmosphere.The trucks affected are models that use GM’s 5.3-liter EcoTec3 V8 engine (including versions with six-speed or eight-speed automatic transmissions), according to Reuters, which first reported the decision. That includes the popular Chevy Silverado and GMC’s Sierra.The module is what powers the trademarked “Active Fuel Management” or “Dynamic Fuel Management” systems GM promotes on these trucks, which... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Today, StreamElements and its partner, analytics company Rainmaker.gg, have put out the February issue of their “State of the Stream” report. It’s something of a fascinating document because, as the end of the pandemic draws near, it’s another piece of evidence that live-streaming platforms were one of the winners of the crisis. (You know, assuming there can be winners to a global mass death event.)The biggest finding in this month’s report is that, in terms of hours watched, both Twitch and Facebook Gaming are up around 80 percent year over year. To be slightly more specific: Twitch has grown by 82 percent, while Facebook Gaming grew by 79 percent. For Twitch, that translates to more than 1.8 billion hours of watch time in February;... Continue reading…

Cruise, a majority-owned subsidiary of General Motors, will acquire self-driving startup Voyage in another major autonomous vehicle merger. The announcement came less than a week after news first surfaced that the two companies were in talks about an acquisition. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.Cruise mainly operates its autonomous vehicles in dense, urban settings like downtown San Francisco, while Voyage oversees a fleet of low-speed autonomous vehicles providing trips to residents of several retirement communities. Both companies have tested their vehicles without a safety driver behind the wheel and aspire to launch full-fledged commercial robot taxi services.“The self-driving industry is consolidating”“The self-driving... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Volkswagen Group unveiled a massive push to drive down the cost of producing batteries for its electric vehicles in the hopes of speeding the transition away from gas-powered cars.The automaker, which is the second largest in the world based on sales, said it would reduce the costs of producing its batteries by up to 50 percent, build multiple battery factories around the world, expand its network of charging stations, and eventually transition to solid-state technology that would cut costs and boost efficiency. The ultimate goal is to make electric cars with longer ranges and quicker charging times — two of the biggest barriers to mass EV adoption.The race for huge improvements in battery technology is one of the most expensive and... Continue reading…

illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The 2021 Game Developers Conference will be entirely digital this year. Organizers scrapped a previous plan that would have incorporated in-person events, opting instead to split the traditionally weeklong event into three parts. GDC Showcase, a mix of old and new lectures, kicks off this week.A full schedule is available on GDC’s official site for talks running March 15th-19th. The Showcase is free to all attendees but requires registration. In addition to popular talks from previous years, like Leighton Gray’s “terminally online” presentation on Dream Daddy’s success, there will also be several live Q&As. Obsidian Entertainment’s Carrie Patel, PlayStation Studio’s Gavin Moore, and Yacht Club’s David D’Angelo will answer questions... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Nvidia implemented a special system to reduce the hash rate of Ethereum mining on its new RTX 3060 graphics card last month. It was supposed to limit mining performance by around 50 percent, but multiple reports now claim cryptominers have bypassed the protection.Japanese site PC Watch first revealed that Nvidia’s protections can be bypassed without needing to modify a driver or BIOS. ComputerBase has since confirmed PC Watch’s report and revealed that Nvidia’s latest 470.05 beta driver is automatically unlocking performance for most RTX 3060 owners. Andreas Schilling, an editor at Hardwareluxx, has also backed up these findings.A variety of RTX 3060 cards seem to be working with this beta driverThe beta driver appears to unlock... Continue reading…

Photo by Philippe Lopez/AFP via Getty Images Amazon is expanding an existing program that gamifies warehouse work to encourage its fulfillment center employees to improve their efficiency and compete against others for digital rewards like virtual pets, according to a new report from The Information. The program is called FC Games, and it includes as many as six arcade-style mini-games that can be played only by completing warehouse tasks in the workplace.It’s been known since at least 2019 that Amazon uses gamification in the form of workstation games to try to incentivize employees to improve productivity, but The Information reports that Amazon is now expanding those methods to warehouses in at least 20 states throughout the country. Many of the games tend to be simple virtual... Continue reading…

