The Verge

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At eBay, the highly rated seller Antonline is listing two Switch bundles that are a little more affordable than it’d be to purchase each of the included items separately. Starting with the most appealing bundle (in terms of value and what’s included), the limited edition console with an Animal Crossing-inspired design comes with New Pokémon Snap and a one-year family membership to Nintendo Switch Online, which altogether costs $379 (usually $395). Note that Animal Crossing: New Horizons isn’t included with this console. This bundle would make for an extremely good gift to yourself or someone else.Also at eBay, you can get the best-ever price on Sony’s excellent WH-1000XM4 over-ear wireless headphones that have noise cancellation.... Continue reading…

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge When somebody comes to your door — not a virtual door, your real door — and wants to get your attention, they usually ring the doorbell. Zoom has a feature that is sort of, kind of like that: it notifies you with a loud “ding dong” when somebody enters your meeting. This can be useful if you’re waiting for a friend to show up for a Zoom meeting and are playing with your dog or dusting the bookcase in the meantime. It can also be irritating if you’re part of a meeting with ten or more people, and you hear a “ding dong” every time somebody enters or leaves the meeting.So if you want to turn this notification on — or off — here’s how you do it. To turn audio notifications off, go to the web-based Settings page.

Fortnite is getting a visual boost on PC very soon. As part of the upcoming Chapter 2: Season 7, which will launch on June 8th, the PC version of the game is getting a new “epic” graphical setting.Epic says it will include “new and enhanced effects plus improved post-processing features and shadow quality.” Among other changes, it sounds like many of the great visual enhancements that came to the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions of the game are coming to PC, including “more advanced explosion effects.” In other words, after you update, try to find a rocket launcher to play with.As part of the update, the system requirements for Fortnite are now getting a tweak. Basically, there are now three ranges: epic, recommended, and minimum. Here’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter has officially announced Twitter Blue, a paid subscription service that offers access to new features like undoing tweets and viewing threads in an easier to digest “Reader Mode.” Starting Thursday, it will roll out first in Canada and Australia, where the subscription will cost $3.49 CAD or $4.49 AUD per month, respectively. We already had a good idea of what features to expect from Twitter Blue thanks to sleuthing from app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, but now Twitter has detailed everything the service includes.A new undo send feature gives you the option of retracting your tweets before they actually go live, and you can set a timer for undoing your tweets that can last up to 30 seconds. A Bookmark Folders feature lets you... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Update June 3rd, 11:15AM ET: All initial stock of the RTX 3080 Ti, including Best Buy’s in-store stock, appears to be sold out. Newegg, however, is still accepting lottery entries for its Newegg Shuffle through 1PM ET. If selected, you’ll be notified between 5PM and 9PM ET.The Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti is here, at least for those lucky enough to find one. Announced earlier this week alongside the forthcoming RTX 3070 Ti, the 3080 Ti serves as the pricier successor to the GeForce RTX 3080, an excellent graphics card that made 4K gaming that much more affordable and exemplified just how transformative DLSS technology could be.Like the RTX 3090, Nvidia’s newest flagship touts impressive 1440p and 4K performance, albeit in a smaller, quieter... Continue reading…

Amazon’s new Movement Health feature in Halo | Amazon Soon, Amazon’s Halo fitness service will offer to use your smartphone’s camera and some cloud-based AI to create a scan of your “Movement Health.” After a five- to 10-minute session where you put yourself into different poses for the camera, Amazon’s servers will analyze the video and use it to create a customized workout routine to improve your “stability, mobility, and posture.” The service is expected to launch “in the coming weeks.”As with Halo’s body fat scan, Amazon says that the video it records for Movement Health is sent to its cloud servers, analyzed only by its algorithms (and not humans), and is then promptly deleted both from the cloud and from your phone. The videos are encrypted in transit and when they’re (briefly) at... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge It’s going to get harder for Android apps to track users who’ve opted out of receiving personalized ads, the Financial Times reports, after Google announced changes to how it’ll handle the unique device identifiers that allow marketers to track them between apps. Starting later this year, Google is cutting off access to these “Advertising IDs” after a user opts out, and will show developers a “string of zeros” in its place.The news was announced in an email to Play Store developers, and Google has also updated its support page for Advertising IDs with the announcement. Google told developers the changes will “provide users with more control over their data, and help bolster security and privacy,” the Financial Times reports.The change... Continue reading…

