The Verge

A truck drives down the street during a power outage in McKinney, Texas, U.S., on Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021. Blackouts left almost 5 million customers without electricity that day, while refineries and oil wells were shut during unprecedented freezing weather. | Cooper Neill/Bloomberg via Getty Images Hundreds more people died in Texas during the February deep freeze and blackouts than the state’s official count shows, according to an investigation by BuzzFeed News. The outages left millions of people without power as indoor temperatures dropped to deadly lows.The way authorities typically count death tolls from disasters tends to drastically low-ball the actual lossesTexas has so far acknowledged 151 winter storm-related deaths. BuzzFeed News, on the other hand, found that an estimated 700 people lost their lives from the combined catastrophes of the storm and power outages. The news outlet conducted a thorough analysis of data that showed how many more people died around that time than would normally be expected. It’s the most... Continue reading…

Image: Innersloth Among Us, the multiplayer game that soared in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, is the latest free title on the Epic Games Store. If you have an account for that storefront, you can download it for free until June 3rd (it normally costs $5). You can then join friends in the game’s newer Airship map, and good news: those friends don’t all need to be playing on PC. The game supports cross-platform multiplayer, so players of the Android, iOS, PC, and Nintendo Switch versions can play together. The PS4 and PS5 versions of the game will support crossplay, too, once it launches later this year.This promo is part of Epic Games’ Mega Sale that’s happening until June 17th. A new mystery game will be free each week, so once Among Us’ time... Continue reading…

Sonic Colors Ultimate. One of the most beloved Sonic the Hedgehog games is making a return. Sega announced today that a remaster of Sonic Colors — called Sonic Colors: Ultimate — will be coming to the PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch on September 7th.The platformer originally launched in 2010, garnering a cult following, and Sega says the new version will feature “stunning visuals, additional features, a new mode, and improved gameplay enhancements.” The game will also be getting a two-part animated tie-in called Rise of the Wisps. The first episode will be out later in the summer.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite. | Image: Samsung Samsung has officially announced two long-rumored tablets: the Galaxy Tab S7 FE and the Galaxy Tab A7 Lite. The company is yet to confirm US pricing or availability for the Tab S7 FE, but in the UK, the tablet will cost £589 or £629 depending on whether you opt for 64GB or 128GB of storage, and it’ll release on June 18th. Meanwhile, the Tab A7 Lite is a smaller, more affordable model. It starts at $159 in the US where it will release on June 10th. (In the UK, it starts at £149 and will release on June 18th.)There’s not a lot we don’t know about the Galaxy Tab S7 FE since most of its specs were revealed earlier this week by its German product page. It’s got a large 12.4-inch 2560 x 1600 LCD display, an 8-megapixel camera on the rear, and... Continue reading…

Hot Vax Summer is fast approaching: vaccination rates are rising, and many people are ready to get out there and party hard — except Airbnb. It’s extending its global partying ban through the summer as it tries to “cultivate safe and responsible travel through our platform.”The company notes in the announcement of the extension that the global ban on parties has already “proven to be popular with our Host community,” noting that most Airbnb hosts had banned hosting raucous parties by choice in their own listing rules prior to the platform-wide ban last August.Airbnb points out that the party ban was already an indefinite one, so the announcement today is less of an extension and more of a clarification for customers who were asking... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Amazon’s Prime Day for 2021 may happen on June 21st and 22nd, according to Bloomberg. Last year’s Prime member-exclusive shopping holiday was delayed until October due to the pandemic. In years prior, Amazon had hosted Prime Day in the summer. But with June upon us, this could mean one of the best times to buy tech, games, movies, and more could be just around the corner.We’ll have that covered end-to-end with all of the best deals. But here are the tech deals you need to know about today.A couple of Beats headphone models with noise cancellation are seeing big discounts today. Firstly, the Beats Solo Pro at Amazon are down to $150 (originally $300), and notably, this sale price is for the black, gray, and ivory colorways that aren’t... Continue reading…