Mining rigs mine Ethereum and Zilliqa cryptocurrencies at the Evobits crypto farm in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, on January 22nd, 2021. There’s a case for more sustainable crypto art, but it’s hotly contested Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge If you have high standards for sound quality, comfort, and features, Sony’s WH-1000XM4 noise-canceling headphones are probably already high up on your wishlist — if you don’t already own them. They’re featured today because you can get $72 off their normal $350 cost, bringing them down to $278. For context, they haven’t been cheaper than this (though, around Black Friday, retailers were throwing in a $25 gift card with purchase). Visually, they’re very similar to their predecessor, the XM3, but these have a sensor that can automatically pause or resume music when you put them on, and they can handle two Bluetooth connections simultaneously.Razer’s Basilisk Ultimate is the go-to wireless mouse if you’re a Razer fan, and if you want a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tinder and other Match Group-owned apps are going to let their users run background checks on possible dates. The company announced an investment in Garbo, a nonprofit that looks to allow people to run background checks with only their first name and phone number or full name. The investment, of which Match didn’t disclose the amount, will help make the group’s tech available to Match’s users, starting with the company’s most popular app: Tinder.This means Tinder users will be able to vet their dates with details like their arrest record or history of violence. That could dramatically affect who finds success on the app and who doesn’t. Garbo says it collects “public records and reports of violence or abuse, including arrests,... Continue reading…

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Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Elon Musk has a new title at Tesla: “Technoking.”The electric automaker announced the head-scratching sobriquet in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, along with chief financial officer Zach Kirkhorn’s new position as “Master of Coin.”“Elon and Zach will also maintain their respective positions as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer,” the filing concludes — just in case you were worried that Tesla was officially becoming one of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.bend the kneeMusk, who recently lost his status as richest person on the planet after Tesla’s stock price dropped in February, could be looking for a confidence boost as his company’s once high-flying valuation falters slightly.... Continue reading…

Red Candle Games, the Taiwanese studio whose first-person horror game Devotion has been unavailable to buy following controversy over a reference to Chinese premier Xi Jinping, has put its games up for sale on its own online store. Devotion and the studio’s first game Detention are available to buy now without DRM.Devotion was pulled from Steam shortly after its launch in February 2019. The game was critically lauded for its atmosphere and originality, but drew controversy and negative user reviews after users noticed an in-game poster that read, roughly, “Xi Jinping Winnie-the-Pooh moron.” Xi is commonly compared to Winnie the Pooh in online memes, which often meet the ire of China’s online censors.At the time, Red Candle Games said... Continue reading…

Kia has given a first real look at its new EV6 electric car, following some shadowy teaser images that were released last week. Full details of the EV6 won’t be announced until an online event later this month, but the new images do at least reveal what it actually looks like.The EV6 has a sporty crossover-inspired design and is the first vehicle to make use of a new design philosophy from Kia that the company calls “Opposites United,” which is comprised of no less than five pillars: “Bold for Nature,” “Joy for Reason,” “Power to Progress,” “Technology for Life,” and “Tension for Serenity.” Kia design chief Karim Habib explains what that means in this video:“EV6, as the first dedicated Kia EV, is a showcase of human-centered,... Continue reading…

HBO Max So I typically save my binge-watching for after dinner, and usually put something on to unwind before bed. Based on this routine, you can probably surmise that it was a very poor decision to try to get back into Hannibal— an excellent show, truly, but not “just before bedtime” fare. Eek. But I can’t stop watching, and the chances I may get up earlier to watch before work— haha I couldn’t even finish that sentence. I just can’t do it. My other current show, Servant, has its season 2 finale this week and honestly, I have no idea what’s going to happen but Lauren Ambrose is absolutely doing work above and beyond what the show’s uneven writing gives her.This week’s trailers are kind of a mish-mash, or in more positive terms, there’s... Continue reading…

Photo: Michele Doying / The Verge Facebook research into “vaccine-hesitant” beliefs has found that a small group of users is driving many of the discussions that may sow doubt or discouragement about taking a vaccine, The Washington Post reported.Vaccine hesitancy predates both social media and COVID-19, as the World Health Organization reports, and can derail progress in eradicating vaccine-preventable diseases. The WHO points out that vaccine hesitancy may not be wholly responsible for an the 30 percent increase in measles cases around the world over the past several years, but it played a role in measles’ resurgence.Facebook banned false and misleading ads about vaccines back in October, weeks before the first coronavirus vaccines were even available. In December,... Continue reading…

After the success of its Disney Plus series WandaVision, Marvel has gone back to press for new print runs of several WandaVision-related titles, Entertainment Weekly reported. Scarlet Witch by James Robinson; Steve Englehart’s Vision and Scarlet Witch, and Vision, by Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta are all on the list. Marvel also will be increasing its stock of print issues of House of M, which EW says ran out “almost overnight” after the show debuted in January.Fans of the show and comics will appreciate the connections; even though the show didn’t hew exclusively to the plot lines in the comics, there were numerous references in WandaVision to themes in House of M and the other comics listed above.As part of our series on... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Thiago Prudêncio/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images During Clubhouse’s weekly town hall on Sunday, CEO Paul Davison announced the voice-chat app’s first creators program. Clubhouse Creator First will help aspiring hosts and creators on the platform build their audiences, connect with brands, and perhaps most importantly, monetize their shows.The accelerator will accept 20 creators, and Clubhouse is taking applications through March 31st.

