The Verge

Image: Samsung The Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE (Fan Edition) could be officially launching soon according to a new German product page spotted by WinFuture. The tablet appears to be a renamed version of the previously leaked “Galaxy Tab S7 Plus Lite” that first made the rounds in March 2021. The Galaxy Tab S7 FE is the first Fan Edition of one of Samsung’s tablets, a tweaked version of the earlier iPad Pro-inspired 12.4-inch Tab S7 Plus.While the Tab S7 FE shares the same 12.4-inch screen size as the older Tab S7 Plus, it appears to be using a TFT LCD display, like the 11-inch Tab S7, rather than the OLED found in the Tab S7 Plus. Another cost-saving measure is found in the processor: the Tab S7 FE has a Snapdragon 750G octa-core processor and 4GB of... Continue reading…

Are you planning to stick with Google Photos when its free unlimited storage disappears on June 1st? If you’re anything like me, you’re probably still struggling to figure out whether you can afford to procrastinate that decision a little bit longer — and today, Google has made that reckoning a little bit easier.First off, the company’s finally telling it like it is: Google will no longer pretend its compressed, lower-quality photos and videos are “High quality,” something that would have saved me a lengthy explanation just last week! (After June 1st, existing Google Pixel phone owners still get unlimited “High quality” photos, but if you’re on, say, a Samsung or iPhone instead, it’s not like there was ever a “Normal quality” photo... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A Tesla Model Y was photographed in Florida sporting rooftop lidar sensors made by buzzy sensor manufacturer Luminar. The sighting caused a bit of a stir among Tesla watchers, given Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s well-established disdain for the laser sensors commonly used by autonomous vehicle companies to create 3D maps of their environment.Even more notably, Tesla has reportedly entered a partnership with Luminar to use lidar for “testing and developing,” according to Bloomberg. What exactly this partnership entails we don’t know for sure — neither company is commenting. But it could point to some shortcomings in the technology Tesla is using to power its “Full Self-Driving” driver assist feature.The vehicle was spotted last week in Palm... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Peloton has announced plans to invest $400 million in a US factory to produce its connected bikes and treadmills, located in Troy Township, Ohio — about half an hour south of Toledo. The facility, which is planned to be approximately a million square feet, is called the Peloton Output Park. Peloton hopes it will eventually lead to lower prices for its products, though its CEO John Foley admits that could take a few years to happen.Currently, Peloton mainly manufactures its fitness equipment in Taiwan, while many of its customers are in the US. This caused expensive shipping delays earlier this year as the company ran into both heightened demand and long shipping times resulting from the pandemic. The company’s factory announcement is... Continue reading…

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Apple is releasing its latest iOS 14.6 update today, and it’s largely focused on audio improvements. This new OS update will allow Apple Music subscribers to enable lossless audio or Dolby Atmos once it’s available next month, and it also debuts Apple Podcasts subscriptions.Podcasts users can now subscribe to content in the app for extra perks like ad-free and bonus content, as well as early access. Apple is also improving the Podcasts app with the ability to mark all episodes as played, recover old episodes, and remove downloads.iOS 14.6 includes a number of other quality-of-life improvements. If you’re an AirTag owner, iOS 14.6 includes the option to add an email address as a contact method for when the item tracker is in lost mode.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Qualcomm has announced a second-generation Snapdragon 7c Arm-powered processor that’s designed to be used inside entry-level Windows PCs and Chromebooks. The biggest change to the Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 (the official name) appears to be a clock speed bump, which Anandtech reports is a jump from 2.4GHz to 2.55GHz. And like the original Snapdragon 7c, it offers integrated LTE connectivity so you can connect to cellular networks, and Qualcomm promises it will support “multi-day battery life.”The first device with the chip is set to arrive “this summer,” Qualcomm said in a press release, and Lenovo has already promised to release new devices using the 7c Gen 2 “later this year.”More chipmakers are increasingly making Arm-based chips, which... Continue reading…