It’s been just over three weeks since the Epic v. Apple proceedings kicked off, and the news has been relentless. So as we wait for a verdict to roll in, we’re taking a quick turn through all the biggest takeaways from the trial. A lot of the juiciest points didn’t speak directly to the verdict — like the profit structure of the Xbox or the troubled history of Fortnite crossplay — but that’s part of the fun of a massive trans-corporate dustup like this. Once you start digging through CEO Tim Cook’s inbox, all sorts of interesting stuff comes out.1] Apple keeps iMessage closed in order to sell more iPhonesWe’ve known for a while that Apple isn’t going to make iMessage available outside of iOS devices, but this trial showed exactly how... Continue reading…

The Acer Predator Triton 500 SE. | Image: Acer We asked CEO Jason Chen about the company’s path to innovation Continue reading…

It doesn’t actually look this polished, but this is the general idea. | Image: Acer Acer has announced SpatialLabs, a new 3D technology that will debut on the company’s ConceptD laptops. I got a chance to try it. It’s not something we’ll realistically see on a consumer device anytime soon — but it’s pretty dang cool nonetheless.SpatialLabs is, according to Acer, “a suite of experiences empowered by cutting-edge optical solutions.” Plainly, it’s a set of tools that makes 3D work look very realistic and cool without requiring special glasses to see it. It delivers content in Stereoscopic 3D, which presents a pair of nearly-but-not-quite-identical 2D images (one to each eye) that combine in your brain to look like one 3D picture. (It’s essentially imitating what your eyes already do.)SpatialLabs uses a combination of... Continue reading…

Take it in. There’s a new Acer Predator in town: the 16-inch Predator Triton 500 SE. It has a new subtle design with a touch of RGB as well as the latest chips from Intel and Nvidia. It also has a feature that I am much too excited about: a 16:10 display.Put this next to the previous Triton 500, and this device looks much more like something you might bring to a meeting or a lecture. It’s not quite as flashy. The last model’s glowing Triton logo has been removed from the center of the lid and squeezed into the top-right corner. The previous Triton also had “Predator” printed along the large bottom bezel, which has been replaced by a smaller and subtler Triton logo as well. The corners are sharper, the keyboard is a bit blacker — it’s a more modern,... Continue reading…

Borderlands 3 is set to get crossplay support soon, but not on Sony’s PlayStation consoles. Gearbox, the developer of Borderlands 3, has revealed it was ready to enable “full crossplay support across all platforms” but that the publisher, 2K Games, required it be removed for PlayStation consoles.Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford revealed the details in a Twitter post today, noting “we have been required by the publisher to remove crossplay support for PlayStation consoles” to pass certification. It’s not immediately clear why 2K Games has asked Gearbox to remove PlayStation crossplay or whether it’s related to Sony’s general disdain for crossplay. We’ve reached out to both Gearbox and 2K Games to comment on the situation.

Splatoon 2. Nintendo is expanding its esports efforts by moving into high schools. The company has announced a new partnership with PlayVS, which will see games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Splatoon 2 introduced into varsity athletics starting in the fall. “What’s magical about this opportunity is that it’s a way for kids to participate, to compete against their peer levels, and to do so as part of high school athletics,” Nintendo’s Bill Trinen tells The Verge.PlayVS is an amateur esports platform that has partnerships with state and national high school athletic associations, turning competitive gaming into officially recognized competition. It currently operates at three age brackets — youth, high school, and college — with games including... Continue reading…

Image: Bird Bird is out with a new electric scooter that’s designed to be the Santa Monica, California-based company’s most durable and sustainable vehicle yet.The Bird Three scooter has a longer wheelbase, a dual-sensor throttle, and a “triple braking system” with dual independent handbrakes and an “autonomous emergency braking” system that the company claims is an industry-first.But specifications aside, the really interesting thing about the Bird Three is the company’s insistence on calling it a “micro-EV.” It’s a clear effort by Bird, which recently announced its intent to go public via a “reverse merger” with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, to capitalize on the current momentum around electric vehicles.“Autonomous... Continue reading…