Lucifer. | Photo: John P. Fleenor/Netflix Netflix is holding its first “Geeked” virtual event starting on June 7th, an entire week dedicated to genre stories across film and TV. That means sci-fi and fantasy, and shows based on comic books and video games.The company says that more than 50 projects will be featured, including big names like The Witcher, Sandman, Lucifer, Cowboy Bebop, Arcane (the League of Legends animated series), The Cuphead Show, and more. In addition to big announcements and trailers, the event will also include “first looks, behind-the-scenes footage, cast interviews, celebrity games, script table reads, live performances, and much more,” according to Netflix.It’s a lot to spread across five days. Here’s how you can keep up with everything.What time is... Continue reading…

Microsoft has been teasing a “next generation” of Windows for months now, but new hints suggest the company isn’t just preparing an update to its existing Windows 10 software, but a new, numbered version of the operating system: Windows 11.The software giant announced a new Windows event for June 24th yesterday, promising to show “what’s next for Windows.” The event invite included an image of what looks like a new Windows logo, with light shining through the window in only two vertical bars, creating an outline that looks very much like the number 11. Microsoft followed up with an animated version of this image, making it clear the company intentionally ignored the horizontal bars.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge WhatsApp has confirmed that its long-rumored multi-device support will be entering public beta in the coming months, allowing users to access their accounts from up to four linked devices. New “view once” and “disappearing mode” features were also officially announced. The news came in an interview between WABetaInfo and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and WhatsApp head Will Cathcart.Cathcart stopped short of confirming reports that WhatsApp has an iPad app in development, but said that multi-device support will make WhatsApp on iPad a possibility.As well as multi-device support, Zuckerberg also confirmed that WhatsApp is adding a new “view once” feature, which will allow users to send content that disappears after it’s been viewed. The... Continue reading…

Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Ring is adjusting how public agencies such as police and fire departments are able to request video clips from Ring camera owners in its Neighbors app. Starting next week, agencies will only be able to request clips be sent to them through public posts that are viewable in the app’s main feed; they will no longer be able to send individuals specific requests for clips.Ring says this new method provides greater transparency to what public agencies are requesting, as all requests will now be logged on the agency’s profile and reviewable by anyone using the app. Agencies will not be able to remove or delete the posts, according to Ring, though they can be marked as “resolved.” Ring says it limits video clips requests to “verified public... Continue reading…

The Home screen of the updated Hue app. | Image: Signify The Philips Hue app is getting a big update on Thursday. The team at Signify, which makes Hue lights, has rebuilt the app “from the ground up” to make it easier to use. The new version looks mostly the same as the existing app, but it has tweaks around the edges to make it quicker to access different controls.One of the bigger changes is faster access to room controls. Now, when you tap on a room or zone, the app will present a grid of all the available lights and pre-set scenes so you can find them right away. In the prior version, you had to switch back and forth across different tabs that were easy to get lost in.You’ll also now be able to add new lights from within the Room tab — not just the Settings menu — and if you’re a power... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The FBI has said that cybercriminal group REvil (also known as Sodinokibi) was behind the recent attack on meat supplier JBS (via The Record). This follows a statement from White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, which indicated that the attack likely came from a Russian-based organization.REvil has previously been implicated in the recent Apple and Acer ransomware attacks, as well as last year’s Travelex attack. The JBS intrusion, however, could have wide-ranging effects: the company is the world’s largest meat processor, and the incident shut down some of the largest slaughterhouses in the US.

Samsung has announced two new Windows laptops running Arm-based processors. The Galaxy Book Go and Galaxy Book Go 5G both use Snapdragon chips from Qualcomm rather than Samsung’s own Exynos designs.The Galaxy Book Go is an entry-level model that starts at $349. It has the updated Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 processor that Qualcomm announced last month, as well as 4GB or 8GB of RAM and 64GB or 128GB of eUFS storage. The display is a 14-inch 1080p LCD and the laptop is 14.9mm thick, weighing in at 1.38kg. The Galaxy Book Go 5G, meanwhile, uses Qualcomm’s more powerful Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 processor — though other laptops with that chip aren’t exactly powerhouses — and, as the name suggests, it includes 5G connectivity. Despite... Continue reading…

