The Verge

A screenshot from the Resident Evil 4 HD Project. Albert Marin has taken some very specific vacations. In Wales, he visited Raglan Castle to snap pictures of its stone wall. At the Palau Güell in Barcelona, he took meticulous photos, not of the building itself, but of the marble floor and its unique veins.His trips followed in the steps of Capcom, which put bits of real-world architecture found across Europe into Resident Evil 4, which was originally released over 16 years ago. “I collected a great number of locations the game’s developers use as source material,” Marin told The Verge.Fast forward to 2021, and Marin is now seven years into a project to remaster Resident Evil 4’s blurry GameCube-era graphics into crisp HD, in part using high-resolution photos he’s taken of everything... Continue reading…

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 20 Ultra | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Woot has discounted Samsung’s Galaxy Note 20 line today, with up to $500 in savings available depending on which phone you buy. You can buy the Galaxy Note 20, which comes in mystic green and features 8GB of RAM and a 6.7-inch 1080p LCD screen for only $600. Alternatively, you can get the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra for $200 more, which comes in mystic bronze and features 12GB of RAM and a 6.9-inch 1440p OLED screen.These prices are for the unlocked versions, and both include 128GB of storage; however, only the Note 20 Ultra features a microSD slot, allowing you to expand your storage if you choose.Best Buy has discounted Western Digital’s 14TB 3.0 external hard drive. You can get it for only $220; that’s $90 off its usual $310 price tag.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Here’s what it’s like to craft live on stream Continue reading…

Photo by Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images Writing in USA Today on Friday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) made a surprise endorsement of a fledgling union at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. In the op-ed, Rubio frames the union drive as a necessary response to the encroaching power of Amazon, a longtime target for Republicans.“When the conflict is between working Americans and a company whose leadership has decided to wage culture war against working-class values, the choice is easy — I support the workers,” Rubio writes in the op-ed. “And that’s why I stand with those at Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse today.”Rubio says Amazon “wages culture war against working-class values”Workers at the Bessemer warehouse are in the process of voting on whether to unionize, as overseen by the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Laurent Hrybrk Voice control provides unique opportunities for accessibility — and some complicated setup Continue reading…

President Biden has been silent on his plans for NASA but excited about the agency’s recent successes — here, he virtually congratulates the team that landed NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars last month. The Trump administration’s Moon-to-Mars program has already dodged the fate of many past presidential space programs: cancellation under new leadership. Last month, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced the Biden administration’s support for Artemis, NASA’s flagship lunar agenda.It was a rare passing of the baton between two administrations at odds with one another in virtually every other area. And it quelled some industry fears that Biden would shelve the moonshot plan entirely. While still in its infancy, the Artemis program unleashed a wave of industry momentum, partially thanks to an energizing, yet wildly unrealistic target date of 2024 for planting boots on the Moon.To get a sense of what’s next for Artemis and NASA,... Continue reading…

The dice are equipped with RGB lights and can communicate via Bluetooth. | Image: Systemic Games / Kickstarter Sometimes it’s nice to get away from technology for a bit, settle down with some friends, and play an entire role-playing game using just pen, paper, and lots of dice. But if that’s a little low-fi for you, then there’s always Pixels, a new set of electronic dice with built in Bluetooth and RGB LED lighting. The dice have launched on Kickstarter, with prices starting at $39. As of this writing, over 14,000 people have already backed the project for a total of over $2 million pledged.The main attraction here is obviously the colorful RGB lighting, which creator Systemic Games promises will be customizable and programmable via a companion app. The Pixels are also waterproof, charge wirelessly via companion charging cases, and can go for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google has detailed the efficiency improvements it made with Chrome 89, the latest version of its browser released earlier this month. Depending on whether you’re using the browser on Windows, macOS, or Android, Google says the browser should use less resources, launch quicker, and feel more responsive to use. There’s no mention of any improvements specifically for users on iOS.The exact benefits vary by OS. Across platforms, Google says Chrome is able to reclaim as much as 100MiB (or over 20 percent on some sites) by using foreground tab memory more efficiently, and on macOS it’s saving up to 8 percent of its memory usage based on how it handles background tabs (something which Chrome already does on other platforms). Google says these... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Facebook has nearly 10,000 employees in its division working on augmented reality and virtual reality devices, according to a report in The Information based on internal organizational data. The number means the Reality Labs division accounts for almost a fifth of the people working at Facebook worldwide.This suggests that Facebook has been significantly accelerating its VR and AR efforts. As UploadVR noted in 2017, the Oculus VR division accounted for over a thousand employees at a time when Facebook’s headcount was 18,770 overall, indicating a percentage somewhere north of five percent.Since then, Facebook has shifted its VR focus away from Oculus Rift-style tethered headsets by releasing the Oculus Quest and Quest 2, which are... Continue reading…