Art for the 2021 Pokémon Go Fest. | Image: Niantic Pokémon Go Fest is just a few weeks away, and this year, the annual event is also going to be a music festival, developer Niantic announced on Thursday.During the event, you’ll pick one of two Pikachu — Pikachu Rock Star or Pikachu Pop Star, which you can see in the image at the top of this post — and that choice will influence the music you’ll hear in-game throughout the fest. Longtime Pokémon developer Junichi Masuda has produced special tracks for the event, including “a rock-and-rolling track for Pikachu Rock Star fans” and “a high-energy electro-pop song for Pikachu Pop Star stans,” according to a blog post.Tickets cost $5 this yearIf you complete in-game activities during the festival, you’ll be able to encounter a mythical... Continue reading…

If you’ve ever had to share an Outlook calendar with colleagues, you’ll know how painful it can be when things go wrong. I spent a decade of my professional career in IT support, and shared calendar problems with Outlook for Windows were a daily problem. Microsoft is now promising that it is “dramatically” improving the reliability of shared calendars in what it’s describing as “arguably the biggest change to Outlook for Windows since its initial release in 1997.”Microsoft first started testing a new shared calendars experience for Outlook last year, and it’s now starting to roll out more broadly. Improvements include much faster sync times for new meetings and updated meetings, meaning changes should instantly be reflected in... Continue reading…

Apps are put into five categories, each represented by a color in the live wallpaper. | Image: OnePlus OnePlus’ new Digital WellPaper app turns your app usage into one of three live wallpapers on Android. Apps are simplified into six categories — social, lifestyle and communication, entertainment, gaming, information and business, and tools — which translate to six colors within each wallpaper that become more or less prominent as you use the apps.Both iOS and Android already have the ability to track app usage at a system level, but generally you have to go into a dedicated menu to actually see the information. The advantage with Digital WellPaper is that it puts this usage information — albeit in an abstract form — front and center, so you’re aware of it every time you look at your home or lock screen. OnePlus says it hopes this will... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In April 2019, amid growing questions about the effects of social networks on mental health, Instagram announced it would test a feed without likes. The person posting an image on the network would still see how many people had sent it a heart, but the total number of hearts would remain invisible to the public.“It’s about young people,” Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said that November, just ahead of the test arriving in the United States. “The idea is to try and depressurize Instagram, make it less of a competition, give people more space to focus on connecting with people that they love, things that inspire them. But it’s really focused on young people.”After more than two years of testing, today Instagram announced what it found:... Continue reading…

Photo by Michal Fludra/NurPhoto via Getty Images Lime is rolling out a new monthly subscription service for its electric scooters that’s called — no joke — Lime Prime.Lime typically charges a fixed rate to unlock a vehicle and then a per-minute fee to ride. For $5.99 a month, the company will waive that initial fee for Lime Prime subscribers. And in markets with no unlock fees, riders will receive 25 percent off the price of their ride. Subscribers will still pay the per-minute charge, but Lime says that someone who uses one of its scooters every day would save approximately $25 a month under the subscription plan.This isn’t the first iteration of Lime’s subscription serviceThere are other perks that come with a subscription. Lime Prime members can reserve any scooter or bike for... Continue reading…

Privacy International (PI) and several other European privacy and digital rights organizations announced today that they’ve filed legal complaints against the controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI. The complaints filed in France, Austria, Greece, Italy, and the United Kingdom say that the company’s method of documenting and collecting data — including images of faces it automatically extracts from public websites — violates European privacy laws. New York-based Clearview claims to have built “the largest known database of 3+ billion facial images.”PI, NYOB, Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights, and Homo Digitalis all claim that Clearview’s data collection goes beyond what the average user would expect... Continue reading…