Photo by Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the latest batch of 60 Starlink satellites into orbit Sunday, and returned to Earth successfully, landing on its Of Course I Still Love You drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean, the company announced.Sunday’s mission marked a record ninth flight and landing for this Falcon 9 booster, SpaceX said, which was part of five earlier Starlink launches and the DM-1 mission for its Crew Dragon capsule.

Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images Honda has announced it will sell two electric SUVs in the US in the 2024 model year, and plans to introduce hybrid gas-electric versions of its best-selling models. It’s the second Japanese automaker that has recently announced a future EV in the United States; last month Toyota said it plans its first mass-market electric vehicle by the end of 2021.Dave Gardner, the head of sales for Honda of America, said last week one of the EVs will be an Acura, and the other will be a Honda brand, according to the Associated Press. He said more details would be coming later in 2021.Japanese automakers— and Toyota in particular— once were the leaders in hybrid vehicles, but have lagged American companies in the all-electric vehicle market in... Continue reading…

Photo by Kurt Krieger/Corbis via Getty Images The 63rd Grammy Awards ceremony will be held Sunday March 14th, as awards show season continues apace despite the coronavirus pandemic. The show will honor the best music of 2020 and all the performers, producers, and behind-the-scenes people who made it happen. As with most of this year’s awards shows, the Grammys look a bit different this year, broadcasting from “in and around” the Los Angeles Convention Center, but without a live audience.As is usually the case with awards ceremonies, there’s some controversy around this year’s Grammys. The Weeknd, whose song Blinding Lights topped music charts around the world in 2020, received zero nominations — the consensus seems to be it had something to do with the anonymous expert committees... Continue reading…

It’s Pi Day, the nerdiest of holidays because it’s all about a mathematical constant that represents the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter (yes, sometimes writing majors do pay attention in geometry class). March 14th has become known as Pi Day because it’s written numerically as 3.14 and pi starts at 3.14 ... and goes on indefinitely. Irrational number, indeed.In case you’ve forgotten the digits of pi, Google is celebrating (marking? observing? idk, choose the term that feels right to you) the day with an Easter egg game hidden in its calculator (also: TIL Google will bring up a calculator if you search for “calculator”).The pi symbol in the upper left corner of the calculator should have some twinkling stars around... Continue reading…

Photo by CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images Epic Games and Brazilian soccer player Neymar are teasing a likely appearance by the star athlete in Fortnite on March 16th, with clues coming via a couple of tweets. Eurogamer first reported the news, including a video tweeted from the Epic Games account showing Neymar’s No. 10 jersey. Neymar retweeted the video with the “eyes” emoji— not exactly confirmation, but another clue that something is brewing.

Photo by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images The middle eastern country of Oman has blocked the Clubhouse voice chat app saying it lacked the proper permit to operate, as some activists raised concerns that it was an act of censorship, Reuters reported.The Omani Telecommunications Regulatory Authority told news site WAF that communications applications operating in the country must get a permit from the authority. According to WAF, Oman “prohibits the use of several encrypted VoIP applications without an official license.”The Omani Association for Human Rights said in a statement that Oman’s government views “the authoritarian government of China as a role model,” and has banned the app even though it’s used by many Omanis “as a space to express their opinions freely without... Continue reading…

