The Verge

Photo by STR / AFP via Getty Images Another “out-of-control” Chinese rocket stage in orbit has spawned a news cycle. But for people on Earth, there’s not much to worry about.The 100-foot-tall, 22-metric-ton corpse of a Chinese Long March 5B rocket that launched the first chunk of Beijing’s new space station last week will reenter Earth’s atmosphere sometime this weekend, and there’s an extremely high chance that pieces of the rocket will splash down in the ocean, analysts say.“Much of the earth is covered in water, so there’s almost no risk,” said Dan Oltrogge, founder of the Space Safety Coalition and top policy expert at AGI’s Commercial Space Operations Operations Center. The risk to the public isn’t zero, he said, “but it’s a whole lot less” if it’s heading for the... Continue reading…

IBM IBM has revealed what it says are the world’s first 2nm process chips, giving a brief preview of the technology that might eventually power the smartphones, laptops, and gadgets of the future.The big jump here is in transistor count. Compared to today’s 7nm chips, the new IBM technology features dramatically more transistors, thanks to the more compact design. That means chips built using that process can potentially offer big gains in performance and battery life: IBM says its 2nm chips are “projected to achieve 45 percent higher performance, or 75 percent lower energy use, than today’s most advanced 7 nm node chips.”It’ll still be years before you can get oneAccording to AnandTech, IBM’s new 2nm chip features about 333 million... Continue reading…

Photo by Toby Scott/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images According to a Vice report, some Amazon delivery drivers are instructed by their employers to turn off Amazon’s safe driving monitoring app, so they can drive faster and get their deliveries done. The drivers don’t work for Amazon directly, but instead for companies known as Delivery Service Partners, and they report that their managers or dispatchers ask them to turn off Amazon’s Mentor app after leaving it running long enough to get a good score.Mentor, the app made by a company called eDriving, gives delivery drivers a safe driving score based on variables like their braking, acceleration, speed, and distraction throughout the course of their 10-hour shift. Many drivers report that the score that the app gives them is factored into... Continue reading…

David After Dentist is now an NFT | David Devore David DeVore was seven years old in 2008 when a trip to the dentist left him feeling “funny” afterward. His dad, David Sr., recorded his son’s post-anesthesia musings (“Is this real life?” “You have four eyes” “I feel funny”), and when he uploaded it to YouTube a few months later — intending to share it with friends and family — the video went viral within a few days.Now, 140 million views and 11 years later, David After Dentist is becoming the latest mid-2000s meme to go up for auction as an NFT.“It kind of feels like 2009 all over again,” the elder DeVore said in an interview with The Verge. “NFTs are like the wild west right now, it’s like back when we went viral and social media was in its infancy.” The auction for the David NFT... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple made it more difficult to upgrade your Hulu subscription plan — say, to add live TV — after it realized the company was offering a way to automatically cancel subscriptions made through the App Store.According to new emails revealed as part of Apple’s lawsuit with Epic Games, the company had given Hulu access to its subscription API but didn’t realize Hulu was using it to help people switch to Hulu’s billing system (and avoid Apple’s in-app purchases) until 2018 when the feature was mentioned in a tweet that caught the eye of a higher-up at Apple. You can see the tweet embedded below:

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The elusive PS5 console is in stock at Best Buy. The retailer is offering both the disc-based and digital editions of the console, starting at $399. Opportunities to snag one of these next-gen consoles have been even fewer and farther between than in late 2020, possibly due to the global chip shortages. We’re noticing that stock is coming in and out, so stick with the page for a few minutes to see if you can add one to your cart.I hope that you get lucky with your purchase today. Whether you do or not, you might need some games and accessories to go with the PS5. Some of the hottest titles such as Returnal and Spider-Man: Miles Morales are available on the console. Resident Evil Village is releasing tomorrow, May 7th.Recently, Sony... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Xbox games were refusing to open or launch for many across Europe today, with an error message being presented instead. “The person who bought this needs to sign in,” said the error. The issues started at around 1PM ET, and Microsoft posted the “All Clear” on its status page at 3:30PM ET.The problems appear to have been related to the Microsoft Store, which was also preventing some Xbox owners from purchasing games. The problems persisted for around two hours.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Update: Walmart’s restock of the PS5 and Xbox Series X seems to be over. If you’re looking for some accessories to go with a console, we have some picks below.Due to the global electronic component shortage, getting your hands on a PS5 or Xbox Series X has been challenging. Fortunately, if you want another shot at getting either next-gen console, Walmart has done a surprise drop right now for both systems, while supplies last.As seen on Walmart’s website, the PS5 digital edition and Xbox Series X gaming consoles are available for purchase. We’re noticing that stock is coming in and out, so stick with the page for a few minutes and keep refreshing to see if you can add one to your cart.Once you get your PS5, if you are looking to... Continue reading…