The Save to Photos option. | Image: Google Google is adding a new “Save to Photos” button to Gmail which you can press to automatically save an emailed image to Google Photos, the company has announced. It’s rolling out to personal Gmail users, Google Workspace, G Suite Basic, and G Suite Business customers over the next couple of weeks and will be available alongside the existing “Add to Drive” button. Unfortunately it only works on JPEGs for the time being. Sorry PNG stans.It’s a good time to be getting a more convenient way to add images to Google Photos, because the service’s storage options are getting a big overhaul on June 1st. At that time, the service’s unlimited storage for “high quality” photos will disappear and will be replaced with a 15GB cap. Importantly, any... Continue reading…

Illustrations by Alex Castro / The Verge Nintendo could release its heavily rumored new version of the Switch in September or October, according to a report by Bloomberg. Manufacturing is reportedly planned to start as soon as July, and Bloomberg says the system may be announced before the E3 trade show, which kicks off in virtual form on June 12th.As Bloomberg notes, an announcement ahead of E3 would allow third-party publishers, as well as Nintendo itself, to show their games running on the new hardware. This version of the Switch is said to use more powerful silicon from Nvidia that works with DLSS technology, allowing for 4K output to a TV. It also reportedly has a 7-inch OLED display sourced from Samsung.Bloomberg says Nintendo’s suppliers are “confident” in their... Continue reading…

Square Enix has announced the latest mainline entry in the Dragon Quest series. Dragon Quest XII: The Flames of Fate was revealed on a livestream to celebrate the series’ 35th anniversary. Not much beyond the game’s logo and title was revealed, but series creator Yuji Horii hinted at some changes to the traditional turn-based battle system, and said Square Enix was aiming for a simultaneous worldwide release.Dragon Quest is the most popular RPG series in Japan. The last game, Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age, was released for the PlayStation 4 and 3DS in its home market in 2017, though the original Western release only came to the PS4 and PC. An updated version, Dragon Quest XI S, was released for the Nintendo Switch and later... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook won’t remove claims that COVID-19 was man-made anymore, according to a report from Politico that cites a Facebook spokesperson. The company altered its policy because of a renewed focus on the origins of the virus, including an order from President Joe Biden to his intelligence agencies to investigate the so-called lab-leak hypothesis.Facebook’s policy change was made “in consultation with public health experts,” that spokesperson told Politico. The social network’s policy mandates that false claims and conspiracy theories about the virus be removed.The company has been trying to stem the tide of misinformationMisinformation has often circulated on Facebook, including during the Ebola crisis in 2014. The company is under... Continue reading…

LeBron James wearing what appear to be Beats Studio Buds. | Image: LeBron James on Instagram Earlier this month, an unannounced pair of Beats wireless earbuds, apparently called the Beats Studio Buds, showed up in beta releases of iOS and tvOS. While those betas were a good start, a flood of new leaks — including actual photos of mystery earbuds from superstar athlete LeBron James — suggest that they could be available very soon.Here’s what we already knew: on May 17th, people digging into the iOS and tvOS 14.6 betas found evidence of the new headphones, with perhaps the clearest look at them coming from animations in the OS shared by MacRumors contributor Steve Moser (he has a whole thread of them here):

Twitter Spaces on the web. | Image: Twitter You’ll be able to join Twitter’s Clubhouse-like Spaces from desktop and mobile web browsers starting Wednesday, the company announced, making the company’s social audio rooms much more widely accessible. Previously, you could only join Spaces from Twitter’s iOS and Android apps.You can get a look at what a Spaces look like on the web in screenshots below, from Twitter. The image on the left shows what you’ll see before joining a Space. The one on the right shows a Space off to the side so you can continue scrolling through Twitter while you listen.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge In February, Sony revealed it was selling the PlayStation 5 at a loss — but that’s imminently about to change. The PS5 should hit break-even in June, and become profitable the very same month, according to a presentation the company shared with investors (PDF) during its investor day today.Needless to say, that’s fast — happening before the company has even managed to catch up with demand, in the midst of a global chip shortage. (We bemoaned the needless drama of buying a PS5 just days ago!) Mind you, this is for the standard PS5, the one where Sony has to supply a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray drive and pay as much as $8 per console in licensing fees, and charges you an extra $100 at retail. It’s not clear if Sony’s driveless PS5... Continue reading…