Free streaming platform Tubi has plans to branch out into original programming, Bloomberg reports, citing sources familiar with the company’s plans. The streamer will likely start with original movies, but is also exploring episodic TV shows, and is speaking with potential advertisers about partnerships, the report states.Fox Corp. acquired Tubi for $440 million last March, in an attempt to get in on the streaming wars. Before the acquisition, Fox didn’t have its own streaming offering. Fox said at the time it planned to offer a large number of its older shows and movies to Tubi subscribers for free, as well as some sports programming. There was no talk at that time of Tubi creating original content to try to compete with the likes of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A judge in California ruled Friday that Google has to face a class action lawsuit that claims the search giant secretly collects data from users even when they’re using its private “Incognito” mode, Bloomberg reported.Three users filed a complaint last June alleging Google has a “pervasive data tracking business,” and its tracking persists even if users take steps to protect their private information, such as using incognito mode in Chrome, or private browsing in Safari and other browsers. The lawsuit seeks at least $5 billion.Google had sought to have the case thrown out, but US District Judge Lucy Koh wrote in her ruling that the company “did not notify users that Google engages in the alleged data collection while the user is in... Continue reading…

Last week everyone was fixated on the “Right Up Our Alley” drone video that made us all nostalgic for bowling alleys. On Friday night, a VP at drone company DJI tweeted this video of a drone flight through a mostly-empty movie theater in Minnesota, and I don’t know about you but I really miss going to the movies. This video makes that longing about 100 times worse.According to its YouTube page the video is by SkyCandy, and is a one-take fly-through of Mann theaters’ Plymouth Grand in Plymouth, Minnesota. It was filmed using a DJI Air Unit and Rotor Riot Cinewhoop.The video is just over a minute long, but the drone takes us through the lobby — after being welcomed through the front doors by a masked theater employee— where people are... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After it reopened in defiance of health department orders last May, Tesla’s plant in Fremont, California saw 450 cases of COVID-19 through December 2020, new data from legal website PlainSite shows (via The Washington Post).Last March public health officials in Alameda County, where the Fremont plant is located, restricted all but “essential” businesses from remaining open as coronavirus cases surged across the country. Tesla fought the order but eventually shut down the plant on March 23rd. But a few days later, Tesla restarted production at the Fremont plant, even though it was in violation of the public health order. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter at the time that he planned to be on the factory floor with Fremont workers and t... Continue reading…

Customers try out Xiaomi Mi 10S smartphones at a Xiaomi in Rizhao, Shandong Province of China. | Photo by Liang Ya/VCG via Getty Images A federal judge has blocked the US Department of Defense from placing restrictions on Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi that were set to take effect next week.Just before former President Trump left office in January, the DoD designated Xiaomi as a “Chinese Communist military company,” (CCMC) making it subject to Trump’s executive order banning the US from investing in such companies. But late Friday, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras issued a preliminary injunction to prevent what he called “irreparable harm” to Xiaomi, saying the designation was “arbitrary and capricious.”Xiaomi said in court filings it would suffer “extreme and irreversible damage” to its business and reputation if the restrictions took effect, and has... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Billions of dollars have been spent fighting the pandemic, with a huge proportion of that money going towards vaccine development. Other areas of research have also gotten a big boost during the pandemic — and the results could make a huge difference to public health in the future.Here are some of the big winners in the pandemic-inspired funding race.mRNA Vaccines — The astounding success of both the Pfizer / BioNtech and Moderna vaccines has set the stage for the development of other highly-customizable vaccines in the future. The beauty of the vaccines is that they are basically blueprints — they use a genetic code to tell the body to build tiny molecular targets. The body’s immune system then goes to town on target practice and... Continue reading…

Wear OS Tiles give users a quick-glance option | Google Google says in a new blog post that it will now allow third-party developers to create custom Tiles for Wear OS. It first introduced Tiles in 2019, widgets that users could glance at and swipe among to get information about weather, calendar notifications, or stats like heart rate. All of the Tiles used to be directly from Google or the device’s manufacturer. Its Jetpack Tiles library for third-party developers is now in alpha. Google notes in the blog post:

An update to Overwatch’s Public Test Region (PTR) is bringing Nvida’s latency-reduction tech, called Reflex, to the popular esports title (via Engadget). The tech aims to help reduce the amount of time between when you click your mouse, and when you see the resulting action on screen, making the game feel more responsive. The fact that it’s coming to Overwatch was announced back in January, but it’s now available to players who can access the PTR, and who have the latest Nvidia drivers.If you haven’t been able to get your hands on one of Nvidia’s latest graphics cards, there’s still hope that you’ll be able to try Reflex out for yourself in Overwatch — the tech was announced alongside the 30-series graphics cards, but works on cards... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A public health authority has ordered Amazon to close one of its fulfillment centers in Canada for two weeks because of an uptick in the rate of COVID-19 infections at the facility. A public health investigation found that while the rate of COVID-19 infections has been decreasing in the area, the rate inside the Brampton facility, near Toronto, “has been increasing significantly.”Dr. Lawrence C. Loh, the medical officer of health for the Peel region where the facility is located, said the temporary closure was necessary to help stop the spread of the virus. “This Amazon facility is in a vulnerable community and employs thousands of people. Immediate action must be taken to protect these essential workers and the community where they... Continue reading…

Image: 20th Century Fox Avatar has once again retaken its crown as the most lucrative movie of all time, with James Cameron’s 2009 film reaching a new all-time box office high to beat out 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, which took the top spot with its $2.7902 billion take that year.But thanks to a re-release of Avatar in China, Deadline reports that Avatar has already grossed enough to push its box office total to $2.798 billion, which edges out Earth’s Mightiest Heroes once again for largest worldwide total.The surge in Avatar ticket sales comes as China theaters are re-opening in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen a rush of theatergoers eager to return to theaters. And seeing as most major Western film studios have yet to release new titles... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge If you missed Target’s PS5 restocks Thursday, you may be in luck. Best Buy has the PS5 Digital Edition and PS5 models up for purchase.According to the product listing, Best Buy will only allow you to pick up your newly purchased PS5 at a local Best Buy store. No home delivery is available for either model.Once you get your hands on a PS5, there are a few items you’re going to want to pick up for your console. Some of the most popular PS5 exclusives right now include Demon’s Souls Remake by Bluepoint Games and Spider-Man: Miles Morales.If you plan to play local co-op with family or friends, an extra DualSense controller might also be a good item to pick up.One thing I also recommend buying is a one-year membership to PlayStation... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is going to adjust its release cycles for Microsoft Edge to match the every-four-weeks release cadence for Chrome that Google announced last week.“As contributors to the Chromium project, we look forward to the new 4-week major release cycle cadence that Google announced to help deliver that innovation to our customers even faster,” Microsoft said in a blog post on Friday.The change will go into effect with Edge 94, which is targeted for a September release. Google has committed to making the switch with Chrome in Q3 with Chrome 94, but hasn’t given a specific month like Microsoft has.Like Google, Microsoft is also offering enterprises the option of a longer release cycle enterprise customers. On that Extended Stable... Continue reading…

Image: Pocket Pocket, an app for saving articles to read later, is rolling out a sorting option to Android users over the next few weeks that could solve my paralysis when choosing something to read. The new sort by time-to-read feature, spotted by The Verge’s Dan Seifert, means articles can be organized where they fit best, whether it’s the five minutes it takes to microwave lunch, or a 20-minute wait for the late bus.The feature appears in both the search section of the app, and as a sorting feature in your main list. A reader can sort their saved article search by length, choosing from Quick (less than five minutes), Medium (six to ten minutes), Long (eleven to twelve minutes), and Very Long (over twenty-one minutes). Your list of saved articles... Continue reading…

Image: Beeple MetaKovan, the pseudonymous founder of MetaPurse, is the buyer behind the $69 million winning bid for a Beeple NFT at Christie’s yesterday. It was the third-highest sale price ever for a work from a living artist.“When you think of high-valued NFTs, this one is going to be pretty hard to beat,” MetaKovan said in a statement published by Christie’s. “And here’s why — it represents 13 years of everyday work. Techniques are replicable and skill is surpassable, but the only thing you can’t hack digitally is time. This is the crown jewel, the most valuable piece of art for this generation. It is worth $1 billion.”The $69 million NFT represented a collage containing 5,000 mostly digital illustrations from Mike Winkelmann, better known as... Continue reading…

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images Over the last decade, hundreds of newspapers have disappeared largely due to Big Tech’s disruption of the ad market. Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on much when it comes to tech reform, whether it be content moderation or spinning off acquisitions, but they do seem to agree that local journalism needs saving.On Friday, a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing focused on the way Google and Facebook distribute news, and a new bill introduced earlier this week has already found Republican support. It’s one of the biggest legislative threats to tech that’s come out of the years-long antitrust debate, and much of its political force comes from the precarious state of local journalism.“The crisis in American journalism has become a... Continue reading…

Image: Lordstown Motors General Motors-backed EV startup Lordstown Motors has been accused of fabricating some of the 100,000 preorders for its forthcoming Endurance electric pickup and misleading investors, the public, and government regulators about how much progress it’s made in developing the truck.The accusations come in a new report from short-selling firm Hindenburg Research — the same firm that published a report about hydrogen trucking startup Nikola that led to the founder resigning his position and a major restructuring of that company’s business. Hindenburg says in the report, published Friday, that it has taken an unspecified short position in Lordstown Motors, meaning it stands to make money from the startup’s stock price falling.The... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge I have been listening to robot-made music all week. No, not Daft Punk, but randomly generated music posted every hour by a Twitter bot, @MelodyBot3456. As you’d expect from auto-generated music, the short songs (if you can call them that) are often bizarre and regularly veer in unexpected and hilarious directions.Each song applies a random instrument, tempo, time signature, and key to melodies that, most of the time, make absolutely no sense. Take this one, for example, made with an instrument called “Mario Paint” that only vaguely sounds like something from Mario Paint’s famous music composer:

Who needs a plastic wristband when you can use your iPhone to do the same thing? | Image: Disney In 2013, Walt Disney World resort offered the MagicBands — a plastic bracelet that made it easy to perform numerous services such as park tickets. And now, almost a decade later, the company is finally making your trip to the most magical place on Earth a little more modern with MagicMobile, a digital pass accessible through your iPhone and Apple Watch starting later this year.As an alternative to spending money on a plastic NFC wristband, the MagicMobile pass will be added to your Apple Wallet. Guests can then use their iPhone or Apple Watch to gain entry into the park. Disney has not said exactly when MagicMobile will officially be available but confirmed Apple devices would get access to the service and features first.Disney... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Teaching AI systems to understand what’s happening in videos as completely as a human can is one of the hardest challenges — and biggest potential breakthroughs — in the world of machine learning. Today, Facebook announced a new initiative that it hopes will give it an edge in this consequential work: training its AI on Facebook users’ public videos.Access to training data is one of the biggest competitive advantages in AI, and by collecting this resource from millions and millions of their users, tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Amazon have been able to forge ahead in various areas. And while Facebook has already trained machine vision models on billions of images collected from Instagram, it hasn’t previously announced projects... Continue reading…

Photo by Paul Clarke / Wikimedia Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, writes in a new post on the internet’s 32nd anniversary that governments must work to ensure global broadband access by the year 2030 in order to bridge the digital divide and better hold tech companies accountable.“Governments need to pass effective laws that govern technology and hold companies to account for creating responsible products and services,” Berners-Lee writes in the post co-authored by his Web Foundation co-founder Rosemary Leith.“Far too many young people remain excluded and unable to use the web to share their talents and ideas.”“Far too many young people remain excluded and unable to use the web to share their talents and ideas,” the post states. And for every... Continue reading…

Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge LG’s German website has revealed its Android 11 update roadmap — at least for Europe — and the news isn’t too encouraging. With the exception of the LG Velvet 5G, most of the company’s phones won’t get Android 11 until the back half of 2021, with the vast majority of devices not seeing the update until at least Q4 2021 (long after Android 12 should be available, if Google’s release schedule is similar this year).It’s worth noting that the released schedule is only from LG’s German site. It’s possible that time frames will be different in other regions, that LG could add more devices over time, or that the updates will simply take less time to develop than the company expects. The slow update speed isn’t entirely... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast The Vergecast, our chat show discussing the week in tech news featuring our reporters and editors.This week, co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn talk to Verge deputy editor Elizabeth Lopatto about the rise in interest of NFTs. Elizabeth explains the basics of how NFTs work and what someone actually owns when a transaction takes place.In the second half of the show, Verge deputy editor Dan Seifert stops by for a gadget roundup — there’s a review for the wild Asus ROG Phone 5, some rumors of OnePlus’ new flagship device, and the announcement of Sonos’ first fully mobile Bluetooth speaker.Listen here or in your preferred podcast player to hear the full discussion.Stories... Continue reading…

Luke Goodman, owner and founder of Out of Darts, is pictured in their Vancouver, WA factory and warehouse on February 25th, 2021. Inside the DIY Nerf arms race Continue reading…

WarnerMedia is set to launch an ad-supported tier for its HBO Max streaming service this June, and executives are hoping that having a cheaper option will help boost subscriber growth.AT&T didn’t provide additional information in a press release sent out, including price or exact launch date, but noted that HBO Max will also launch in about 60 markets outside of the US in 2021. WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar recently spoke about the incoming advertisement supported tier at the Goldman Sachs conference, noting that “most people on this planet are not wealthy.”“And so if we can wake up and use price and be able to kind of invent and do things elegantly through advertising to reduce the price of a service, I think that’s a fantastic thing... Continue reading…