Image: Ubisoft Ubisoft announced that it’s developing a free-to-play game set in The Division’s universe, called The Division Heartland. The company also announced that a Division mobile game is in the works.The announcement is light on details, so it’s not clear yet whether the game will be a battle royale style like Call of Duty: Warzone or Fortnite, but Ubisoft has said it’ll be coming to PC, consoles, and cloud gaming platforms at some point in 2021 or 2022. There are also basically no details about the mobile game, but Ubisoft said in a news release that more will be revealed at a later date.It’s understandable why Ubisoft would want to launch its own version of the free-to-play and mobile shooter games: Fortnite makes billions of dollars for... Continue reading…

Apple’s Night Shift feature, which it says “may help you get a better night’s sleep,” doesn’t appear to live up to its claim, according to new research. Because exposure to blue light affects the regulation of sleep cycles, the hope is that Night Shift, which filters blue light from screens after sunset, will make falling asleep easier. But as a recent study shows, sleep is weird and complicated, and a single phone feature likely won’t do much to combat sleepless nights.The study, published in Sleep Health, tracked the sleep of 167 young adults for one week. People were divided into three groups: one that used their phones for an hour before bed with Night Shift turned on, one that did the same with Night Shift turned off, and one that... Continue reading…

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.It’s been a very hard year for us all — but especially for moms, who have had to deal with not only the worry about the pandemic itself, but its effect on their work schedules, their kids’ schooling and socialization, and all of the other issues that have come up over the past year. So for Mother’s Day this year — which is Sunday, May 9th — it could be a good idea to give mom a gift that will allow her to relax, if only for a few hours.(Incidentally, check out The Verge’s Father’s Day Gift Guide 2021 to find some more great gifts for either parent!)We’ve put together a list of about 30 possible gifts that might give your mom — or you —... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you use your phone in portrait lock all the time, it can be frustrating trying to get YouTube videos into full screen with the tiny button in the UI. Thankfully, there’s a better way, using the app’s built-in gestures: you can simply swipe up on a video to fill up the screen and swipe down on it to go back to portrait orientation.We’ve actually written about this feature before, but it seems like it’s easy to miss; most of the people I’ve shown it to had no idea it existed. Easy. Of course, this feature works on Android phones as well, which I personally like better than having to hit the auto-rotate button built into the OS.There is one obvious limitation: it only rotates one way. If you want to hold your phone... Continue reading…

Newsletter publishing platform Substack has introduced publication sections for its newsletters, which will allow writers “to create and manage multiple newsletters or podcasts within a single main publication,” the company announced Thursday.“As your publication grows, you might start to expand what you offer to readers,” Substack explained in a blog post. “For example, you may want to add a separate section for a podcast series, for regional or topical content, or for posts in other languages.”Subscribers can opt in or out of receiving emails for each section. “We’re excited to build more tools that give writers the flexibility to grow their media empire and give readers more agency over what they read,” the blog post states.S... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Starting next year, apps on Google Play will show details about what data they collect, as well as other information about their privacy and security practices, in a new safety section in their listing. The announcement comes just a few months after Apple started displaying similar privacy information in the App Store. In the same way Apple’s policy covers both its own apps and those developed by third parties, Google says its first-party apps will also be required to provide this information.According to Google, the initiative is meant to “help people understand the data an app collects or shares, if that data is secured, and additional details that impact privacy and security.” The section will detail what user data an app has access... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google is announcing some improved Assistant features for families, including improved broadcasts, new bells, and some new stories that can be read to kids. Google says it’s rolling out the features for Mother’s Day, but a few of them could be useful for everyone, not just moms.The first is an expansion of its Broadcast feature, which lets you send messages to Assistant devices in your house. Using Family Broadcast, messages will now show up on your Family Group’s phones as well, which your family members can reply to. For instance, if you wanted to tell everyone to be quiet when they come home because you’re taking a nap, they’ll now be able to get that message outside of the house. GIF: Google Getting Family... Continue reading…