Photo by Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Monday that bars social media companies like Twitter and Facebook from “knowingly” deplatforming politicians.The bill, SB 7072, was proposed in February, weeks after former President Donald Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter after the deadly right-wing riot at the US Capitol. The law bars social media platforms from banning Floridian political candidates and authorizes the Florida Election Commission to impose fines if these candidates were to be deplatformed. The fines range from $250,000 per day for statewide office candidates and $25,000 per day for non-statewide offices.“This will lead to more speech, not less speech,” DeSantis said during a press conference at the Florida... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Police in India raided the offices of Twitter India in Delhi and Gurgaon on Monday as part of an investigation into why tweets about a so-called “toolkit” of information about the coronavirus were labeled as manipulated media, The Indian Express reported. An officer told the media outlet that police had sent a notice to Twitter demanding an explanation for the label on a ruling party member’s tweet, and that it was seeking “information Twitter has about the toolkit and why they chose to give the ‘manipulated media’ label.”Twitter declined to comment Monday. TechCrunch reported that there were no Twitter employees in the offices at the time of the raid, which occurred late Monday evening India Standard Time. Journalist Aditya Raj Kaul... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google announced last Tuesday that it developed a new artificial intelligence tool to help people identify skin conditions. Like any other symptom-checking tool, it’ll face questions over how accurately it can perform that task. But experts say it should also be scrutinized for how it influences people’s behavior: does it make them more likely to go to the doctor? Less likely?These types of symptom-checking tools — which usually clarify that they can’t diagnose health conditions but can give people a read on what might be wrong — have proliferated over the past decade. Some have millions of users and are valued at tens of millions of dollars. Dozens popped up over the past year to help people check to see if they might have COVID-19... Continue reading…

Police analyzed the palm and fingerprints in the photo to identify the suspect. | Image: Merseyside Police It’s generally a good idea to be careful about the photos you share online. Share a photo of your vaccination card, for example, and you risk revealing your full name and date of birth, which opens you up to the possibility of identity theft. But you might want to be even more careful if you’re a drug dealer involved in selling heroin and cocaine. Even an innocent picture of a block of cheese can contain enough personal information to help convict you.We’ve got the UK’s Merseyside Police to thank for the worrying revelation, the Liverpool Echo reports, after they successfully identified drug dealer Carl Stewart (39, of Gem Street, Liverpool) and convicted him of conspiracy to supply cocaine, heroin, MDMA, and ketamine with the help of a... Continue reading…

Image: Anker Anker’s GaN (gallium nitride) chargers are some of the best around, offering tiny sizes but powerful charging capabilities. Now, the company is introducing its second-generation GaN-based chargers: the Anker Nano II lineup.The new Nano II chargers use what Anker calls its “GaN II” technology, the company’s second-generation version of the gallium nitride-based components, which Anker says offer a 20 percent increase in working efficiency,” which translates to less heat and even smaller chargers than before. Image: Anker Gallium nitride is an increasingly popular replacement for silicon components in electrical devices, thanks to a wider band gap than silicon. That means it can sustain higher voltages at higher... Continue reading…

Twitter lists can be a wonderful resource: they can help you categorize different companies, track what’s happening with your friends or family, follow accounts that you enjoy, or keep up with news sources you like to follow. And being on others’ Twitter lists can help amplify your own tweets.However, occasionally, you could find yourself on a Twitter list that you’d rather not be associated with. Perhaps somebody misread one of your tweets and thought that you agreed with a certain point of view — and you don’t. Or it could happen that somebody who disagrees with you puts you on a list in order to target you for harassment.Journalist Theresa W. Carey has suggested that it’s a good idea to check your Twitter account regularly to make... Continue reading…

OLED screen movie machine Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Netflix is announcing a new week-long virtual event, “Geeked Week,” where it will share information about upcoming titles like The Witcher, The Sandman, and The Cuphead Show. During Geeked Week, you can expect to see “a wide array of exclusive news, new trailers, live art, drop-ins from your favorite stars and much more.” And fortunately, you won’t have long to wait: Geeked Week is taking place in just a couple weeks, from June 7th through the 11th.If you want a preview of what’s to come, check out Netflix’s poster below, which also mentions The Umbrella Academy, Resident Evil (unclear if this is referring to the upcoming anime or the live-action series), Sweet Tooth, and Cowboy Bebop. Image: Netflix Netflix’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge AT&T CEO John Stankey said Monday that the company’s focus on its connectivity business in the US meant it didn’t have the global reach to grow a global streaming business with WarnerMedia, and the company decided it was “time to unleash the media assets” of WarnerMedia to Discovery.AT&T announced on May 17th that it would spin off its WarnerMedia business to merge it with TV company Discovery. The resulting entity, which has yet to be named and is still awaiting regulatory approval, will be a competitor in the cable space and for streaming content giants like Netflix and Disney; WarnerMedia owns HBO, CNN, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT, and the Warner Bros. movie studio, while Discovery has a number of channels that focus more on reality... Continue reading…