Photo illustration by Matthew Horwood/Getty Images Uber has finally recognized a union of its own drivers. Allow yourself that single moment of elation before we get to the rest of the details.GMB trade union in the UK (it’s not really an acronym for anything, as it was shortened from General, Municipal, Boilermakers’ and Allied Trade Union some 40 years ago) managed to clinch union recognition from the jaws of the famously labor-hostile app company today. As The Guardian reported, “GMB will have access to drivers’ meeting hubs [...] It will also be able to represent drivers if they lose access to the Uber app, and it will meet quarterly with management to discuss driver issues and concerns.”It’s not clear whether this arrangement hews closer to traditional union representation as we... Continue reading…

Image: Sandisk Western Digital, owner of the SanDisk brand, has announced a new product called the Pro-Dock 4, and it’s all I’ve ever wanted in a card reading solution: it lets you mix and match four card reading modules, which can all be read simultaneously, and connect them all to your computer using a single Thunderbolt 3 cable. This dock not only fills the hole that was left in my heart by Lexar’s Workflow hub, but it makes me completely forget it existed: the Workflow didn’t have Thunderbolt daisy-chaining or a 260W power supply for charging devices and accessories (though I will admit that Lexar’s SSD modules were kind of neat).SanDisk says it’ll be making modules for the dock that support CFast, CFexpress, Red’s Mini-Mags, CF, microSD, and SD... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Clubhouse has hired Justin Uberti, creator of the WebRTC standard and the Google Duo video chat app. He leaves Google after nearly 15 years at the company, where he was most recently the engineering lead for Google’s Stadia cloud gaming service and led the team that made the Stadia iOS web app.“Justin is a phenomenal engineering leader and one of the original inventors of WebRTC, on top of which Clubhouse is built,” Clubhouse co-founder and CTO Rohan Seth said in a statement. “There’s so much that goes into crafting a fantastic audio experience — the quality, the latency, the ability to use spatial distance when multiple speakers are talking. This will be a critical area of investment for us as we open Clubhouse to the whole world, and... Continue reading…

Members of the environmental group MilieuDefensie celebrate the verdict of the Dutch environmental organisation’s case against Royal Dutch Shell Plc, outside the Palace of Justice courthouse in The Hague, Netherlands, on Wednesday, May 26, 2021. Shell was ordered by a Dutch court to slash its emissions harder and faster than planned, dealing a blow to the oil giant that could have far reaching consequences for the rest of the global fossil fuel industry | Peter Boer/Bloomberg via Getty Images Fossil fuel companies are having a big reckoning with climate change this week. Shareholders for Exxon and Chevron voted for measures that could force them to take more responsibility for their emissions, while a Dutch court is forcing Shell to slash its pollution.Taken altogether, the actions reflect a growing push for the energy sector to phase out fossil fuels. Major oil companies had already taken some steps to at least appear to address climate change, but activists are pushing for more action on a faster timeline to meet the scale of the climate crisis.A growing push for the energy sector to phase out fossil fuelsClimate activist Bill McKibben called it a “watershed day,” adding that the ruling against Shell could be “g... Continue reading…

Elon Musk’s Boring Company started shuttling passengers through the twin tunnels it built underneath the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) this week, as part of a test to get the system ready for its full debut in June.Videos, images, and accounts shared around the internet by the people who showed up for the test offer the most coherent glimpse yet at Musk’s solution for traversing the LVCC campus. It is quite literally just Teslas being driven through two 0.8-mile tunnels — a far cry from the autonomous sled-and-shuttle ideas that Musk once proposed for The Boring Company.There are three stops to the “LVCC Loop” system. The stations at either end are above ground, while the one in the middle is at the same 30-foot depth as the... Continue reading…