The PlayStation 5 now has a YouTube TV app, arriving more than six months after the console launched. That means anyone lucky enough to actually buy Sony’s latest console now has another way to watch live TV on it, as first spotted by Android Police.YouTube TV costs $64.99 per month (not counting additional extras) and allows up to three simultaneous streams within a household, which could be useful if your PS5 is hooked up in another room from your main TV.Having another device that works with YouTube TV could be especially helpful for Roku owners, given the ongoing feud between Google and Roku that has seen YouTube TV removed from Roku’s channel store. (That means new Roku owners can’t install or re-download the app if they don’t... Continue reading…

Graffiti outside the Valley Generating Station, a natural gas power plant reported to have been leaking methane in California since 2019. | Photo: Citizen of the Planet//Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images A major new United Nations report makes it extremely clear that relying on natural gas won’t help the world avoid climate catastrophe. Once seen as a “bridge fuel” that could provide a less-polluting alternative to coal and other fossil fuels, growing evidence shows that gas is a bigger culprit in the climate crisis than previously thought.Though it’s been attractively branded as “natural” gas, the fuel is primarily plain old methane. When burned, the fuel does produce less carbon dioxide than coal and oil. The problem is that extracting so-called natural gas and bringing it to homes and buildings leads to a lot of methane leaks. Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, with more than 80 times more power to warm the planet than carbon... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple’s new item-tracking AirTags have arrived, and they come with a surprise addition: a hidden menu in the Find My app that reveals some of the back-end data used by the service.To uncover this menu, open up Apple’s Find My app, select one of your AirTags, then tap your name in the top left corner five times. And just like Dorothy clicking her heels together, you’ll be whisked away to a comforting world of, well, sliders and data. It’s not clear what all the information means, though some of the labels (like “device pitch”) are obvious enough.The menu seems to be an accidental remnant of Apple’s development process, with the information presumably left over from an early beta version of the Find My app. Think of it like builders... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google is about to take a pretty significant step that will help keep user accounts more secure: it’s going to enroll people in two-factor authentication by default. Today the company wrote in a blog post that it will soon start enrolling customers in two-factor authentication (or “two-step verification,” as Google calls it) if their accounts are “appropriately configured.”Once enabled, they’ll receive a prompt on their smartphone to verify that an attempted login with their Google account is legitimate. “Using their mobile device to sign in gives people a safer and more secure authentication experience than passwords alone,” said Google’s senior director of product management, Mark Risher. (On-phone alerts are more secure than SMS... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The New York attorney general’s office issued a report Thursday confirming that some of the US’s largest broadband providers engaged in a massive campaign to flood the Federal Communications Commission with fake comments in the run-up to the commission’s 2017 order to roll back net neutrality.The attorney general’s multi-year investigation found that fake comments accounted for the vast majority of comments received in response to the order — nearly 18 million, out of a total of 22 million.Out of those 18 million, 8.5 million were submitted through a process called “co-registration,” which saw outside companies promising “gift cards and sweepstakes entries” in order to attract consumers to join in the campaign. They would then use... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge A Microsoft executive has admitted that the company doesn’t earn any profit on sales of Xbox consoles alone. The admission came as part of the Epic v. Apple trial yesterday, confirming what we’ve known for years: Microsoft sells Xbox consoles at a loss. Asked how much margin Microsoft makes on Xbox consoles, the company’s head of Xbox business development, Lori Wright, said, “We don’t; we sell the consoles at a loss.”An Epic Games lawyer asked a follow-up question: “Does Microsoft ever earn a profit on the sale of an Xbox console?” Wright replied, “No.” That doesn’t mean Xbox doesn’t make money, though. Microsoft was keen to point this out in a statement to The Verge just hours after Wright’s testimony yesterday.“The gaming business is... Continue reading…