Photo by JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP via Getty Images Tesla has been ordered to pay 136,000 kroner ($16,000) each to thousands of customers in Norway for slowing down charging speeds, according to Nettavisen via Electrek.A 2019 software update was found to have affected the battery life in Tesla Model S vehicles manufactured between 2013 and 2015, sparking a complaint by dozens of Norwegian Tesla owners to the country’s conciliation council, according to Nettavisen. As a result, customers were reporting diminished range and slower charging speeds at the company’s Supercharger network. Tesla did not file a response, and the case was decided in the plaintiffs’ favor on April 29th.Tesla is ordered to pay each customer roughly $16,000 to settle the complaint. Nettavisen notes that this... Continue reading…

Robert McDaniel’s troubles began with a knock on the door. It was a weekday in mid-2013, as he made lunch in the crowded three-bedroom house where he lives with his grandmother and several of his adult siblings.When he went to answer the door, McDaniel discovered not one person, but a cohort of visitors: two police officers in uniform, a neighbor working with the police, and a muscular guy in shorts and a T-shirt sporting short, graying hair.Police officers weren’t a new sight for McDaniel. They often drove down his tree-lined street in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago making stops and arrests. Out of the 775 homicides tracked by the Chicago Sun-Times in 2020, 72 of them happened in Austin. That’s almost 10 percent of the... Continue reading…

After a brief teaser earlier in May, Marvel has finally revealed a full-length trailer for Eternals, set to hit theaters on November 5th. In addition to being the latest entry in the MCU, Eternals is the first film from Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao since winning Best Picture and Best Director wins for Nomadland earlier this year.The trailer doesn’t actually do much to showcase the plot of what Eternals will be about, instead focusing on the civilization-spanning scope of the superhero team and its members throughout human history.“We have watched and guided. We have helped them progress and seen them accomplish wonders,” Salma Hayek’s Ajak muses, as we see the Eternals help humanity raise crops, establish cities, and war... Continue reading…

The Block Island wind farm, from Montauk Point on Long Island, New York, on April 16th, 2021. | Photo by Mark Harrington / Newsday RM via Getty Images GE shared some new details today of a concept that might advance the development of futuristic floating wind farms. Floating turbines are engineering marvels — or nightmares, depending on how you see it — that could make massive swathes of deep ocean available to offshore wind development.Make massive swathes of deep ocean available to offshore windWhile they hold a lot of potential, the floating behemoths have so far been too costly to deploy at commercial scale. And because they’re floating, they also face a barrage of technical challenges that turbines fixed to the seabed don’t have to weather. GE hopes to solve some of those problems through advanced turbine controls that it’s developing alongside consulting firm Glosten. They’re... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon has a new deal for new and existing unlimited plan subscribers starting May 25th: up to a year of Apple Arcade or Google Play Pass, free of charge. Specifically, customers who pay for the Play More Unlimited and Get More Unlimited plans get 12 months of either app subscription service for free, while all other unlimited plans get six months. It’s worth noting that both free options are longer than the ones Apple or Google offer themselves.The $80 per month Play More plan or $90 per month Get More plan (that’s the price for a single line) also come with other benefits to sweeten the deal. Play More comes with an “unlimited” mobile hotspot with up to 15GB of 5G data, the Disney Bundle (Hulu, Disney Plus, ESPN Plus), six months of... Continue reading…

SiriusXM SiriusXM wants to reach the youth, and starting today, it’s going to do so through the cultural cachet of TikTok. Sirius, which owns Pandora and the podcasting company Stitcher, announced a new partnership with the social video app today that’ll bring TikTok-popularized music to the satellite radio provider. TikTok Radio, a new music channel, will broadcast trending sounds through the SiriusXM app, browser, and connected devices. Sirius says tuning in should sound like swiping through TikTok’s “For You” page.It’s also using the partnership to launch a new Pandora series, called TikTok Tastemakers, that’ll involve popular TikTok creators, like Bella Poarch, hosting and curating playlists with their favorite songs alongside commentary.... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Metro Exodus has become one of the first PC games to support the PS5 DualSense controller’s haptic feedback and adaptive triggers thanks to a recent patch. Although many PC games already support the PS5 controller’s basic features, with Valve adding support for it to its Steam Input API last year, Metro Exodus now supports its advanced haptics, as well as its trigger features, which add extra resistance depending on what you’re doing in-game.Videos posted by Twitter user @mrdomino_ and VGC’s Andy Robinson show the feature in action, including showing the controller’s right trigger springing back with the recoil from various weapons. It’s nothing new compared to what we’ve seen from native PS5 games like Returnal, but it’s great to see... Continue reading…