Photo by Michele Doying / The Verge Iran is temporarily banning cryptocurrency mining after some of the country’s major cities experienced repeated blackouts. President Hassan Rouhani said that the ban would last until September 22nd.The country has experienced summer blackouts in years past, and while the current round of outages is mostly being blamed on a drought that’s affecting the country’s ability to generate hydroelectric power, it seems that the Iranian government is eager to cut down on any aggravating factors. Power-hungry cryptocurrency mining operations, for instance.According to the BBC, Iran operates a program where Bitcoin miners must register with with the government, pay extra for electricity, and sell their coins to the central bank. President Rouhani... Continue reading…

Image: Ford Ford will spend $30 billion on electric vehicles by 2025, and says 40 percent of its global fleet will be all-electric by 2030. The company is working on an all-electric versions of its Explorer and Lincoln Aviator SUVs. And it’s developing two new electric vehicle platforms: one that will power full-size pickup trucks, and one that can easily flex between all- and rear-wheel drive to fit multiple vehicle types.The company had previously committed $22 billion to EVs and had announced a goal to be all-electric in Europe by 2030.Ford is also creating a standalone business for its commercial vehicle division called Ford Pro. The company hopes that by offering more dedicated services to these customers, it can build on what is already a... Continue reading…

A company illustration shows astronauts staring at a fleet of conceptual lunar rovers. | Image: Lockheed Martin Lockheed Martin and General Motors unveiled plans on Wednesday to build an autonomous buggy-like vehicle that future astronauts can use to zip around the surface of the Moon. The two companies collaborated to pitch a conceptual Lunar Terrain Vehicle to NASA’s Artemis program, a Moon exploration campaign that calls for various robots, vehicles, and scientific bases to be planted on the lunar surface within the next decade.Ahead of a presentation Wednesday morning, Lockheed and GM said in a joint press release that the vehicle will use the automaker’s autonomous driving technology and is “being designed to traverse significantly farther distances” than Apollo-era buggies. Just like those Moon buggies from the ‘70s, the Lockheed-GM concept... Continue reading…

Activists outside demanding a vote to pass ‘The Green New Deal’ in Washington, D.C. March 26, 2019. | Photo by Aurora Samperio/NurPhoto via Getty Images Nearly two-thirds of Americans now believe that climate change is an urgent problem to address, but they aren’t nearly as enthusiastic about giving up oil and gas, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center.Only one-third of people surveyed supported completely phasing out fossil fuels. Less than half of respondents are okay with phasing out new gas-powered vehicles. Taking those steps might seem drastic, considering fossil fuels currently make up about 80 percent of the US energy mix. But phasing out most, if not all, fossil fuels is pretty much in line with what’s needed to meet the scale of the climate crisis, according to climate experts.Now that many Americans are taking the threats posed by climate change seriously,... Continue reading…

Photo: Netflix Jeff Lemire’s Sweet Tooth is a comic book about a young boy surviving in a world ravaged by a pandemic. He also happens to be a “hybrid,” a new breed of half-human, half-animal creature that began to appear alongside the deadly sickness. It’s a dark story, one that had the potential to be incredibly bleak and uncomfortable when translated to television. That’s particularly true now, as the real world continues to deal with its own pandemic. For the team adapting the story for an upcoming series on Netflix, all of these factors combined to create a slightly different approach. “It made us lean more into the hope,” executive producer Amanda Burrell says of the show.Netflix’s eight-episode Sweet Tooth series will debut on June 4th. It’s a... Continue reading…