Photo: Jonny Cournoyer / Paramount Pictures Over a year after A Quiet Place Part II was set to release, Paramount has dropped the final trailer for it. It looks pretty good!Paramount made the decision to pull the movie from the schedule back in March 2020 due to concerns over the pandemic. At the time, director and star of the first film John Krasinski tweeted that he was proud of it, but felt it needed to be seen in a theater for true impact.The problem was Paramount had already blown its marketing budget for the movie when it was pulled from the release schedule. The world premiere was held in New York on March 8th, 2020. Critics saw it and many published glowing first reactions to it. Plenty of my friends saw it in early screenings and told me it was great. Emily Blunt... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge OnePlus has released its latest update for the OnePlus Watch, adding its promised always-on display mode that was absent on the device when it first launched in April. But being able to always see the time on OnePlus’ smartwatch comes at a big cost, with the company cautioning that the new mode will halve the expected battery life when using it.The release of the always-on display was surprisingly swift for OnePlus, which announced that it planned to add the feature just two weeks ago. The company says in a blog post that the B.48 update that adds the new feature will arrive for a “small percentage” of users first, with wider rollout over the coming days.In addition to enabling the always-on display, the B.48 update also adds the... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Mother’s Day is Sunday, May 9th. You knew that though. That’s why you already got Mom a gift. Nice going... Wait, you haven’t done that yet? Today is likely the cut-off date for guaranteeing that orders placed online will get where they need to be by Sunday (you may have luck tomorrow, but I wouldn’t push it, personally). So, without further delay, let’s load you up with a few last-minute ideas.Firstly, our team has already compiled a big, varied list of Mother’s Day gift ideas right here. It’s refreshed to reflect the strange year that 2020 was and that 2021 is proving to be. There are fun gifts in there, as well as practical ones. Check it out.The latest Amazon Kindle Paperwhite is $35 off, bringing the price down to $95. We’ve seen... Continue reading…

Unbeatable. | Image: D-Cell Games Unbeatable and Rhythm Doctor make the genre more accessible — and challenging Continue reading…

It’s been a long time since Netflix first announced Stranger Things 4 — the upcoming fourth season of the streamer’s hugely popular series — but there’s finally a new trailer teasing the next adventures of the Hawkins gang.The new teaser appears to be a flashback, showing the sinister Dr. Martin Brenner addressing a group of children at the same facility that Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) originated from. Presumably, the new season will continue to explore Eleven’s origins, as well as potentially introduce other supernatural children (something the show has explored before back in season 2.)The new trailer is technically the second for the upcoming fourth season, following a teaser released back in February 2020 that promised the return... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Owners of Apple’s HomePod and HomePod mini can now connect their smart speakers directly to Deezer and make the music streaming service their default player. That means they can take advantage of the HomePod’s Siri voice controls to navigate their tunes and playlists on Deezer.To connect the services, you’ll first need to be a paying Deezer subscriber. If you are, head to the Deezer app on your iOS device (make sure you’re on iOS 14.3 or later), hit the settings cog in the top right, then scroll down and hit “Connect with HomePod.” You can then play music from Deezer on your Apple speakers by saying “Hey Siri, play [insert cool and relevant band of choice] on Deezer.”Apple’s smart speakers now work directly with Deezer, but still no... Continue reading…

If you get annoyed with the number of apps that crowd your iPhone’s home screen, you probably welcomed a feature that came with iOS 14: the App Library, which gathers all of your apps into various categories and displays them on a separate page to the right of your home pages.The App Library doesn’t only add some automatic organization to your iPhone’s home pages, but allows you to clean up your home screen by hiding as many apps as you want. You can keep your favorites front and center, and get the more utilitarian or less-used apps out of the way. (In fact, one way to keep a clean screen is to have all your newly-installed apps appear in your App Library only — we offer directions on how to do that here.)If you want to organize your... Continue reading…

The Zenfone 8 Flip. | Image: 91Mobiles Asus’s successor to last year’s Zenfone 7 has leaked online, pointing to a return for the phones’ flipping camera array on May 12th. Specs and images of two upcoming devices — the Zenfone 8 and Zenfone 8 Flip — have been published by 91Mobiles, based on information provided by leaker Ishan Agarwal. As its name suggests, the 8 Flip has three cameras built into a mechanical flipping mechanism that rotates them over the top edge of the display to take selfies, while the 8 has two rear cameras in a more standard rectangular camera bump.From the leaks, the Zenfone 8 Flip appears to be a comparatively minor spec bump compared to last year’s Zenfone 7 Pro. It’s got a Snapdragon 888 processor rather than a Snapdragon 865 Plus, but the new model... Continue reading…