Image: Ford Ford has revealed a version of its new F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck aimed specifically at commercial customers. It’s called the F-150 Lightning Pro, and it starts at $39,974 for a version with an estimated 230 miles of range. Extended-range versions of the truck, which are expected to get 300 miles on a full battery, will start at $49,974.Much like the retail version of the electric F-150, the Lightning Pro stands to win Ford a lot of business as long as the company executes well when the truck starts shipping in 2022. Fleets all over the country are already considering a switch to electric vehicles, either to get ahead of zero-emission guidelines at the state or federal level, or in an attempt to take advantage of what should... Continue reading…

Samsung’s Smart Monitor range is expanding. The company’s line of Tizen-powered smart computer displays now includes a 43-inch 4K M7 model as well as a 24-inch 1080p M5, marking the biggest and smallest Smart Monitors to be made available to date.Samsung introduced the Smart Monitor last year and describes it as a “do-it-all” display designed for both work and entertainment. The screens have built-in speakers and smart TV functionality through Samsung’s Tizen platform, meaning you can run video apps like Netflix directly on the device, as well as remote desktop access and productivity software like Office 365. The Smart Monitors have a remote control that works with Alexa, Google Assistant, and Bixby, and there’s also wireless support... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images A social media campaign by pro-Palestine activists has pushed down the ranking for Facebook’s app in Apple and Google’s app stores, NBC News reported. The activists are seeking to protest Facebook’s alleged censorship of Palestinian accounts on its platform, and are instructing people to leave Facebook’s app a one-star review.According to NBC News, Facebook is treating the situation as a high-priority issue internally; one software engineer wrote in a post on an internal Facebook message board that “users are upset with our handling of the situation,” adding that the users “have started protesting by leaving 1-star reviews.” Facebook has reached out to have the reviews removed, but so far, Apple has declined the request to remove the... Continue reading…

Trese comes to Netflix in June | Netflix Still reeling from that shocking ending to last week’s Mare of Easttown? Me too! I have literally no idea what to expect in tonight’s episode or from next week’s finale. I can’t say the same for Army of the Dead, a movie I really, really wanted to like but which felt really predictable. I found myself wishing the entire movie could have been as wild as its opening credits. Army of the Dead looks spectacular (except perhaps for the digitally-added Tig Notaro character), but could have done away with a few of the rag-tag mercenary characters and tightened things up a bit.Here are this week’s trailers:TreseThis long-awaited adaptation of the award-winning Filipino comic of the same name, Trese is the story of a woman who protects... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Securing a PS5 is not easy, and it feels like it could be. With a combination of greed and incompetence, the stores selling PS5s in the United States have transformed the process into a weirdly dramatic affair where you’re forced to join Discords and follow overly exuberant guys on Twitter in the hopes that they’ll give you a heads-up on a PS5 “drop” — a store making a big shipment of PS5s available for purchase. These stores have turned every drop into an event, when really, buying a PS5 should be as easy as buying a pepper grinder.The other day, a package was sitting in the vestibule of my apartment building. I noticed my name on the label and mentally cataloged any recent purchases I may have made or packages someone mentioned... Continue reading…

A pricey phone built to withstand the elements Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge India’s government has sent notices to social media platforms ordering them to take down content that refers to an “Indian variant” of the COVID-19 virus, Reuters reported. The letter from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology sent Friday was not made public, but was viewed by several news outlets.It was not clear which social media outlets received the letter, but India’s government has recently ordered Twitter to remove tweets and Facebook and Instagram to take down posts that were critical of its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.“There is no such variant of COVID-19 scientifically cited as such by the World Health Organisation (WHO). WHO has not associated the term ‘Indian Variant’ with the B.1.617 variant of... Continue reading…

Photo by Avery White for The Verge Once again, Google is hitting the reset button, combining with Samsung’s Tizen wearable operating system for a new wearable OS, tentatively called “Wear.”The company is throwing in the towel on Wear OS. It’s trying yet again, this time with Samsung’s Tizen OS helping to fill in the gaps that Google, for whatever reason, can’t. It’s theoretically good news for Android owners interested in a decent smartwatch — but one that’s damning of Google’s lackluster efforts in the smartwatch space to date.In the years since Google first introduced Wear OS (neé Android Wear), there’s never been a truly good Android-powered smartwatch. Samsung’s Tizen-powered watches have been the best option for years, but they’re ultimately Samsung watches. They... Continue reading…