Los Angeles theaters will be allowed to reopen at 25 percent capacity next week, according to the LA Department of Public Health (via Variety). The restrictions are being lifted, almost exactly a year after they were put in place, because Los Angeles County believes it will reach the number of vaccinations required by California to move into the next phase of reopening. The movie capitol’s theater re-opening comes a few weeks after New York’s, meaning that two of the biggest movie markets will once again be uncapping their projectors.As Variety notes, this doesn’t mean that the theaters will be able to open as soon as the ban lifts — they’ve been closed for so long that they’ll have to re-hire and train staff, which could take a week or... Continue reading…

President Joe Biden just announced that he will direct states to make all adults eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations by May 1st. He also said that the federal government will launch a website on May 1st that will let people check where they can get a vaccine near them. He made both announcements during his first prime-time televised address as President on Thursday evening.“All American adults will be eligible to get a vaccine no later than May 1st,” says Biden. “That doesn’t mean everyone’s going to have that shot immediately. But it means you’ll be able to get in line beginning on May 1.”The administration also plans to increase the number of places administering vaccinations and expand the group of medical professionals who can give... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A Black woman who interviewed at Facebook last year says she was told the company was “looking for a culture fit” before being rejected, according to The Intercept. She’s now one of four people who’ve recently complained to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) about allegedly racist hiring and promotion practices at the tech giant.The woman says she was well-suited to the managerial position on Facebook’s Global Impact Partnerships team due to her work experience and relevant doctoral degree, The Intercept reports. Yet she alleged that during in-person meetings, she “sensed that the interviewers were not prioritizing her interviews because all of the interviews seemed rushed after making her wait for several hours.” The... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Microsoft released a new Xbox update earlier this week that brings toggles for Auto HDR and FPS Boost and improvements to better support the new Xbox Wireless Headset. But there was another big feature that wasn’t mentioned in the official release notes: the update also fixes “many” of the Xbox Series X controller disconnect issues that have cropped up, according to the Xbox team’s Jason Ronald.

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge The latest Windows update has been causing problems for some printer owners, according to a report from Windows Latest (via Gizmodo). Users are reporting that they’re getting a blue screen when they try to open the print dialogue from Notepad, Office, or other programs. (You know that annoyingly ambiguous error message that’s like “Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart”? It’s that one.)Microsoft is aware that attempting to print in certain circumstances can blue screen your PC, and has listed the bug on the Windows 10 Support page. The company doesn’t appear to have issued a fix at this time. “We are presently investigating and will provide an update when more information is available,” that website currently reads.It’s not... Continue reading…

T-Mobile hopes to expand the service to 7 to 8 million customers in the next five years | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge At an analyst event on Thursday, T-Mobile revealed that its long-awaited 5G home broadband service will launch later this month, which it confirmed to The Verge. A 4G version of the service is currently in pilot testing with 100,000 households. By the end of the year, T-Mobile says it hopes to extend the service to 7–8 million customers within five years. There’s no confirmed launch date for the service yet, but we’ll know more later this month.The company has been promising 5G-based wireless broadband since before its acquisition of Sprint, saying that the merger would make it possible to offer service that would challenge the dominant cable companies. Before the deal was approved, T-Mobile went ahead and started testing out the... Continue reading…