The Apple TV Plus logo. | Image: Apple This week, Apple brought its Apple TV app to many new Android TV devices — not just the Nvidia Shield. And Apple was smart to widen that support — the expiration date for free trials of Apple TV Plus is swiftly approaching, with many customers about to see their subscriptions end July 1st. That gives Apple a month to win over Android TV users by letting them watch flagship shows like the earnest and delightful Ted Lasso on the big screen, a show whose second season will premiere near the end of July.The rollout of the Apple TV app to Android TV OS devices started Monday at 8AM PT, a Google spokesperson confirmed to The Verge. As a caveat, the Google spokesperson clarified that support does not extend to third-party operator set-top... Continue reading…

Image: Norton Ethereum mining is coming to perhaps an unexpected place: Norton 360, the antivirus software that many readers will know from setting up new computers for their parents (via BleepingComputer). In its press release, Norton claims its brand is a perfect fit: people looking to mine crypto won’t have to dig through the dark, scary parts of the web, where they could possibly find “unvetted code.”The company also says that it’ll store users’ crypto wallets in the cloud, with its own Norton Wallet. As far as actually using their gains, a Norton spokesperson tells The Verge there will be a button that allows users to “pull money into Coinbase.”Until now, Norton claims, people who wanted to mine had to disable their security software to do it,... Continue reading…

The agency has picked two new robotic missions to explore the hot hell-world of Venus, Earth’s neighbor and the second planet from the Sun, administrator Bill Nelson announced on Wednesday. The two missions, DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, were among four competing proposals under the latest round of NASA’s Discovery Program, which manages smaller planetary exploration missions with a slim budget of roughly $500 million each.“These two sister missions both aim to understand how Venus became an inferno-like world capable of melting lead at the surface,” Nelson said during his first “State of NASA” address at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, DC on Wednesday. “They will offer the entire science community a chance to investigate a planet we... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple employees are being asked to return to the office three days a week starting in early September. Tim Cook sent out an email Wednesday informing staff of the change.“For all that we’ve been able to achieve while many of us have been separated, the truth is that there has been something essential missing from this past year: each other,” he said. “Video conference calling has narrowed the distance between us, to be sure, but there are things it simply cannot replicate.”Cook said that most employees will be asked to come in to the office on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, with the option of working remotely on Wednesdays and Fridays. Teams that need to work in-person will return four to five days a week.Employees also have the... Continue reading…

Magicicada periodical cicadas, members of Brood X, cluster on a plant at Fairland Recreational Park June 01, 2021 in Burtonsville, Maryland. | Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Brood X is back and ready for action. After a 17 year nap, the cicadas of the Eastern US have emerged to scream, mate, and perhaps pick up a fungus that turns them into “horror movie sex bots.” While some people have been dreading the return of the screeching multitudes, others have eagerly awaited the brood with tasty bug recipes in hand. But before you run to the nearest cicada cookout, be aware that you’ll probably want to avoid these crunchy morsels if you have a shellfish allergy.

A promotional image for Fortnite’s next season. If you hop into a game of Fortnite right now, you might get teleported across the map by a mysterious laser beam that appears out of the sky.Yes, seriously. Watch it happen in this video from streamer Ali “SypherPK” Hassan, which I’ve also embedded below at the right timestamp.While it’s hard to tell exactly where the laser beam is coming from, it’s hard to think that it isn’t coming from some kind of UFO or alien... thing.The abductions started happening in Fortnite Tuesday evening, just one week before the game’s next season begins on June 8th. And a few other hints seem to indicate that Chapter 2 Season 7 could be alien-themed in some way, too.Check out this video teaser that apparently is on TikTok, for example, which features... Continue reading…

Image: Apple The Apple Card experienced an outage on Wednesday that reportedly affected users’ ability to make payments, manage their cards, and see recent transactions, according to Apple’s status page. Interruption in service appears to have started at 6:17AM PT today and lasted for a little over five hours, ending at 12:19PM PT.Apple’s credit card solution is managed almost entirely through the built-in Wallet app in iOS, where users can pay off their credit card bill, see recent transactions, and make payments through Apple Pay. Apple said that all users were affected by today’s outage, but it wasn’t clear if every user experienced all of the possible issues the company reported.My colleague Mitchell Clark was able to pay off a portion of their... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is relaxing its policy around employees using weed, according to a new blog post, and will no longer enforce marijuana drug tests for any employee who isn’t also regulated by the Department of Transportation, like a delivery driver. In the past, Amazon used positive tests as a reason to disqualify applicants during the hiring process.Dave Clark, Amazon’s CEO of worldwide consumer, announced the change as part of the company’s goal to be “Earth’s Best Employer,” a strategy that so far has been characterized by new programs like WorkingWell that seem to view employees as things that need to be maintained and trained, rather than people who should be treated fairly. Still, as weed is legalized for recreational and medicinal use... Continue reading…