This machine plays marbles. | Image: Wintergatan Swedish band Wintergatan may be widely known for its Marble Machine music video (which featured a machine dropping marbles to play drums, a bass, and other instruments), but today I learned that they’re building a bigger, better version, and documenting the entire process on YouTube. It’s called the Marble Machine X, and it’s driven by a motor instead of a hand crank, is being built by an entire team of people, and, hopefully will be able to go on tour and be played on stage when it’s finished.Wintergartan also produced a build log of the first machine, but this new project is way grander in scope, offering a deeper look at the creative process that leads to... well, building a massive musical instrument that uses marbles. The band put... Continue reading…

VSS Unity in space over New Mexico on May 22nd. | Virgin Galactic Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic completed its first successful space flight in more than two years on Saturday, with its crewed VSS Unity spacecraft carried to an altitude of more than 44,000 feet before gliding safely back to Earth. It marked the first spaceflight from New Mexico, making it the third US state to launch humans into space. The Zia sun symbol of New Mexico’s state flag was displayed on the outside of the ship.Virgin’s VMS Eve carrier aircraft took off from Spaceport America in New Mexico at about 10:35AM ET with Unity aboard. About 10 minutes before its release, Unity switched to its own battery power, and conducted flight control and electrical checks. Once released by Eve, Unity’s pilots C.J. Sturckow and Dave Mackay... Continue reading…

Flying off into the sunset | Aerion Aerion Supersonic, which had plans to build silent business jets that would travel twice as fast as most commercial airplanes, is shutting down operations. First reported by Florida Today, Aerion, which had backing from Boeing, said it was unable to raise the money to build its AS2 supersonic jet.“The AS2 supersonic business jet program meets all market, technical, regulatory and sustainability requirements and the market for a new supersonic segment of general aviation has been validated with $11.2 billion in sales backlog for the AS2,” the company said in an statement emailed to The Verge on Saturday.“However, in the current financial environment, it has proven hugely challenging to close on the scheduled and necessary large new... Continue reading…

Getty Images Chinese autonomous vehicle startup Pony.ai has received a permit from California’s Department of Motor Vehicles to test its driverless cars without human safety drivers behind the wheel on specified streets in three cities.Pony has been authorized to test autonomous vehicles with safety drivers in California since 2017, but the new permit will let it test six autonomous vehicles without safety drivers on specific streets in Fremont, Alameda County; Milpitas, Santa Clara County; and Irvine, Orange County. According to the DMV, the vehicles are designed to be driven on roads with speed limits of 45 miles per hour or less, in clear weather and light precipitation. The first testing will be in Fremont and Milpitas on weekdays between 10AM... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge In a new support document on its website, Apple dives a little deeper into the details around the upcoming launch of lossless audio on Apple Music.Apple now says that both the HomePod and HomePod Mini will support lossless audio after a future software update. That’ll be good news to people who’ve invested in one or a pair of Apple’s smart speakers. Two HomePods grouped in stereo playing a lossless source? Yeah, that’s going to sound wonderful. Apple isn’t yet giving any timetable for when this software update will be released, however.The document also clarifies that the Apple TV 4K will only support standard lossless audio when the ALAC files become available in June. Apple has said that in most cases, the “Hi-Res Lossless” tier... Continue reading…

The Epic v. Apple trial was bookended by Tims. Epic Games called its CEO Tim Sweeney as the first witness nearly three weeks ago. Yesterday, Apple called Tim Cook as the last to take the stand, before both sides make their final case to a judge on Monday. Cook was supposed to bring home Apple’s defense of its ecosystem. He did it by laying out Apple’s most high-minded principles — but also its hard financial calculations.Epic v. Apple covers two separate issues: whether the market for in-app purchases within the App Store is unfairly monopolistic, and whether iOS itself is a monopoly that should be opened up to third-party stores and side-loaded apps. Cook addressed both with an appeal to user safety and privacy. “Privacy from our point... Continue reading…

Riot Games The 2021 League of Legends World Championship will be held in Shenzhen, China, Riot Games announced late Friday. The Worlds Final will be at the Universiade Sports Centre, a 60,000 capacity stadium that’s home to the Shenzhen FC football (soccer) club, on November 6th.“We’re extremely excited to push the boundaries of entertainment and sport this year with Worlds 2021 and define the next 10 years of LoL Esports,” John Needham, Global Head of Esports for Riot Games said in a statement. “Shenzhen is China’s most competitive and innovative city with thousands of high-tech startups and entrepreneurial pursuits, so we felt that it was the perfect landscape to host our Finals.”