Photo by Michele Doying / The Verge Spotify is making a podcast about its own history, and the first two episodes are well worth a listen for the details on the jump from piracy to streaming, how the company decided to build its business, and the technical details of how it did so. There are also some fun interviews included, with the podcast featuring stories from Sean Parker, inventor of Napster, and Lars Ulrich of Metallica.In the podcast, the Spotify founders discuss the history of piracy in Spotify’s home country, Sweden, to give context about its development environment. It goes into the existence of Sweden’s Pirate Party, an actual political party that once held several seats in the country’s parliament. The founders also discuss how they wanted to take the ease of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Pakistan has banned TikTok yet again, citing objectionable content on the shortform video app. This is the second time the ByteDance platform has been banned in Pakistan, following a brief 10-day shutdown in October of last year.Last fall, TikTok was banned for hosting “immoral” and “indecent” videos, but the company was able to assure the Pakistani government that videos would be moderated “in accordance with societal norms and the laws of Pakistan,” and the app resumed operations a week and a half later.

Gogo in-flight internet STOCK Gogo will be delaying the rollout of its 5G network, pushing it back from 2021 to 2022. According to LightReading, the global chip shortage is to blame for the delay, though Gogo didn’t provide any direct details about how the shortage was setting it back.Gogo isn’t the only one feeling the sting of the global chip shortage: graphics cards, CPUs, and game consoles have become infamous for being in short supply, and car manufacturers are having to slow down production lines because of the supply constraint. The situation has gotten to the point where President Joe Biden has signed an executive order calling for a review of the chip supply chain.The company, known for providing in-flight Wi-Fi, had a difficult 2020: it did several rounds... Continue reading…

Bob Wulff Tenet, the latest film by director Christopher Nolan, arrived on Blu-ray in December 2020, but now it has been released in another physical format: Game Boy Advance cartridges. Via Engadget, YouTuber Bob Wulff managed to fit the two-hour, 30-minute time-bending film with a nearly incomprehensible plot on five cartridges, compressed down to a 192 x 128 resolution that looks blurry even on the GBA’s 240 x 160 display. The worst (best) part of the experience might be that it runs at six frames per second. They even made bespoke labels for each cartridge that are, actually, very well done.Now, before you ask aloud “why?” just say “thank you, Bob Wulff!” instead. This obviously doesn’t need to exist, but the promise of these little displays... Continue reading…

T-Mobile is keen to stay ahead of the 5G competition | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge During its virtual analyst event today, T-Mobile outlined some bold plans for expanding its 5G coverage and speeding up its current offerings. The company says that by the end of 2023, it will cover 90 percent of Americans (about 300 million) with what it calls Ultra Capacity 5G (its faster mid-band and mmWave service). It also plans to cover 97 percent of Americans (approximately 320 million) by the end of 2022 with its slower low-band 5G, which it calls Extended Range. Currently, 125 million are covered by Ultra Capacity, with Extended Range covering 287 million.Additionally, those currently covered by Ultra Capacity 5G will see an increase in average speeds from 300Mbps up to 400Mbps, thanks to additional megahertz devoted to 5G,... Continue reading…

Image: SCNR YouTube drama remains some of the most interesting drama, and a new report from The Daily Beast on infighting at political YouTube creator Tim Pool’s news company — and the fate of a cat named Betsy — is no exception.The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer sets the scene with Pool’s background as a former Vice reporter who went independent as an alt-right-adjacent YouTube creator. But the meat of the report is the fight over Subverse, a news media site with a YouTube channel (renamed SCNR for a hilarious reason you should read the report to learn) for which Pool and his former business partner, Emily Molli, raised over $1 million to start.Molli was joined by another Vice alum, Rocco Castoro, to get the YouTube operation off the ground, and the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple is suing Simon Lancaster, a former product design architect at the company, accusing him of selling trade secrets and details on unreleased Apple products to an unnamed media correspondent. Lancaster apparently did this in hopes of gaining publicity for his next venture after leaving Apple. AppleInsider first reported on the legal filing.“Tens of thousands of Apple employees work tirelessly every day on new products, services and features in the hopes of delighting our customers and empowering them to change the world. Stealing ideas and confidential information undermines their efforts, hurting Apple and our customers,” commented Apple in a statement to The Verge. “We take very seriously this individual’s deliberate theft of our... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix has more than 200 million subscribers around the world, and now the company is looking at ways to curb password sharing for both business and security reasons.A new feature, first spotted by GammaWire, prevents people who are not authorized to use the account from accessing it. A Netflix spokesperson told The Verge, “This test is designed to help ensure that people using Netflix accounts are authorized to do so.” If Netflix detects that someone is trying to use the account without being an account owner, they’ll be asked to verify later or verify being an account owner through an email code or text code.If someone is unable to verify account ownership within a certain timeframe, they won’t be able to stream any Netflix... Continue reading…