Photo by AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images Look, when the internet learns a new trick — like it did in January, with GameStop — it’s a pretty safe bet that people will play the trick again. So AMC is through the roof right now: it touched $72.62, a 91 percent increase from its open and an all-time high. That’s because AMC has embraced the trolls, and now the stock price is going brrr.AMC announced today that it was creating AMC Investor Connect, “an innovative, proactive communication initiative that will put AMC in direct communication with its extraordinary base of enthusiastic and passionate individual shareholders to keep them up to date about important company information and to provide them with special offers.” This represents “a groundbreaking new approach” to... Continue reading…

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule is seen docked to the ISS in April, 2021 after a port relocation manuever with its crew of four Crew-1 astronauts on board. | NASA/JSC SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule will launch three more private astronaut missions tentatively through 2023 under a bulk deal signed this week with mission manager Axiom Space, the companies announced on Wednesday. Though specific terms weren’t disclosed, it marks one of the biggest deals yet in the burgeoning private spaceflight industry and makes for a busy ISS schedule for the next few years.The three missions, paced roughly six months apart, will come after Axiom’s first ride on Crew Dragon in January next year flying an “all-civilian” crew to the International Space Station for eight days. Ax-2, the second mission, will be led by former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson. Crews for Ax-3 and 4 haven’t been announced yet. All flights will... Continue reading…

The HBO Max logo. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge HBO Max’s ad-supported streaming option has officially launched on the platform. The new tier will be priced at $10 per month, which shaves $5 off HBO Max’s regular cost of $15 per month. How exactly HBO Max planned to successfully introduce ads on its premium content has been a bit of a head-scratcher, as premium and ad-free content was sort of the entire point of HBO to begin with. But to hear the company justify it, ads on the platform’s content will be both “elegant” and “respectful” of the subject matter.“Advertising is a time-tested way to reduce the cost of great entertainment and reach a wider audience,” Andy Forssell, EVP and general manager at HBO Max, said in a statement. “We’ve worked hard to create an elegant, tasteful ad... Continue reading…

The next God of War game has been pushed to 2022. The game, intended for PS5, was originally planned to launch sometime in 2021. Head of PlayStation Studios Hermen Hulst confirmed the news in a post shared on the PlayStation blog, saying “we’ve made the decision to push that game out to next year, to ensure that Santa Monica Studio can deliver the amazing God of War game that we all want to play.” We also learned today that a PS4 version of the next God of War is in development.The studio posted a tweet confirming the delay.

Image: PUBG Corp Free-to-play games are hugely successful (in 2020, PUBG Mobile reportedly made $2.8 billion in China alone), but that success attracts unscrupulous developers who earn their own small fortunes helping players cheat.If you’ve ever wanted a peek inside that kind of operation before it implodes, Motherboard’s feature on the rise and fall of an infamous game cheating ring for PUBG Mobile which authorities call Chicken Drumstick is worth a read. It features a rare account from “Catfish,” the software engineer who claims to be behind the $77 million business — and who ultimately decided to bring it to an end.Catfish became interested in making cheats for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) on PC after dealing with cheaters himself, M... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Nvidia just announced its new $1,199 RTX 3080 Ti graphics card, and it’s set to release tomorrow, June 3rd. It hasn’t exactly been easy to buy a graphics card as of late, though, and it seems extremely likely that demand for this new card is going to be through the roof. If you’re looking to try to pick one up, you might want to consider Best Buy, which has announced that customers will be able to line up at 81 of its stores for the chance to snag a Founder’s Edition of the card.Here’s the full list of participating stores, if you want to see if one near you is included. On that website, Best Buy notes that staff at participating stores will hand out tickets for the cards at 7:30AM local time, and if customers receive a ticket, they’ll... Continue reading…