Comics have never been bigger: with Marvel TV shows, DC movies, and indie adaptations growing by the day, comic books have never been more prominent in pop culture. This biweekly Verge column recommends comic series new and old, whether you’re a longtime fan or a newcomer.Haunted house stories are usually pretty dreary. It helps with the horror: a bleak old house covered in shadows so that you can’t see what’s around the corner. But Home Sick Pilots goes in a different direction. It’s still dark and spooky, but it’s also incredibly vibrant — thanks in large part to its punk rock edge.What is it? Home Sick Pilots is an ongoing series from Image Comics — the run is currently five issues deep — about a girl named Amida, her band, and a... Continue reading…

The Tile Mate features excellent Bluetooth range and, unlike AirTags, Android compatibility. | Image: Tile At The Verge, we strive to bring you the best deals we can find — after all, not everyone has the time to comb through endless product listings and retailer pages. The past week has seen some good buys, including deals on the iPhone 11 Pro and the best noise-canceling headphones you can buy, but many of the week’s top deals will continue through the weekend. Right now, for instance, you can save $24 on the second-gen Apple Pencil and score Tile’s latest Bluetooth tracker at its lowest price in months. It’s the weekend, y’all. Have at it.The Android-friendly Tile Mate is now $5 off across the boardLately, it feels Apple’s AirTags have stolen all the thunder when it comes to Bluetooth trackers. And while they might be a better fit for... Continue reading…

A woman at a vaccination site in Florida. The site in Immokalee, FL was set up to reach seasonal farmworkers, and other people who might not have as much access to traditional vaccination efforts. | Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images In the US, COVID-19 vaccines are free, but it turns out that money is still a big barrier to vaccination.See, even though the vaccines don’t cost a thing, it still takes time to go and get a shot and potentially recover from any side effects. For working adults, that may mean taking time off work — and that isn’t something that everyone can afford to do.Black and Hispanic people are particularly concerned about the tradeoff between missing work and getting the vaccine, according to new results from research published by the Kaiser Family Foundation this week. People in both demographics are more likely than their white counterparts to work lower-paying jobs, which may not offer as much paid leave for things like illness.Those... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Starting next week, streaming platform Twitch will add more than 350 new community tags to its platform related to gender, sexual orientation, race, nationality, ability, and mental health, the company said in a new blog post. The list of tags will include transgender, Black, disabled, veteran, and Vtuber, Twitch said, and it will remove the “ally “ references from its LGBTQIA tag, in favor of a new standalone ally tag.The platform thanked its trans community for pushing for a transgender tag, and admitted “the simple truth is we should have done this sooner.” Twitch reportedly had resisted adding a transgender tag over concerns about targeted harassment.“When we launched tags in 2018, we did so to boost discovery, to help creators... Continue reading…

An image taken by the navigation camera of China’s Zhurong rover on the surface of Mars when it landed on May 15th. | Photo by CNS/CNSA/AFP via Getty Images China became the second country to successfully deploy a vehicle on Mars on Saturday, and the first to do so on its inaugural visit to the Red Planet. Reuters reported that the solar-powered Zhurong rover drove down the ramp of its landing capsule on to the surface of Mars at about 10:40 AM Beijing time.Zhurong first landed on Mars earlier this month and started its journey on Mars’ surface on Utopia Planitia, a smooth plain where NASA’s Viking 2 lander touched down in 1976. That’s more than 1,200 miles from the Jezero Crater where the US rover Perseverance touched down in February. A third rover, NASA’s Curiosity, which landed on Mars in 2012, was spotted by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter climbing up Mars’ Mont Mercou last month, S... Continue reading…