Microsoft completed its $7.5 billion Bethesda acquisition earlier this week and initially hinted that “some new titles in the future” would be exclusive to Xbox and PC players. That some language left some wiggle room for the possibility of future Bethesda titles to appear on Sony’s PlayStation 5, Nintendo’s Switch, or elsewhere. Now, Microsoft’s Xbox chief, Phil Spencer, is making it very clear why the company paid $7.5 billion for Bethesda: Xbox Game Pass.Speaking during a Bethesda and Xbox roundtable event today, Spencer revealed that Xbox Game Pass is at the heart of this Bethesda deal. “If you’re an Xbox customer, the thing I want you to know is that this is about delivering great exclusive games for you that ship on platforms... Continue reading…

Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images Uber and Lyft announced a “first-of-its-kind” effort to share information about drivers who were deactivated for committing serious offenses, including physical and sexual assault and murder.Uber and Lyft will pool information under the banner of the Industry Safety Sharing Project, which will be administered by a third party. The companies will share “information about driver deactivations related to the five most critical safety issues within the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s (NSVRC) Sexual Misconduct and Sexual Violence Taxonomy, along with physical assault fatalities,” Uber and Lyft said in a joint announcement.Ride-hailing services have long struggled to keep riders and drivers safe from one anotherRide-hailing... Continue reading…

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Polestar / Beadyeye It’s a fundamental rule of the road: driver picks the music.And yet, in a brazen challenge to the immutable laws of the universe, Spotify has chosen to meddle with this golden rule by expanding its Group Session beta to cars. Starting today, up to six people in the car can all control music at the same time, starting with the Android Automotive-powered Polestar 2.“We all know that sometimes the driver doesn’t have the best taste in music and my family tends to agree. The addition of Group Sessions Beta from Spotify is a great way for others in the vehicle to influence the playlist and enjoy their favorite tracks,” commented Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath, a man who clearly cannot be trusted with playlist powers.Group Session rolled... Continue reading…

Four years ago yesterday, a meme was born: professor Robert Kelly, who will be forever known as “BBC Dad,” had the gall to get interrupted by his kids during a live video interview broadcast around the world.

Amazon’s Fresh stores feature its high-tech Dash shopping carts. | Image: Amazon Last Thursday, Amazon opened its 11th Amazon Fresh grocery store, Bloomberg reports. It’s a remarkably quick expansion of the initiative considering Amazon only opened its first store of this type on an invite-only basis in August in Los Angeles. The company doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon either, with Bloomberg reporting that it has plans for at least 28 more locations (though Amazon was only willing to confirm five of these).Amazon’s Fresh stores are just one part of the company’s growing collection of retail stores. They’re meant to be less upscale than Amazon’s Whole Foods locations, and bigger than the company’s Go and Go Grocery locations. In the US, they also don’t use Amazon’s cashierless “Just Walk Out”... Continue reading…

After a drawn-out series of leaks and teases, Oppo has announced its 2021 flagship in full. The Find X3 Pro is a sleek, powerful phone with an unusual design and some unique features to match. It’s also an important device for Oppo, which recently overtook Huawei in the Chinese smartphone market and will be looking to capitalize on its rival’s troubles this year.The Find X3 Pro’s most arresting visual element is its camera bump, which almost looks organic in the way it seamlessly rises from the same piece of glass as the rest of the phone’s back panel. Combined with the finish, which on my unit is aggressively shiny and glossy, the phone looks sort of like it was forged out of Terminator 2-style liquid metal. The camera... Continue reading…

“Preview page” now appears an an option when you long-press a link. | Screenshot by Jon Porter / The Verge Chrome’s Android app now lets you preview a webpage before committing to clicking on a link, 9to5Google reports. The feature appears to have been enabled via a server-side update to version 89 of the browser, and can be accessed by long-pressing on a link and then tapping “Preview page.” It seems to be Android-only for the time being.It’s a small, but helpful, feature if you want to quickly check the contents of a webpage without fully leaving your current page. Maybe that’s to get the gist of an article by reading its first couple of paragraphs, or because you’re still vigilant about being Rick-rolled in 2021.A small but helpful additionThe feature has been included in other browsers for a little while now. On iOS, both Safari and... Continue reading…

The original Xbox One with Kinect. Microsoft is removing its TV listings feature on the Xbox One in May. Originally introduced as part of its broad ambitions to take over the living room, the OneGuide TV listings on Xbox One was designed to overlay on top of your cable box and provide a better way to access content. You could also combine the feature with an Xbox USB TV tuner to access free-to-air TV channels.“Based on customer usage and feedback, we’re constantly evolving the Xbox experience,” says Jonathan Hildebrandt, a program manager for Microsoft’s Xbox Experiences group. “To that end, beginning this May we’ll be sunsetting live TV listings for OneGuide on Xbox One.” OneGuide users will still be able to access the HDMI passthrough feature on the Xbox One to watch... Continue reading…

Employees of cloud-based surveillance firm Verkada had widespread access to feeds from customers’ cameras, according to new reports from Bloomberg and The Washington Post.Verkada’s systems were recently breached by a “hacktivist” collective which gained access to more than 150,000 of the company’s cameras in locations ranging from Tesla factories, to police stations, gyms, schools, jails, and hospitals. The group, who call themselves Advanced Persistent Threat 69420, stumbled across log-in credentials for Verkada’s “Super Admin” accounts online. They publicized their findings, saying they were motivated by “lots of curiosity, fighting for freedom of information and against intellectual property, a huge dose of anti-capitalism, a hint... Continue reading…

Perseverance touched down on Mars last month. | Photo: NASA/JPL NASA has released an audio recording of its Perseverance rover firing lasers on the martian surface. The strikes, which sound like a series of small clicks, are designed to help scientists analyze the rocks around the rover. In this case the target was a rock called “Máaz,” which scientists were able to discover was basaltic, BBC News reports, meaning it contains a lot of magnesium and iron.According to NASA’s site, the laser is fired by Perseverance’s “SuperCam,” and allows the rover to “zap and study areas on a rock as small as the period at the end of this sentence” from a distance of 20 feet (7 meters) away. Once the laser has fired at a rock, it uses its camera and spectrometer to analyze the hot gas the rock is vaporized into. The... Continue reading…

Photo by Robert Paul / Blizzard Entertainment Jay “Sinatraa” Won, one of the biggest names in competitive Valorant, has been suspended from the game and by his team following accusations of sexual assault. In a statement posted on Tuesday, Cleo Hernandez posted a lengthy account of her nine-month-long relationship with Won, detailing a disturbing history of physical and emotional abuse, supported by audio recordings and screenshots of messages.“I have avoided talking about any aspects of me and Jay’s relationship for over a year,” Hernandez wrote. “I never spoke about it mostly because this is horrifying, and also because I’ve seen the way women in our community are treated when they try to talk about being hurt by prominent figures.”Won is a former Overwatch League MVP who made... Continue reading…

Verizon wants to funnel more customers into its more expensive unlimited plans. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’re on a basic Verizon plan, you’re going to be stuck with the company’s poor performing “nationwide” 5G network — even after critical C-band spectrum comes online. The company revealed in a presentation to investors and confirmed to The Verge that C-band frequencies, and their faster speeds, will only be available to customers on “premium” unlimited plans. Those on metered or the basic Start Unlimited plan will be relegated to slower, low-band 5G.