Safari just doesn’t support key features — and Safari’s the only option Continue reading…

Microsoft is finally preparing to refresh its Windows 95-era icons. The software giant has been slowly improving the icons it uses in Windows 10, as part of a “sweeping visual rejuvenation” planned for later this year. We saw a number of new system icons back in March, with new File Explorer, folder, Recycle Bin, disk drive icons, and more. Microsoft is now planning to refresh the Windows 95-era icons you still sometimes come across in Windows 10.Windows Latest has spotted new icons for the hibernation mode, networking, memory, floppy drives, and much more as part of the shell32.dll file in preview versions of Windows 10. This DLL is a key part of the Windows Shell, which surfaces icons in a variety of dialog boxes throughout the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google expects 60 percent of its approximately 140,000 global employees to spend around three days in the office per week post-pandemic. The policy was announced in a company-wide memo by CEO Sundar Pichai, which was later published as a blog post and series of tweets. While Pichai said a majority of employees will come into the office “a few days a week,” 20 percent are expected to work from home permanently, with another 20 percent working from new office locations.The search giant is the latest tech company to announce big shifts to its post-pandemic working culture. Microsoft will allow employees to freely work from home for up to 50 percent of the working week, or to work remotely on a permanent basis with their manager’s approval.... Continue reading…

Nintendo Switch sales fuel full year profits. | Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Nintendo Switch sales were up 44 percent percent from January to March compared to the same pandemic-impaired quarter from a year earlier. Today’s numbers bring total Switch sales to 28.83 million for the fiscal year, up 37 percent compared to the 21 million Switch consoles the company shipped the year prior, and beating the company’s own revised forecast.In February, Nintendo raised its annual forecast to 26.5 million Switch units for the fiscal year ending March 31st on the strength of increased demand during the COVID-19 pandemic, a number that had already been raised from 19 million units at the start of the year. The lifetime-to-date sales figure now stands at 84.59 million Switch units shipped worldwide since its launch in 2017,... Continue reading…

Cowboy 4 (left) next to step-through Cowboy 4 ST. | Image: Cowboy Cowboy, maker of some of our favorite pedal-assisted electric bikes, is back with two new models for 2021. The Cowboy 4 is a complete overhaul to last year’s Cowboy 3 while the Cowboy 4 ST features the company’s first step-through frame. Both bikes benefit from a new powertrain with 50 percent more torque than last year’s C3 as well as a new integrated “cockpit” with Quadlock mount that wirelessly charges your phone as you ride. But that’s just a start to the bevy of tweaks both big and small that Cowboy hopes will justify a price tag of €2,490 / £2,290 (about $3,000 USD) when the bikes ship in September.I had a chance to ride near final pre-production versions of the Cowboy 4 and Cowboy 4 ST alongside Adrien Roose, co-founder and CEO... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Internal emails revealed during the Epic Games v. Apple lawsuit show that employees at Apple were considering giving Netflix special treatment to convince the streaming service to not abandon in-app purchases. In the run up to Netflix removing its subscription offering to avoid Apple’s fees, a presentation circulated within Apple proposed to advertise Netflix in its retail stores, use a portion of its cut of App Store commission fees to pay for search ads, and even bundle Netflix with other Apple services.The emails, spotted by 9to5Mac, start with an explanation of a test Netflix wanted to run to study the impact of disabling in-app purchases on iOS. Netflix’s main concern, as Director of App Store Business Management Carson Oliver... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Is an iPhone more like a PC or an Xbox?That question was asked — implicitly and explicitly — over and over on the third day of Epic v. Apple testimony. The antitrust trial started on Monday with some heady pronunciations about Fortnite, the game and/or metaverse at the heart of the case. Yesterday, both sides argued about whether iPhones and iPads were truly locked down. And today, Apple and Epic delved into one of the biggest questions of the trial: whether saying iOS violates antitrust law would make every major game console an unlawful monopoly too.Apple says if Epic wins, ‘other ecosystems will fall’Apple’s attorneys issued a dire warning to Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft during its opening statement, saying that their business... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The acting head of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) said Google “arguably violated” US labor law by illegally firing three workers in 2019 amid their organizing activities, Bloomberg reports. On Wednesday, the NLRB reversed an earlier decision which had dismissed claims from Sophie Waldman, Rebecca Rivers, and Paul Duke that Google had retaliated against them for labor activism.The employees claim Google fired them to send a messageThe NLRB’s general counsel’s office has already accused Google of unlawfully terminating former Google workers Laurence Berland and Kathryn Spiers. Now, acting general counsel Peter Sung Ohr has asked that the complaint be amended to include Waldman, Rivers, and Duke.Google claims that four... Continue reading…

SN15 on the landing pad after landing | SpaceX SpaceX launched a high-altitude Starship prototype rocket and successfully landed it for the first time on Wednesday, overcoming a key challenge in Elon Musk’s whirlwind quest to build a fully reusable Mars rocket. Musk has said the SN15 rocket contained “hundreds of design improvements” over past high-altitude prototypes, which were all destroyed during explosive landing attempts.Starship SN15 lifted off at 6:24PM ET from SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas facilities, soaring more than 6 miles in the sky to test in-flight maneuvers. As it reached peak altitude, SN15’s three Raptor engines gradually shut down to begin a horizontal free-fall back to Earth. Nearing land, two engines reignited to execute a complex “landing flip maneuver,” where... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Getting asked to shoot five weddings for a massively popular Netflix show might seem like a dream opportunity, but according to photographer Megan Saul, the show’s producers weren’t planing on paying for it. In a Facebook post on May 4th, she says she was contacted by Kinetic Content (the company producing Love Is Blind for Netflix) about working with them on the show, but was told in a follow-up email that, instead of money, the company was offering the opportunity for her work to appear in promotional materials and magazines (via PetaPixel).In her post Saul says that getting the email was “super exciting for all of 20 minutes,” until she found out that she was being asked to basically donate her time and expertise. She called the... Continue reading…

The young attractive royal couple that is not Harry and Meghan has dropped a truly chaotic intro video for their shiny new official YouTube channel. In the video, the presumed future queen and king of the United Kingdom (also known as Kate Middleton and Kate Middleton’s husband) laugh and chat awkwardly in what looks like their home. It’s well-lit but not too well-lit: a reasonably good YouTuber rig but not exactly one of royal magnificence.“Be careful what you’re saying, these guys are going to start filming,” says Prince William to his smiling wife, as though she doesn’t know how cameras work. The general feel of the clip is the first few seconds after a camera starts rolling but before the YouTube stars start vlogging in earnest.... Continue reading…

Nintendo’s next game for the Switch is one you build yourself. Today the company revealed Game Builder Garage, a new software title that’s designed to teach beginners the basics of programming and game design. It utilizes visual programming, has pre-built lessons and games, and will be launching on the Switch next month.Game Builder Garage appears to build off of some of the ideas featured in past Nintendo projects, like the DIY series of Labo experiences and Super Mario Maker. The core of the experience is a playful, visual programming language that utilizes cute characters called Nodon that you can move around and assign properties to. For instance, once you insert a character node, you can attach a “stick” node and assign the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it supported waiving patent protections on COVID-19 vaccines, calling the pandemic a “global health crisis.”“This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures. The Administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines,” United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a statement.Waiving those protections would theoretically let countries and organizations manufacture patented vaccines without facing repercussions. But they would need to have the expertise and materials on hand to... Continue reading…