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge It’s safe to say that no company in existence today that has more than a couple of employees can exist without a knowledgeable IT support person or team. When you’re trying to run a website, create a solid technological structure, and keep things running even at the most stressful of times, a strong IT support team can make sure that things don’t go completely haywire at the worst time — or, if it does, that somebody is there to fix it.The Verge is certainly no different, and so we asked one of the members of Vox Media’s IT team — Eric Arredondo, IT administrator — to tell us a bit about himself and his job.What do you do for Vox Media?I am an IT administrator for our IT service desk team. I help manage and support the internal... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge We have poked a considerable amount of fun at the Apple TV’s Siri Remote over the years, and we’re pleased to say it’s finally fixed — except for the headsmacking decision not to stick the company’s AirTag UWB locator technology into one of the few gadgets absolutely, positively guaranteed to get lost in your couch cushions someday. Why?Today, Apple VP Tim Twerdahl answered that burning question in perhaps the most unsatisfactory way imaginable: simply, that the new TV remote’s thick enough you shouldn’t need to worry about that much anymore.Here’s the whole exchange between Twerdahl and MobileSyrup’s Patrick O’Rourke:

Image: Kotaku Kotaku has revealed an Easter egg that’s been hidden on the original Xbox for almost twenty years, after a developer who worked on the console sent in a tip. The Easter egg, which has apparently remained secret until now, can show you the Xbox Dashboard Team’s names after you follow a byzantine set of steps (as is par for the course when it comes to some video game secrets).Kotaku was able to find someone with a working Xbox who could actually carry out those steps, which you can see in the publication’s video below. If you’ve got one of the consoles, you can try it out for yourself by ripping a CD as a soundtrack and calling it “Timmyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!” (using 26 “y”s to reach the maximum amount of characters allowed). After... Continue reading…

Tim Cook is seen through a window of the federal courthouse in San Francisco | Photo by Philip Pacheco/Getty Images Apple called CEO Tim Cook to conclude three weeks of testimony in Epic v. Apple — and with the end of the trial approaching, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers engaged Cook in a surprisingly tense exchange over Apple’s business model.Rogers noted that most of Apple’s App Store revenue comes from games, and she asked Cook why developers can’t use other payment methods to sell in-app purchases, or at least tell users they can make those transactions elsewhere. “If they wanted to go and get a cheaper Battle Pass or V-Bucks, and they don’t know they’ve got that option, what is the problem with Apple giving them that option?” she asked.“If we allowed people to link out like that, we would in essence give up our total return on our [intellectual... Continue reading…

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge A quarter of the deep links in The New York Times’ articles are now rotten, leading to completely inaccessible pages, according to a team of researchers from Harvard Law School, who worked with the Times’ digital team. They found that this problem affected over half of the articles containing links in the NYT’s catalog going back to 1996, illustrating the problem of link rot and how difficult it is for context to survive on the web.The study looked at over 550,000 articles, which contained over 2.2 million links to external websites. It found that 72 percent of those links were “deep,” or pointing to a specific page rather than a general website. Predictably, it found that, as time went on, links were more likely to be dead: 6 percent... Continue reading…

A screenshot of Twitch’s new hot tubs category. Twitch is launching a dedicated category for hot tub streams after claiming that it has received pushback from advertisers and viewers about how the trend has taken over the platform. The new “Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches” category is meant to let creators stream what they want, while also giving Twitch advertisers a more convenient way to prevent ads from running on streams that they don’t approve of.Earlier this week, Twitch pulled advertising from some hot tub streamers without warning. In a statement sent to The Verge today, the company said that was a mistake. “We did not alert impacted creators at the time, and we should have–our creators rely on us,” a spokesperson said. Twitch said the ads were suspended at advertisers’ request... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Editor’s note: According to a Facebook company spokesperson, the issue described below with the iOS carousel feature is attributable to a bug: “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing the ‘Select Multiple’ photos feature in Instagram due to a bug in the latest iOS update and are working on a solution.”Whenever we use an app continuously, any change to the UI of that app can cause stress — and during these stressful times, who needs more? For example, in a recent update, Instagram tweaked the way it asks its users to create carousels (groups of up to 10 photos or videos that rotate through a single post), and this is apparently causing a bit of confusion.This new method was pointed out in the Instagram account Digital... Continue reading…

This morning, The Verge published a story about how Citizen — an app that appears to encourage vigilante justice — encouraged its users to hunt down the wrong person and presumably bring them to justice, in the mistaken assumption that person had started the 1,158-acre Palisades wildfire in Los Angeles last week. The company offered a $30,000 bounty.Now, we’re learning the same company is apparently planning to offer its own private security forces to users, according to a new report from Motherboard.In fact, one Citizen-branded patrol car has already been spotted in the wild: