The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A new web standard is playing off of California’s powerful privacy law Continue reading…

Photo by Alexander Sayganov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Cyberpunk 2077’s big new 1.1 patch introduced a game-breaking bug earlier this week, and now Developer CD Projekt Red is fixing it. A new 1.11 hotfix is available across PC, Stadia, and Xbox / PlayStation consoles today. While it also restores item randomization to a previous state, the primary purpose is to fix the game-breaking part of the “Down on the Street” quest.The quest includes a holocall that’s supposed to trigger progress through the main part of Cyberpunk 2077’s storyline, but some players found the call was silent and blocked progress of the game. CD Projekt Red published a workaround after a few hours, and has now followed up with a hotfix after the problem was spotted earlier this week.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Telegram has added the ability to import your chat history from WhatsApp, meaning you won’t lose past conversations if you want to switch messaging services. On iOS the feature arrived with version 7.4, released yesterday and spotted by 9to5Mac, but the update doesn’t appear to be live yet on Android. Alongside WhatsApp, chat histories from Line and KakaoTalk can also be imported, according to Telegram’s changelog. We’ve verified that you can import chats from WhatsApp into the latest version (7.4.1) of Telegram and continue the conversation, so long as each WhatsApp user has a Telegram account.The addition of the feature comes as Telegram is reporting huge increases in user numbers, with the service now boasting over 500 million active... Continue reading…

Pac-Man celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, and to commemorate the occasion, Cook and Becker is releasing a history book later this year — and it looks incredible. While there’s a standard hardcover version of the book for $39, which is called Pac-Man: Birth of an Icon, you can also buy a $99 special edition that comes with an ingenious Pac-Man-shaped slipcase. There’s even a vinyl pressing of the single “Pac-Man Fever” included.The book is described as “the first-ever official history book” for the iconic video games series, and it’s written by Arjan Terpstra and Tim Lapetino. Here’s the official description:

The Pixel 5 and 4A 5G (pictured) can enable Night Sight mode automatically. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Thanks to its latest update, the Google Camera app now lets you permanently turn off its Auto Night Sight feature on devices that automatically enable the low-light photography mode, 9to5Google reports. The feature is available with version 8.1.200 of the app, which started rolling out on Monday. Additionally, the update lets you disable the mode from the app’s flash settings.When Google released the Pixel 4A 5G and Pixel 5 last year, it tweaked their camera apps to enable Night Sight mode automatically in low-light conditions. But using the feature means photos take longer to capture, so there’ll inevitably be occasions when you don’t want it to automatically come on. Annoyingly, as 9to5Google notes, the toggle to turn this feature... Continue reading…

Image: Vivaldi Vivaldi is releasing version 3.6 of the Vivaldi browser with a great and terrible power today: you can now create two-level tab stacks, so that grouped tabs can become pseudo-workspaces for whatever you get up to in your browser. Vivaldi first introduced the feature as an experiment in December 2020, but now you can officially indulge in two levels of too many tabs.Creating two-level stacked tabs is as easy as holding down the Command or Windows key, selecting whatever tabs you want to be in the stack, and then right-clicking and selecting “New Tab stack” from the drop down menu. You can also achieve the same effect by dragging and holding one tab over another. Clicking on the newly formed tab stack (signified with a white outline)... Continue reading…

Linking your WhatsApp account to your computer’s web browser or desktop app is getting a little more secure. Soon, if you’ve got biometric authentication enabled on your phone, you’ll have to unlock the app before you can link your account.The company says the new system is intended to ensure that should someone else gain access to your phone, they won’t be able to link your account to their web browser (which, in turn, would allow them to see any messages you send or receive).To be clear: WhatsApp (and Facebook) aren’t getting access to your fingerprints or facial recognition scansThe new system will be enabled by default on any iPhone devices running iOS 14 with either Touch ID or Face ID, and any Android devices that have... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Samsung Electronics has reported its fourth-quarter earnings, confirming that the company made more money in 2020 than the year before despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Operating profit was up to 35.99 trillion won ($32.1 billion) off 236.81 trillion won ($211.5 billion) in revenue for the year, increases of 29.6 percent and 2.78 percent respectively.Samsung says its fourth-quarter results were helped by its “company-wide efforts to ensure a stable supply of products and services globally” in the pandemic environment. Quarterly profit was up 26.4 percent year-on-year, largely driven by the display and memory businesses, though the latter was down quarter to quarter.Samsung’s display business had its highest ever... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple’s new privacy feature requiring developers ask for permission to track iOS users for ad targeting is at last going live in the next iOS 14 beta with a planned full release some time this spring for non-beta users, the company tells The Verge.The announcement coincides with Data Privacy Day, as well as a speech on privacy from Apple CEO Tim Cook later today at the Computers, Privacy and Data Protection conference in Brussels. Apple initially planned for the feature to go live with the launch of iOS 14 last fall, but it delayed its implementation to 2021 in September of last year to give developers more time to comply. Today’s announcement narrows the launch window to this spring, but Apple is not commenting further on when... Continue reading…

Garmin has released a new smartwatch called the Lily, and its main selling point is that Garmin claims it’s designed by women, for women. The Sport Edition, which is made of aluminum and has a silicone band, costs $199, while the stainless steel Classic Edition is $250 and comes with a leather band.Garmin claims it’s “the smartwatch women have been waiting for,” which seems based on its size and design, which is very fashion-forward. However, as reviewer Lily Katz from Android Authority points out in her review of the Lily, the watch may have given up a few important features to achieve those looks. Image: Garmin To its credit, the Lily looks very much like a regular watch. One of the Lily’s main selling... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The r/WallStreetBets subreddit’s own moderators made it private for a little less than an hour on Wednesday evening, Reddit confirmed to The Verge — but now, it’s back, with a new post from the moderators themselves that doesn’t quite explain why it vanished in the first place. The subreddit has seen a significant increase in attention in recent days following the meteoric rise in GameStop’s stock driven in part by traders on the forum.“We have grown to the kind of size we only dreamed of in the time it takes to get a bad nights sleep,” reads a new post from the mods, one which you can read in its entirety at the bottom of this post in case it disappears. “We’ve got so many comments and submissions that we can’t possibly even read... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The story of r/WallStreetBets Continue reading…

If you can’t find a PS5 or Xbox Series X, how about an $80,000 electric sports car with comparable performance? Tesla just announced its refreshed Model S today, and a new “Plaid” powertrain isn’t its only performance enhancement — the company claims the car can now compete with next-gen gaming consoles, thanks to a 10-teraflop gaming computer that will apparently come with every new model.Assuming that refers to GPU performance and Tesla isn’t wildly exaggerating, that might indeed be competitive with a PS5 or Xbox Series X, which offer 10.28 teraflops and 12 teraflops of raw GPU power respectively. There’s more to performance than teraflops, though. Now, you might ask: who’s going to put a game in your car that might... Continue reading…

Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge Apple says there are now more than 1 billion active iPhones, an enormous milestone for the company that speaks to the phones’ continued success and longevity. There are now 1.65 billion Apple devices in active use overall, Tim Cook said during Apple’s earnings call this afternoon.The milestone had been approaching for a while. Apple sold its billionth iPhone in 2016, and in January 2019, Apple said that it had hit 900 million active iPhone users. Apple counts a device as active if it has engaged with an Apple service within the past 90 days, a spokesperson told The Verge. The stat would suggest that a substantial number of the iPhones ever sold remain in active use, at least by Apple’s definition. BNN Bloomberg reported last year that... Continue reading…

Cyberpunk 2077 creator CD Projekt Red would kindly like modders to stop making Keanu Reeves into a sex object. Following a fan mod that allowed players to have sex with Reeves’ character, Johnny Silverhand, the developer told PC Gamer that user-generated content cannot be “harmful towards others” — especially when it comes to mods. “In the case of model swaps, especially those that involve explicit situations, it can be perceived as such by the people who lent us their appearance for the purpose of creating characters in Cyberpunk 2077,” the developer said.It’s worth noting that Reeves’ character does have an in-game sex scene, though it plays out from his perspective. As Johnny, the player has sex with a blonde woman who inexplicably... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The history of cinema is littered with racist stereotypes. (Call it the long tail of minstrel shows.) As cultural preferences have evolved — which is to say it’s now not cool to be racist — so have our films. In practice, what that means is some stuff just doesn’t hold up, especially when you’re showing it to kids. According to Disney, that includes classics like Peter Pan and Dumbo. Disney Plus will now not show those two films and some others to profiles that indicate the viewer is seven years old or younger. Other blocked movies include Aristocats, Lady and the Tramp, The Swiss Family Robinson, and The Jungle Book.It’s a big move, though adult accounts will still be able to access the blocked films. If you do decide to stream those... Continue reading…

Sling TV, Dish’s live TV streaming service, announced that it’s raising the prices on its packages and add-ons for new customers starting today. Both the Orange and Blue channel packages from Sling will go up by $5 to $35 per month for new subscribers or $50 per month when bundled together. Because of Sling’s existing one-year price guarantee, current subscribers won’t have to deal with the new prices until August 2021.Along with the changes to the packages, Sling TV add-ons are also getting a small price bump. The “Sports Extra” for live sports is going up by $1 to $11 per month for new customers who subscribe to either Sling Blue or Orange. Customers who bundle Blue and Orange together will still pay $15 per month for the sports... Continue reading…

Photo by Michele Doying / The Verge Facebook finished 2020 much stronger financially than at the beginning of the year, proving its business could weather the coronavirus pandemic and even thrive thanks to skyrocketing screen time these past 12 months.The company reported fourth quarter earnings on Wednesday of more than $28 billion in revenue with profit of $11.2 billion, respective 31 percent and 53 percent year-over-year increases. As far as usage goes, Facebook is up all around, with more than 1.84 billion people using its main social network at least once a day in December 2020, an 11 percent year-over-year increase. As of December 31st, 2020, more than 2.8 billion people check Facebook at least once a month, a 12 percent jump from the year before.When measuring... Continue reading…

Images: Tesla Tesla has just announced the first major redesign of the Model S since it launched the electric sedan in 2012. This new version, which starts shipping in March, has a refreshed exterior, a simplified interior, and the option for a more powerful powertrain that lets the car travel at least 520 miles and go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in under two seconds. Tesla says this makes it the “fastest accelerating production car ever made.”Tesla’s Model X is also getting the interior update, and there will be a version with that new powertrain, though the SUV’s refresh is not as extensive.The new Model S has some light updates to the exterior of the car, including a standard large glass roof, but the biggest visual change is inside. Tesla has... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple today reported its fiscal Q1 2021 earnings, which cover the final calendar quarter of 2020 and the holiday sales season. That means this is the first time we’re getting a real indication of how the new iPhone 12, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max are faring with consumers. As it turns out, they’re doing very well. Apple crossed $100 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time in the company’s history: it brought in $111.4 billion in total, with earnings per share of $1.68.The latest iPhones went on sale a bit later than normal, and Apple has had to again close some of its retail locations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But despite those obstacles, the iPhone business did extraordinarily well, tallying over... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Tesla’s record sales in 2020 helped the Silicon Valley company turn its first annual profit, according to financial figures released Wednesday, though not by much. Aided by a fourth quarter that brought in $270 million in profit on $10.7 billion of revenue, Tesla finished 2020 with a $721 million in profit on $31.5 billion in total revenue.To help get over the line, Tesla booked $401 million in regulatory credit sales in the fourth quarter of 2020. The company generates this money by selling these credits to automakers that make fewer clean vehicles than are required by the US government and the European Union. The credit sales have come in handy the past year and a half, as they’ve generated hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge There are many moving parts involved in the Biden administration’s goal to administer 100 million vaccine doses in its first 100 days. Boatloads of data need to flow between manufacturers, health agencies, state officials, and local clinics. An article by Cat Ferguson and Karen Hao, published in MIT Technology Review today, lays out each step of vaccine distribution and explains the hurdles that come up along the way.At the federal level, the Department of Health and Human Services uses a Palantir-designed system called Tiberius to plan vaccine allocation. At the same time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s VTrckS helps states order vaccines. Both digital systems are constantly being fed data from a variety of sources.... Continue reading…

Image: Baidu Baidu has gotten the green light to test fully autonomous vehicles on public roads in California.The Chinese search giant is the sixth company to receive a fully autonomous testing permit from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (the others being Cruise, Waymo, Nuro, Zoox, and AutoX). Currently, 60 companies have an active permit to test autonomous vehicles with a safety driver in California.Baidu is the leading Chinese company in the autonomous vehicle spaceBaidu, which already spent years working on self-driving technology, is the leading Chinese company in the autonomous vehicle space. Last September, the company demonstrated its Level 4 fully autonomous vehicles at its developer conference, Baidu World. In December, Baidu r... Continue reading…

5G in the US isn’t mind-bogglingly fast, but it is going to get better | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Your guide to the current state of 5G carrier plans in the US, what they cost, and whether it’s worth upgrading your plan Continue reading…

Users caught between Apple and Microsoft may now have an easier time managing passwords: it looks like iCloud Keychain is coming to Windows 10 as a Chrome extension (via MacRumors). It’s already in the iCloud for Windows 10 app, but there’s just one small problem: the Chrome Extension isn’t available yet.The latest version of iCloud for Windows 10 includes “Support for iCloud Passwords Chrome Extension” in the list of new features, and when you open the app, there’s a new Passwords-syncing option. Checking the box will cause a login prompt to come up, along with a request for two-factor authentication. According to Apple’s support page, you’ll need to have two-factor turned on for your account to have access to the feature, which is... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge In retrospect, stock memes were inevitable. Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of brokerages weren’t ready.Vanguard, Charles Schwab, and Fidelity Investments, among others, have been experiencing outages, The Wall Street Journal reports. None of the brokerages would tell the WSJ specifically why the outages were happening. Also, Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade are restricting trading around GameStop and AMC, as individual investors pile into these companies, MarketWatch reports.See, GameStop stock rose an astounding 1,600 percent in January alone, MarketWatch points out. What happened is a little complex, but basically boils down to traders gathering on Reddit, Discord, and elsewhere to encourage others to buy call options on the... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge This isn’t new information but more of a PSA that you only have one more day to preorder the Galaxy S21, which will get you a few perks you wouldn’t get otherwise. Every major US carrier and most retailers are accepting preorders for the S21, S21 Plus, and the high-end S21 Ultra through Thursday, January 28th. No matter where you buy it, you’ll get up to $200 in Samsung credit to pick up a few accessories on its site, along with a complimentary Samsung SmartTag to help keep track of your stuff.If you want to dig into the preorder offers, check out my Taylor Lyles’ post that has everything you need to know. Image: 2K Games Nintendo Switch owners who haven’t had the chance to play through the glorious BioShock trilogy... Continue reading…

An aerial view of a Russian nuclear icebreaker clearing a path in ice to North Pole. | Photo by Per Breiehagen / Getty Images President Joe Biden signed a sweeping executive order today that makes climate change a top US national security priority. He commissioned a “National Intelligence Estimate on the security implications of climate change.” He also directed the Department of Defense and other federal agencies to develop plans to adapt to a warming world.Climate change could be deliberately “weaponized”The environmental and geopolitical risks from climate change are quickly evolving. We’ve already seen droughts exacerbate water and food scarcity, which can spark conflict. In the future, climate change could be deliberately “weaponized” in clashes over resources, according to Sherri Goodman, who served as deputy undersecretary of defense for environmental... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The United States Department of Justice announced today that it has charged a Twitter user who allegedly spread misinformation during the 2016 presidential election using Twitter.Douglass Mackey of West Palm Beach, Florida, is accused of conspiring with others to spread election misinformation in 2016, which was designed to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote. He has been charged with violating the civil rights conspiracy statute and, if convicted, will face up to 10 years in prison.The complaint alleges that between September 2016 and November 2016, Mackey (who used the alias “Ricky Vaughn” on Twitter) spread fake information to his followers, trying to convince voters that it was possible to cast their vote by... Continue reading…

Photo: Amazon Amazon’s new motorized Echo Show 10 — announced last fall at its annual hardware event — finally has a release date of February 25th, with preorders starting today for $249.99. The smart display was originally announced for a late-2020 release date.Unlike Amazon’s other Echo Show smart displays, the Echo Show 10 has a motorized base that allows the display to swivel around to face you whenever you’re interacting with it. It also uses its rotational abilities (together with digital zooming and panning) to keep users centered in the frame on video calls, even when they’re moving around. Notably, Amazon supports Zoom in addition to its own Alexa group calling features, making it a potentially useful tool for videoconferencing.Similarly,... Continue reading…

Photos by Britta Pedersen-Pool, Elif Ozturk / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images The satellite feud between Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Amazon spilled out into the open on social media this week, after brewing for months in meetings with regulators. It’s only the latest spat in a new race among billionaires for a slice of a $1 trillion telecommunications market.Musk and Bezos, the two richest people in the world, are racing to build vast networks of satellites in low-Earth orbit capable of bringing high-speed broadband internet to rural parts of the world that have little or no access to the internet. SpaceX has 955 satellites in orbit for its Starlink network and plans to launch thousands more, while Amazon’s Kuiper System is in earlier stages of development without any satellites in orbit — yet.The quarrel... Continue reading…

Schell Games is making a sequel to its massively successful virtual reality game I Expect You to Die, and it’s expected to come out later this year.Along with the announcement, the studio mentioned the original game earned $6 million in revenue across all VR platforms, which could explain how it can afford to make a sequel. It isn’t yet clear which VR platforms the next game will come to, but it will at least arrive on Steam, which indicates support for Vive, Index, and Windows Mixed Reality headsets.The original was more or less a spy-themed escape room in VR, and the second one looks like it’ll be more of the same, which isn’t necessarily unwelcome in a world where real-life escape rooms aren’t really accessible during a pandemic.... Continue reading…

YouTube If you’ve ever used Windows 10 before, I need you to stop what you’re doing and go listen to this a cappella group’s terrifyingly accurate covers of Windows sound effects.No Windows noises were spared here. The compilation includes the Windows Vista startup theme (remember that?), the recycle bin crunch, the Windows XP shutdown tones, and more. But the two segments that are unbelievably spot-on are the “USB In” and “USB Out” noises, which come about 10 seconds in. If I closed my eyes, you could convince me they were the real deal. Also, the error message straight-up stresses me out. It’s haunting.But don’t take my word for it — give the video a watch yourself.The group behind this video is a Korean band called Maytree. They’ve got a... Continue reading…

Instagram Instagram is making its Stories feature more complete on the desktop. In a small interface refresh today, the company is updating its Stories feature so that it opens up to show a carousel of videos, which previews what’s cued up next and the content that just played. From this interface, viewers can click on whatever story they want to watch. It’s sort of like if the tiny circles at the top of users’ feeds went bigger and full-screen.This is a minor change, but it rounds out the desktop feature and makes it more appealing to use, especially as people are on their computers more frequently while working from home. For the most part, Instagram has left Stories unchanged for years. The format is the same as always, with posts being... Continue reading…

The processor is updated. The rest? Not so much. Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Netflix has a new worldwide mega-hit on its hands with the Regency-era British drama Bridgerton, which the streaming service says is its biggest show ever with more than 82 million households tuning in to at least one partial episode in its first 28 days. It beats out the previous record-holder The Witcher, which was watched by 76 million households when its first season debuted back in December 2019.Now, there are a few caveats to point out here. Netflix, which has always been guarded about publicly releasing metrics, counts a household as one account, including multiple profiles. And Netflix also classifies a watch as one profile on an account playing at least two minutes of one episode. So it’s likely not every single one of the... Continue reading…

Photo by Rey Del Rio/Getty Images Election misinformation continues to be a problem on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook even after all three companies took the unprecedented action to ban or suspend former US President Donald Trump. Now that President Biden is in office, those same platforms have kept pressure on, sustaining the bans and issuing new ones to Trump’s associates and allies. Here are some steps these platforms have taken in the last week to continue to stamp out election misinformation:YouTubeOn January 26th, Rudy Giuliani joined Trump in a slightly less restrictive form of YouTube purgatory. Because the former mayor continued to parrot the same false claims about the “stolen” election, he’s been suspended as a YouTube Partner, cutting him off from... Continue reading…

Image: IO Interactive The most accessible, cohesive Hitman game to date Continue reading…

A screenshot from Control. | Image: Remedy Entertainment Control: Ultimate Edition, which bundles the original game with all of its post-launch content, will be downloadable for free for PS Plus subscribers starting February 2nd. This free version of Control arrives alongside the game’s next-gen update, which also hits digital storefronts on February 2nd.The next-gen upgrade will include a 60fps performance mode and a 30fps performance mode with ray tracing. You can get a preview of what both of those modes should look like in this trailer from Remedy, which was recorded on a PlayStation 5.There’s something you should know about the next-gen version of the game, though: only people who have Control: Ultimate Edition, which was released on the PlayStation 4 (and PC and Xbox One) last year, c... Continue reading…

Intel launched its first Iris Xe desktop graphics cards yesterday, but you won’t see them appearing in AMD-powered systems. While Nvidia and AMD’s desktop GPUs typically work across a variety of Intel and AMD processors, Intel’s new desktop GPUs are a little more limited for now.“The Iris Xe discrete add-in card will be paired with 9th gen (Coffee Lake-S) and 10th gen (Comet Lake-S) Intel® Core™ desktop processors and Intel(R) B460, H410, B365, and H310C chipset-based motherboards and sold as part of pre-built systems,” says an Intel spokesperson in a statement to Legit Reviews. “These motherboards require a special BIOS that supports Intel Iris Xe, so the cards won’t be compatible with other systems.” Image: Intel ... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple could start manufacturing iPads in Vietnam by the middle of this year, marking the first time a “significant number” of the tablets would be produced outside of China, Nikkei reports. As well as shifting iPad production, Apple is also reportedly increasing the number of iPhones manufactured in India, where it’s produced some iPhone 11 units since last year. It will reportedly begin producing iPhone 12 series devices in the country as early as this quarter.The report paints a picture of a company that’s increasingly keen to diversify its manufacturing out of China, despite hopes that trade tensions could ease under President Biden. Nikkei notes that the new administration has said it won’t immediately ease tariffs on Chinese... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge Google announced today a new feature for electric vehicle owners that uses artificial intelligence to sort through thousands of public charging stations while finding the best route. The level of technology needed to make this type of route planning functional is a pretty clear indication of what an unholy mess EV charging in America is today.In a blog post published Wednesday, Google acknowledges that route planning in an EV can be like “solving a puzzle” (which is an overly polite way of saying it), with EV owners needing to find the right charging station within range that also has the specific type of plug their car needs.Google acknowledges that route planning in an EV can be like “solving a puzzle”The new feature will only... Continue reading…

Image: CD Projekt Red CD Projekt Red has added modding tools and resources to Cyberpunk 2077 for players to adjust their experience. The developer announced the news on its website. “Tools will be continuously updated alongside with game patches to ensure compatibility,” the post reads.The game has been rife with problems since its launch late last year. CD Projekt Red released its first big patch on January 22nd. The update is part of a larger effort to clean up the game’s problems, with more significant fixes to come. Since the patch’s release, however, players have run into at least one game-breaking bug introduced in the update; the developer has since released a workaround.Although the tools are official resources from CD Projekt Red, players have... Continue reading…

Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Netflix is working on yet another video game adaptation with a new Tomb Raider anime in the works. We don’t know much about the series just yet, but it will take place after the events of the recent trilogy reboot. (That series wrapped up with 2018’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider.)And there’s more anime on the way as well, with a series based on Skull Island, and set in the same universe as Legendary’s recent Godzilla and King Kong movies. The latest, Godzilla vs. Kong, is set to debut very soon. The tagline for the anime is: “A shipwrecked crew, an island of monsters, and one king to rule them all.” Both the Tomb Raider and Skull Island series are being produced by Legendary.The announcements continue two trends for Netflix: a focus on... Continue reading…

Walmart is planning to increase the number of local fulfillment centers across the United States, it announced on Wednesday. Walmart’s approach of more localized fulfillment centers is a direct parallel to Amazon’s strategy, as both companies continue to face off amid an increasing demand for online orders. The new fulfillment centers are warehouses that will either be built within or adjacent to its existing retail locations.Walmart’s first fulfillment center opened in 2019 in Salem, New Hampshire, when the retail giant started piloting the concept. These warehouses use wheeled robots — called Alphabots — to pick items from the shelves and prepare orders placed online.Walmart is piloting new technologies for some of its fulfillment... Continue reading…

Spin, the scooter company owned by Ford, is testing a new scooter that can be controlled by a remote operator. The scooters, Segway’s T60 model, look different than Spin’s regular fleet with the addition of a third wheel in the front. They’re also outfitted with sensors and other technology provided by a startup called Tortoise, which has been testing how teleoperation could potentially make fleets of shared electric scooters easier to manage.Starting this spring, Spin plans to start testing 250 remote-operated scooters in Boise, Idaho, before deciding whether to expand the pilot to additional markets. Tortoise’s software — which uses the scooters’ front- and rear-facing built-in cameras — makes it possible for remote operators to move... Continue reading…

Amazon’s Ring has debuted its latest video doorbell, the (blandly named) Ring Video Doorbell Wired which, at $59.99, is the cheapest and smallest doorbell that the company has ever offered.As the name implies, there is one major limitation of the new Ring Video Doorbell Wired — unlike its pricier siblings, it can only be used as a hardwired doorbell, instead of the battery-powered option offered by products like the Ring Doorbell 3 or the $99.99 Ring Video Doorbell that the company refreshed last year. Assuming you’ve got your home wired already, though, the rest of the Video Doorbell Wired checks all the boxes for a Ring doorbell: 1080p video, night vision, custom motion detection zones, and support for other Ring... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge HBO Max has nearly 40 million US subscribers, AT&T disclosed in its first quarter earnings report on Wednesday. Combined with traditional HBO subscribers, the platform has surpassed a 41 million subscriber milestone the company says it didn’t expect to hit for two more years. Globally, AT&T says HBO now has more than 60 million subscribers.There are a few caveats worth mentioning. For one, AT&T has different metrics for different levels of its subscriber base. Total subscribers includes not only people who pay for a standalone subscription, but also those with access to HBO Max either through an existing HBO subscription through a cable company or through a promotion via AT&T’s cell carrier business, regardless of whether they’ve even... Continue reading…

Photo by Victor J. Blue/Getty Images Reddit traders who have successfully profited off GameStop (GME) stock are now turning their attention to struggling movie theater chain AMC. Reddit board r/wallstreetbets has helped push GameStop stock to record levels in recent days, with the stock closing up 92 percent yesterday alone. It’s part of a chaotic, meme-fueled effort to create an organized short squeeze, and force traditional hedge funds into losing millions of dollars on their bets against struggling companies.AMC appears to be next on the list. Overnight, online traders at r/wallstreetbets’ Discord server spent hours creating memes and spamming AMC emoji in an effort to convince thousands of people to buy AMC stock. Hundreds swarmed rapper Soulja Boy’s live Twitch stream... Continue reading…

With Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury for the Switch, Nintendo is once again giving a great Wii U game a second chance on a more successful platform. But it’s also more than just a straight port. In addition to the main game, this rerelease also includes a separate experience — the titular Bowser’s Fury. It’s essentially a built-in expansion pack with a strong heavy metal vibe to remix the classic gameplay.For starters, you don’t actually have to play 3D World to access Bowser’s Fury. Both titles are accessible right from the main menu, and you can swap between them at will. Progress in one doesn’t appear to impact the other. Fundamentally, the two games are the same: Bowser’s Fury still plays and controls just like 3D World, which... Continue reading…