Image: Twitter Twitter is finally rolling out a long-awaited feature: bigger images that don’t crop in so darn much. Now, image previews should show way more of the image, giving you a better idea of what you’re actually looking at, and avoiding embarrassing situations where Twitter’s cropping algorithm picks the absolute wrong thing to focus on (sometimes with apparent racial bias).Twitter announced it would be testing the improvement on iOS and Android back in March, and it should now be making its way to everyone.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge An old version of Peloton’s API, the software that allows the company’s bikes and recalled treadmills to communicate with its servers, may have exposed private customer profiles, according to a report from TechCrunch. The bug was first spotted by Jan Masters, a security researcher at Pen Test Partners, and reported to Peloton on January 20th, but the company is only just now confirming that the bug has been fixed.Using Peloton’s API, Masters was able to scrape all sorts of customer information that would typically be private, depending on the individual user’s settings. That includes customer profiles, which can potentially feature their age, location, birthday, and workout history. All Masters had to do was make an unauthenticated... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is infamous for tightly controlling its workers and contractors, but a report from Bloomberg shows that it also tries to control the employees of companies that it contracts. The company has explicit policies concerning personal grooming and social media etiquette that apply to the drivers from other delivery companies. The rules govern everything from how the delivery people look (they must have clean fingernails, teeth, ears, and hair) to how they smell (no bad breath, body odor, or immodest perfume).The rules also apparently forbid drivers from making social media posts that could be considered obscene. That by itself wouldn’t be remarkable, but it’s worth noting that these policies are applied to drivers that don’t work for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In 2020, Microsoft was battling to bring xCloud or Xbox Game Streaming to the iPhone and iPad, and the conversations had an unlikely victim: Shadow — a third-party cloud gaming app that lets you stream PC games to an iPhone or iPad.Emails between Microsoft and Apple, revealed in the Epic v. Apple trial today, show how the Xbox maker was trying to get xCloud on iOS. Microsoft was trying to figure out how Shadow, Netflix, and other similar “interactive” apps were able to exist in the App Store while Apple was refusing to approve xCloud. Microsoft put forward Shadow as an example of such a service, only to see it suddenly removed from the store.“We were showing two examples where a game or an application was able to exist, and we didn’t... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After months of waiting, today Facebook’s Oversight Board finally handed down the biggest ruling of its short existence — the question of whether to uphold the ban on Donald Trump. The verdict? Send the question back to Facebook, and give them six more months to decide.In fairness, it wasn’t quite that bad. The initial ban was upheld, and the board made specific rulings on the questions of whether Trump’s posts were inciting violence, and whether world leaders should get special treatment. For now, Facebook can continue to block Trump, which means that on the face of it, this is a win for anti-Trumpers. Unless you’re visiting his self-hosted website, you’ll remain blessedly safe from Trump posts.“an endless cycle of uncertainty”But... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter is updating its “be nice, think twice” system that prompts users to reconsider when they’re about to tweet a “potentially harmful or offensive” reply. The upgraded feature is now better at spotting “strong language,” claims Twitter; is more aware of vocabulary that has been “reclaimed by underrepresented communities” and is used in non-harmful ways; and also now takes into account your relationship with the person you’re messaging.In other words, if you’re tweeting at a mutual who you interact with regularly, Twitter will assume “there’s a higher likelihood [you] have a better understanding of preferred tone of communication” and not show you a prompt. So, you can call your friend a **** or a ****-**** or even a ****-******* son... Continue reading…

Netflix is taking a different route for its new Zack Snyder-directed zombie heist movie, Army of the Dead. Rather than skip theaters and drop the new thriller directly in subscribers’ laps and homes, the company has reached an agreement with theater chains to screen the movie a week early starting May 14th in around 600 theaters, according to Variety.That’s Netflix’s widest US release yet for one of its feature projects, and it positions the film and the company to capture summer theatergoers’ attention and dollars right as screens are beginning to reopen across the country, and newly vaccinated film fans feel comfortable enough to watch how they used to. Variety says Netflix has partnered with Cinemark, Alamo Drafthouse, iPic,... Continue reading…

A excavator operates next to a dump truck on a mine floor at the Bald Hill lithium mine site, co-owned by Tawana Resources Ltd. and Alliance Mineral Assets Ltd., outside of Widgiemooltha, Australia, on Monday, Aug. 6, 2018. | Bloomberg / Contributor via Getty News The world isn’t mining enough minerals to reach a future that runs on clean energy, according to a new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Minerals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel are the building blocks for clean energy economies. Countries can’t meet their new climate goals without them. If supply chains can’t meet skyrocketing demand, mineral shortages could mean clean energy shortages.The building blocks for clean energy economiesMany of the world’s biggest economies have set goals to nearly eliminate climate pollution from fossil fuels in the next few decades. Leading climate scientists have found that greenhouse gas emissions need to reach net zero globally by around 2050 to stave off the worst effects of climate... Continue reading…