Images: Canoo No, that’s not a Duplo toy — what you see above (and in the renders below) is the design for a pickup truck from California electric vehicle startup Canoo.Revealed in a leak on Reddit on Wednesday, and then subsequently confirmed to Reuters before officially being revealed, the head-turning EV truck is not due out until 2023. By that time, Tesla’s Cybertruck, the electric Hummer pickup, Ford’s electric F-150, and Rivian’s EV pickup should all be on the road. Canoo said it will start taking preorders for its pickup later this year, but did not release pricing details. The startup is also reportedly in talks with other states for a “microfactory” where a contract manufacturer would build the vehicles.The toyish truck shows just how far... Continue reading…

GameStop stock (GME) soared in value on Wednesday, peaking at $348.50 per share. Then, in an event that’s definitely not cause for concern, minutes later it lost fully half its value by plummeting to $172, Bloomberg reports. Yes, “stonks” are back, and GameStop is once again in the crosshairs of online amateur investors.Wednesday’s drama ultimately ended with the price settling back down to $265 per share, but it’s hard to not feel déjà vu. It seems like it was only yesterday when everyone was watching in a mixture of shock, amusement, and general concern as GME crested $483 per share. The rise and fall doesn’t quite compare, but the losses for anyone who sold during Wednesday’s dip in price are likely huge.

Images of OnePlus’ upcoming 9-series phones show prominent branding from camera partner Hasselblad. | Image: WinFuture We have a very clear picture of what the upcoming OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro will look like thanks to WinFuture — the site has published a whole bunch of official press renders of the upcoming phones well ahead of the March 23rd launch. We got our first official look at the upcoming flagship in a teaser video from OnePlus earlier this week, but this latest leak features both regular and Pro models from multiple angles in a variety of colors.These renders align with what OnePlus has already shared, and they also resemble an alleged prototype device that was leaked late last year. It appears that the OnePlus 9 Pro will come with a slightly curved 6.7-inch display, and the OnePlus 9 will feature a flat 6.5-inch screen. That’s about the extent of... Continue reading…

Sanda Lindsay receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. | Photo by Mark Lennihan - Pool/Getty Images The glass vial used in the first US COVID-19 vaccination has been acquired by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The museum also acquired related items including the scrubs and vaccination card of Sandra Lindsay, director of critical care nursing at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center who, on December 14th, 2020, became the first person in the US to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.“The urgent need for effective vaccines in the U.S. was met with unprecedented speed,” said Anthea M. Hartig, the museum’s Elizabeth MacMillan director, in a statement Tuesday. “These now historic artifacts document not only this remarkable scientific progress but represent the hope offered to millions living through the cascading crises... Continue reading…

Scott Olson/Getty Images AMC Theaters reported another jarring but predictable loss in its fourth quarter earnings, but the company’s CEO is optimistic that the theater chain will make it out of the pandemic alright.Revenue was down 88 percent year over year, to $162.5 million. While beating expectations, that still led to a quarterly loss of $946 million (slightly better than the last quarter, though significantly worse than the $13.5 million loss AMC reported in its 2019 fourth quarter), but AMC also has more than $1 billion in cash on hand, according to CEO Adam Aron. On the tailwinds of announcements that New York City would start to allow theaters to open, and studios seemingly preparing to head back to theaters, Aron is trying to find the positives while... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has reportedly denied social media company Parler’s bid to reenter the iOS App Store, saying its platform hasn’t addressed problems with offensive content. Bloomberg reported the news earlier today, quoting a message reportedly sent on February 25th.According to Bloomberg, Apple said that Parler’s latest community guidelines still didn’t meet its standards. “Simple searches reveal highly objectionable content, including easily identified offensive uses of derogatory terms regarding race, religion and sexual orientation, as well as Nazi symbols,” it reportedly told Parler. “For these reasons your app cannot be returned to the App Store for distribution until it complies with the guidelines.”Parler’s guidelines ban threats, spam,... Continue reading…

Image: Kyle Craven After selling Nyan Cat as an NFT, its creator, Chris Torres, has found himself working on an even bigger event: a week-long series of auctions where classic memes are being sold on the blockchain by their original creators. Torres calls the event Memeconomy, and he’s hoping it’ll bring both recognition to the meme creators, as well as to the NFT space.The memes involved should be recognizable if you were on the internet in the early 2010s. They include:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge So this was a weird one: depending on the browser you’re using, your space bar may not have worked in the YouTube.com search bar for a little while today. Pressing it would make absolutely nothing happen, so your YouTube searches ended up being one long string of words. The bug seemed to be around for an hour, based on when people started sounding off about it on Twitter, but as of 3:50PM ET, the site appeared to be working correctly again on all browsers.The bug affected the desktop site, but only browsers that aren’t based on Chrome. Firefox wouldn’t take spaces in Windows, macOS, or even Android if you requested the desktop version of the website. Safari on iPhones worked as normal, but the problems showed up on Safari on iPad —... Continue reading…