Microsoft is planning to detail its “next generation of Windows” at an event later this month. The software giant has started sending invites to media for a Windows event on June 24th. Both Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and chief product officer Panos Panay will be presenting at the Windows event. Microsoft’s Windows event will start at 11AM ET / 8AM PT on June 24th.The invite comes just a week after Nadella teased a “next generation of Windows” announcement. Microsoft is expected to detail its next significant changes to Windows, and they will likely include a number of visual enhancements. We’re expecting to see some significant UI changes to Windows under something codenamed “Sun Valley.” Microsoft’s event invite even appears to tease... Continue reading…

Eufy, the Anker-owned smart home brand, is announcing a new SoloCam line of battery-powered security cameras that have local storage and are designed to operate without connecting to a separate hub. The new lineup will include two “Essential” (standard) cameras, two spotlight cameras, and one solar-powered camera.The standard and spotlight SoloCams will be offered in 1080p or 2K resolution models, and Eufy says that you can get four months of battery on a single charge. All of the cameras also offer 8GB of local storage, which Eufy estimates should hold at least two months of video.You’ll be able to preorder all of the models of the SoloCam on Wednesday, but they’ll be shipping out at different times over the next couple months. Here... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Deals from the last week or so have been especially kind to gamers who have a PS4 or PS5. Sony’s Days of Play sale event has discounted many games, and today there are price cuts on subscriptions that will help you get more enjoyment out of your console. At Newegg, a one-year subscription to PlayStation Plus is $44, down from Sony’s usual $60 price. It’s just one dollar more at Amazon, if you’d prefer to shop there. This service will allow you to play online multiplayer games, and it’ll make you eligible to download some complimentary games every month.Another useful service that’s more affordable today is PlayStation Now, which is effectively Sony’s take on Xbox Game Pass. It lets you download some of the games in its library, while... Continue reading…

A screenshot from Gran Turismo Sport. | Image: Sony The Olympics is currently hosting its first-ever virtual sporting event series, the Olympic Virtual Series, where competitors can play in virtual versions of five different physical sports: motorsport, cycling, baseball, sailing, and rowing. The cycling competition, for example, takes place in Zwift, which lets you pair your bike and a bike trainer with your computer, phone, or tablet. The motorsport competition takes place entirely inside Gran Turismo Sport.You might notice that none of those are games you might typically associate with esports, such as Overwatch, which has previously hosted World Cup-style tournaments where players represented their countries. At least for now, though, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is... Continue reading…

Photo by James Devaney/GC Images Former President Donald Trump’s blogging days are officially over. On Wednesday, CNBC reported that Trump’s blog has shut down less than a month after its launch.The blog, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” launched May 4th as a substitute messaging platform for the former president after he was banned from Facebook and Twitter earlier this year. But as of Wednesday, the blog had been completely removed from Trump’s website. Jason Miller, senior aide to Trump, confirmed to CNBC Wednesday that the site “will not be returning.” The old blog posts are now archived as press releases in a separate section of the site.The site ‘will not be returning’Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter in January after a deadly right-wing riot broke... Continue reading…

Behold, the P50’s mammoth-sized camera array During Huawei’s HarmonyOS livestream, the company provided a first look at its upcoming P50 series phone. Few specs were given, and it didn’t talk pricing or tease a release date, but the sizzle reel did reveal a close-up look at its interesting camera array.Four camera lenses are visible, along with two flashes. It’s tough to say exactly what we’ll be getting with this phone in terms of megapixel count and sensor size; the photo below confirms that Huawei is working alongside Leica with its optics. We’ll have to wait to see if Huawei improved on its periscope telephoto lenses that my colleague Sam Byford saw great results with on the P40 Pro Plus. The teaser hinted at Huawei’s continued camera partnership with... Continue reading…

Image: Huawei Huawei has announced that its HarmonyOS operating system is coming to its smartphones via a forthcoming update. Huawei’s consumer business CEO Richard Yu says the company is updating around 100 of its devices globally to the new operating system, which also includes tablets like the MatePad Pro. In theory, it’s a big change from its previous phones, which have run the open-source version of Android with Huawei’s own services replacing the Google software it’s been unable to include on new devices as a result of US sanctions.HarmonyOS will initially come to recent flagships like the Mate 40, P40, and Mate 30 series, before releasing on more devices later in the year. Older phones like the Mate 9, Mate 10, P20, and P10 will receive the... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Nintendo is holding an E3 event on June 15th, and the company promises it will be “focused exclusively on Nintendo Switch games mainly releasing in 2021.” The Nintendo Direct presentation will begin at 9AM PT / 12PM ET on June 15th, and Nintendo will hold three hours of gameplay deep dives once the event has concluded.Nintendo’s wording suggests we won’t be seeing any hardware announcements at the company’s E3 show. A “Switch Pro” has been rumored for months, with recent reports suggesting it may be announced ahead of E3. Nintendo’s E3 event starts at 9AM PT / 12PM ET on June 15th. Bloomberg has previously reported that this new Switch model will use more powerful silicon from Nvidia that supports DLSS (Deep... Continue reading…