Photo by Richard Bord/Getty Images Airbnb doesn’t want you to forget about Airbnb, especially when you’re planning post-pandemic vacations. So on Monday, the company made multiple announcements all seemingly designed to get people renting, traveling, and, crucially, choosing Airbnb to do so. It announced flexible booking, which lets people search across days, weeks, or months to plan a trip, as well as more location flexibility when looking for a place to stay. It also launched a faster onboarding process for hosts, during a time when competitors like Vrbo are trying to poach them, as well as a new service for Super Hosts that’ll allow them to reach out to the Airbnb team directly for support issues.“We just think there’s this huge inflection point in travel brought on... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Waze has a new CEO: Neha Parikh, the former president of Hotwire and a board member of Carvana. Parikh replaces Noam Bardin, who stepped down as CEO of the Google-owned navigation service last November after leading the company for 12 years.Parikh will join Waze as CEO starting in June, the company says. She is a veteran of online hospitality brand Expedia, having served in a variety of positions at two of the corporation’s subsidiaries: Hotels.com, where she ended as senior vice president for global brands and retails, and flight and hotel booking service Hotwire, where she is currently president.As Hotwire’s youngest and first female president, Parikh “led a return to growth by revamping the business model, reshaping the product,... Continue reading…

Possibly the most ambitious Pokémon game to date will be available early next year. Today Nintendo announced that Pokémon Legends: Arceus will be launching on the Nintendo Switch on January 28th, 2022. The game was first announced in February.Legends looks to be a big change for Pokémon, a franchise that’s become known for its slowly evolving roleplaying games. It’s an open-world RPG that takes place in a much older version of the Sinnoh region, before the time of pokémon trainers and organized competitions. In addition to the new setting, the experience also looks to be much more seamless compared to the main games, as Nintendo says players will be able to go out into the wild to “study the pokémon’s behaviors, sneak up to them, then... Continue reading…

You can now hide like counts on Instagram and Facebook. After years of testing on both platforms, Facebook and Instagram have settled on an opt-in experience for hiding like counts to allow people to disable seeing them across all posts and an option to hide their own public like counts from others.Instagram is enabling this feature after years of tests and pressure from experts to make changes to its platform. The service was ranked as “the most detrimental to young people’s mental health and wellbeing” in a 2017 study by the Royal Society for Public Health UK. Experts have argued that removing a like button or like counts could help reduce anxiety and social pressures for some Facebook and Instagram users.“We tested hiding like... Continue reading…

Walk walk fashion baby | Disney It will delight you even as you question its need to exist Continue reading…

Image: Metro Goldwyn Mayer Amazon has reached a deal to acquire the film and TV company MGM for $8.45 billion, the companies announced today. It’s a significant acquisition for the e-commerce giant, and it means it will own a library of content that’s reported to consist of around 4,000 films and 17,000 hours of TV. The acquisition is likely to help Amazon attract even more big-spending Prime subscribers as its Prime Video service competes with the likes of Netflix and Disney Plus.MGM is perhaps most notable for being the Hollywood studio behind the James Bond and Rocky franchises, but its library runs the gamut from classic films like 12 Angry Men to modern TV shows like The Handmaid’s Tale and Vikings. MGM’s library also includes unscripted TV shows like The... Continue reading…

The S2721DGF boasts everything you need in a gaming monitor, including a 165Hz refresh rate and HDR. | Image: Dell Dell’s Summer Sale Event is officially underway, and if you’re looking for a 1440p panel to support your newfound gaming habits, the Dell 27 S2721DGF Gaming Monitor is an excellent bet. The 27-inch peripheral is currently on sale at Dell for $380 — more than $200 off the initial list price — and it touts a 165Hz refresh rate, HDR, and support for both FreeSync and G-Sync, helping to smooth gameplay and reduce unwanted tearing. A 1ms response time and decent port selection round out the monitor’s feature set alongside the sleek accent lighting on the back, which, like it or not, will douse your wall in a subtle shade of blue.Mass Effect’s legendary starship may be available to No Man’s Sky for a limited time, but if you truly want to... Continue reading…

A selection of app reviews detailing the scammy behavior. | Image: Kosta Eleftheriou / App Store App developer and scam app hunter Kosta Eleftheriou’s latest discovery is a real doozy, an iOS app that refuses to function before you give it at least a 3-star review in the App Store. Although the UPNP Xtreme app — which claimed to let users stream video to their TVs — now appears to have been pulled, we were able to verify that it generates the App Store rating box the second it opens. You can’t dismiss the ratings box, nor can you tap the 1 or 2-star ratings, Eleftheriou said. We verified this behavior, but some other users report they were able to dismiss the dialog box or leave a lower rating.This is just the latest scammy app to have been unearthed by Elefheriou, who’s been waging a war against them after his own Apple Watch... Continue reading…

China is a key market for Tesla. | Photo by NOEL CELIS/AFP via Getty Images Tesla says it’s established a data center in China to store and process information produced by its vehicles locally. The announcement, made on Weibo, comes as the US carmaker faces pressure from Chinese authorities over fears its cars could be used for spying.“Car data security is very important,” said Tesla (via Google Translate). “All data generated from the sales of vehicles in the Chinese mainland market will be stored in China.”Telsa cars are reportedly banned from Chinese military sitesReports from The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg said Tesla’s cars have been banned from Chinese military sites, and that “military staff and employees of key state-owned companies” are prohibited from owning the vehicles. Chinese authorities... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is now claiming the performance crown in the desktop browser battle. The software maker has been gradually adding new features to Edge over the past year to improve performance and launch times. These additions have allowed Microsoft to claim itself the performance winner, even as Google releases Chrome 91 today.“Microsoft Edge will be the best performing browser on Windows 10 when Microsoft Edge version 91 releases later this week,” says the Microsoft Edge team in a blog post. “So, why can we say this? It’s simple: startup boost and sleeping tabs.”Microsoft first started rolling out its new startup boost feature in Edge back in March, with claims that it makes browser launches up to 41 percent faster. The new sleeping tabs... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp is suing India’s government over new internet rules it claims are unconstitutional and will “severely undermine the privacy” of its users, The New York Times reports. The Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code, which was introduced in February and comes into effect today, contains a requirement that messaging apps identify the “first originator of information” when asked. But WhatsApp, which boasts nearly 400 million users in its largest market of India, argues that doing so would require it to trace every message sent on its service, violating users’ right to privacy.“Civil society and technical experts around the world have consistently argued that a requirement to “trace”... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge In 2019, Sony quietly established a subsidiary dedicated to researching artificial intelligence. What exactly the company plans to do with this tech has always been a bit unclear, but a recent corporate strategy meeting offers a little more information.“Sony AI [...] has begun a collaboration with PlayStation that will make game experiences even richer and more enjoyable,” say notes from a recent strategy presentation given by Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida. “By leveraging reinforcement learning, we are developing Game AI Agents that can be a player’s in-game opponent or collaboration partner.”This is pretty much what you’d expect from a partnership between PlayStation and Sony’s AI team, but it’s still good to have confirmation!... Continue reading…

Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge The US has formally removed Xiaomi from its trading blacklist. The US District Court for the District of Columbia issued a final order yesterday that vacated the Department of Defense’s designation of Xiaomi as a “Communist Chinese military company” (CCMC), which would have prohibited Americans from investing in the Chinese consumer tech giant.“The Company is grateful for the trust and support of its global users, partners, employees and shareholders,” a Xiaomi spokesperson says in a statement to The Verge. “The Company reiterates that it is an open, transparent, publicly traded, independently operated and managed corporation. The Company will continue to provide reliable consumer electronics products and services to users, and to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amnesty International is teaming up with 38 other human rights groups and individuals to call for a halt to Google’s plans to set up an enterprise cloud business in Saudi Arabia because of concerns over the country’s human rights track record.The joint statement — signed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Media Matters for Democracy, among others — calls for Google to end its plans in Saudi Arabia until the company conducts a public human rights assessment and makes it clear what kinds of government requests for data it won’t honor. Even more important, the letter writers state, is conducting that investigation in the open, actually consulting with the people Google could inadvertently help Saudi Arabia to hurt, and speaking to... Continue reading…