Photo by Claus Andersen/Getty Images Disney and the NHL have just signed a massive new TV rights deal for the next seven years that will see ESPN and ESPN Plus become key places to watch and stream hockey games, starting with the upcoming 2021-2022 season.It’s the first time that ESPN will offer NHL hockey games since its previous deal expired in 2005, and this time streaming — particularly, ESPN Plus streaming — is a huge part of that deal.ESPN Plus is effectively replacing NHL.TV as the NHL’s out-of-market streaming service, with over 1,000 games each season available for fans to stream. ESPN and ABC will also get 25 exclusive national regular-season games each season, while 75 games a year will be exclusive to ESPN Plus and Hulu.Additionally, ABC will get exclusive... Continue reading…

New A-series phones, including the A52 5G seen here, are expected to debut on March 17th. | Image: Moboaesthetics The Galaxy A52 5G will likely be announced next week at Samsung’s second Unpacked event of the year, but thanks to an early unboxing video spotted by GSMArena, we won’t have to wait that long to see it in action.The upcoming midrange device has been subject to plenty of leaks over the past few weeks, and the video from YouTuber Moboaesthetics seems to confirm many of them. The device in the video matches up with previously leaked renders and appears to be fully functional.Specs featured in the lengthy video include a 64-megapixel main camera with OIS, a 120Hz display, IP67 dust and water resistance, under-screen fingerprint sensor, and a 4,500mAh battery. Unlike the S21 series, there’s a microSD card slot for memory expansion.The... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you opened your phone this morning to see a Twitter app update, you might have been excited — and then confused — to see an advertisement for Twitter Spaces, the audio chat rooms that the social network recently launched to compete with the similar Clubhouse app. “Introducing Spaces,” the iOS update says, promising that “Now you can Tweet and Talk.”But while you won’t actually find the ability to create a new Space unless you’re one of a select few, the company now says it’s planning to launch Spaces to everyone next month. Screenshot by The Verge The iOS update note. Amusingly, we overheard the news in a Twitter Space itself, hosted by the company. Twitter’s plans aren’t set in stone, but the gist is that... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In two motions filed Wednesday, Facebook called on the courts to dismiss a pair of sweeping competition cases brought on by the federal government and a coalition of states.The Federal Trade Commission and a group of state attorneys general filed separate lawsuits against Facebook last December accusing the tech giant of engaging in anti-competitive behavior. The two lawsuits make similar claims, alleging that Facebook bought Instagram and WhatsApp in order to squash the threat the two apps posed to the company’s business. Additionally, the attorneys general accused Facebook of using its market dominance to stifle the growth of competing services.The FTC’s case also calls for the courts to unwind Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram... Continue reading…

Apex Legends is the latest major cross-platform Switch port. After years of availability on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC, EA has finally brought the battle royale shooter to Nintendo’s handheld console, adding a fresh wave of players to the mix and a new, on-the-go option for existing Apex Legends fans. But there’s a glaring issue with the Switch port: right now, there’s no cross-progression, making the Switch port effectively a nonstarter for dedicated players.At launch, the new Nintendo Switch version of Apex Legends offers cross-platform gameplay — meaning that you can play with and against players on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC in addition to other Switch players. But any progress or purchases that players have made on those other... Continue reading…

Image: Recode Today, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has found the growing trend of celebrity-endorsed special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) dangerous enough to warn investors in a new statement: just because a celebrity is participating in or endorsing a SPAC, doesn’t mean you should invest.The terminology can be complicated, but the SEC’s advice is fairly simple. Like if any stranger recommended you invest in a business (in this case, one trying to merge with other companies to take them public), there are a lot of unknowns that should be accounted for. “Celebrities, like anyone else, can be lured into participating in a risky investment,” writes the SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy. Celebrities, many already... Continue reading…