In Black Rock Forest, just north of New York City, Angie Patterson aims a shotgun at a northern red oak tree. Patterson is a plant ecophysiologist, and the leaves that she’s shooting out of the canopy will give her data to understand how and why trees migrate.Trees have been on the move since at least the last ice age. As their native habitats become inhospitable, tree ranges shift, slowly, to areas they can thrive. But climate change is disrupting the process, scientists say. As of 2019, the IUCN Red List categorized more than 20,000 tree species as threatened, and upward of 1,400 as critically endangered.As scientists scramble to learn more about what drives tree migration, others are planning for the future. To preserve... Continue reading…

Spotify’s Only You feature will visualize listeners’ data. | Spotify Spotify loves when people share its annual Wrapped music breakdown on social media, so it’s making that more of a year-round treat. The company is announcing a new digital experience today called Only You, which will give users personalized playlists in a shareable form. The in-app experience will give users a variety of playlists and data insights based on their music listening habits, and a new feature called Blend will let two friends automatically merge their musical tastes into a playlist.Among the new experience highlights is “Your Dream Dinner Party,” which lets users pick three artists they’d invite to a dinner party with Spotify making a mix for each artist. Another is “Your Artist Pairs,” which highlights unique pairings that... Continue reading…

Mark Abramson, of Heal the Bay, displays a New Zealand mud snail on the tip of his little finger at in Medea Creek at Natural Park in Oak Park on Friday March 3 2010. | Photo by Brian Vander Brug/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images DNA sleuthing helped scientists spot early outcrops of a spreading snail invasion in Pennsylvania. The method could be used to spot the unwanted critters before they cause serious damage. That way, conservationists can stop them from conquering even more places.New Zealand mud snails became a global pest in part because they can reproduce asexually — just one snail in a new area can essentially clone itself until there are 500,000 snails in a single square yard. They’re about the length of a pencil eraser so they’re hard to find until there are so many in a location that it’s nearly impossible to stop their spread.“It opens the door for us to be able to use this technology to detect the snail at a much wider scale”“It’s kind of... Continue reading…

Riot is bringing its tactical shooter Valorant to mobile devices. There aren’t a lot of details yet — such as when it will launch, on what hardware, or how it will differ from the main game — but Riot says the new version will simply be called Valorant Mobile.The developer claims that the PC version of the game, which launched last year, currently averages 14 million monthly players. Valorant is also coming off of its biggest competitive tournament to date, with an event in Iceland, and Riot says that more than 1 million concurrent viewers tuned in to the finals on May 31st.The news shouldn’t be too surprising. Earlier this year, Riot made a similar move with League of Legends, launching a mobile-focused spinoff called Wild Rift.... Continue reading…

With photogrammetry, hundreds of still photos can be transformed into an incredibly realistic 3D model of a real place on Earth — assuming you capture them all.This Memorial Day weekend, a self-flying robot cameraman did that entire job for me. I simply designated where to fly and where not to fly, kicked back in a chair, and a Skydio 2 drone nabbed those photos all by itself. Today, Skydio is launching Skydio 3D Scan, an optional software suite for its self-flying drones that lets them build incredibly detailed models for far more important tasks than my holiday backyard BBQ. We’re talking about scanning bridges that might be in need of structural repair, accident reporting at crash sites, and allowing clients to... Continue reading…

No Man’s Sky is getting yet another big update, this time focused on the way the sci-fi adventure looks. The update is called “Prisms,” and developer Hello Games describes it as “a visual overhaul” of the game. It’s available starting today.The changes include new weather effects, volumetric lighting, furry aliens, skies full of stars, and more. The studio also says that PC and next-gen versions of the game will get “detailed reflections, improved lighting quality, more detailed biomes, and more.” You can get a good rundown in the trailer above. As part of the update, No Man’s Sky is also getting a very cool new feature: flying pets that you can ride. These include giant beetles, flying worms, and huge butterflies.As always, the... Continue reading…

Nvidia goes back to 4K for more than $1K Continue reading…

Apple Watch | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge People with irregular heartbeats who use wearable devices like Apple Watches and Fitbits aren’t overwhelming doctors with worried calls about their hearts, a new study shows. But they are more likely to be treated with a heart procedure called an ablation, the analysis found.The small study is one of the first to show how people with existing heart problems use wearables. Devices like the Apple Watch have a heart-monitoring feature that can alert users if they have an irregular pulse. Technically, those features on the Apple Watch are only authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for people who don’t have underlying heart conditions. But people with heart conditions, including a type of abnormal heart rhythm called atrial... Continue reading…

The Huawei Watch 3. | Image: Huawei Huawei has announced its first smartwatches running its own HarmonyOS operating system, the Huawei Watch 3 and Huawei Watch 3 Pro. In theory it’s the third separate operating system Huawei has used for its smartwatches, which originally ran Google’s Android Wear (now Wear OS) before introducing its own LiteOS software with more recent devices.Despite the new OS, the Watch 3 offers a similar set of features to Huawei’s previous wearables. New additions includes a redesigned home screen that now consists of a watchOS-style grid of apps rather than a list (though you’re free to switch back to a list if you prefer), and there’s also support for video calling through Huawei’s own MeeTime service.Although it’s branded as a HarmonyOS device,... Continue reading…

Huawei’s new 12.6-inch MatePad Pro with stylus and keyboard cover. Huawei has announced a trio of new MatePad tablets; a new 12.6-inch MatePad Pro, a smaller 10.8-inch MatePad Pro, and a new MatePad 11. Not only are they the company’s first tablets running its own HarmonyOS operating system, but the smaller MatePad Pro and MatePad 11 use Snapdragon chips produced by Qualcomm rather than the Huawei-designed Kirin processors found in its previous devices.Between these hardware and software changes, the tablets highlight the challenges that the Chinese technology giant is going through. It’s simultaneously trying to break free of Android, which outside of China is dominated by the Google apps and services that Huawei is unable to preinstall on its phones. But they also speak to the problems US sanctions... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A Californian court has dismissed bribery charges against Apple’s Chief Security Officer Thomas Moyer, Reuters reports, who was accused of offering iPads as bribes to obtain concealed-weapons permits for Apple employees. Judge Eric S. Geffon dismissed arguments of corrupt intent as “pure speculation” that were “not supported by the evidence presented to the grand jury.”Moyer was accused last November of trying to bribe Santa Clara County officials by offering to donate 200 iPads to two officers in the sheriff’s office following a meeting in 2019. Moyer had indeed made the offer, but evidence suggests he believed the permits were already approved at this time, Judge Geffon wrote. This, combined with the fact that Moyer followed Apple’s... Continue reading…

Clothes hangers with Depop’s logo appear in a pop-up shop in Selfridges, London. | Photo by David M. Benett/Getty Images for Depop E-commerce site Etsy, best known for selling handmade and vintage wares, is buying up a cooler, younger rival, UK-based secondhand shopping app Depop.The $1.6 billion acquisition lets Etsy access Depop’s young and growing userbase. Etsy says more than 90 percent of Depop’s users are under 26, meaning they mostly belong to Gen Z, while Etsy’s own users are firmly millennial, with a median age for sellers of around 39. Etsy claims that Depop is the 10th most visited shopping site for Gen Z consumer in the US.“We are simply thrilled to be adding Depop — what we believe to be the resale home for Gen Z consumers — to the Etsy family,” Etsy chief executive Josh Silverman said in a press statement. “Depop is a vibrant, two-sided marketplace... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla CEO Elon Musk has blamed supply chain price pressure for incremental price increases the company has made to its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles over the past several months. “Prices increasing due to major supply chain price pressure industry-wide,” the CEO tweeted in response to a complaint about the changes. “Raw materials especially.”Today, the CEO followed up to say that “microcontroller chips” are a particular challenge right now. But although Musk said that he’s “never seen anything like it,” he added that he doesn’t expect this to be a long-term issue. “Fear of running out is causing every company to overorder – like the toilet paper shortage, but at epic scale.”Musk had previously indicated in an April earnings call that... Continue reading…