The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft has reversed its controversial Xbox Live price increase. The company announced a price hike on Friday that would have doubled the cost of a yearly subscription to the service, which is required to play games online on Xbox consoles, to $120 for many users. Now, though, Microsoft says the price will stay the same.Beyond that, Microsoft has decided to bring Xbox Live in line with Sony and Nintendo’s online services by dropping the subscription requirement for free-to-play games. Popular free-to-play titles like Fortnite are playable on PlayStation consoles and the Nintendo Switch without an online subscription, but you still need one for Xbox consoles; Microsoft says it’s “working hard to deliver this change as soon as possible... Continue reading…

SpaceX is locked in a legal fight with a Texas oil company for a plot of land it wants to use to drill for natural gas, according to public records. The 806-acre site in southern Texas sits near SpaceX’s Starship facilities, a sprawling testing ground for its methane-fueled Raptor rocket engine.Tim George, an attorney for the SpaceX subsidiary fighting for the land, was quoted by Bloomberg News, which first reported the legal despute, as saying methane reserves from the land will be used “in connection with their rocket facility operations.”In filings with a Texas energy regulator, the SpaceX subsidiary Lone Star Mineral Development LLC demanded that Dallas Petroleum Group (DPG) LLC, which claims ownership to wells on the land, vacate... Continue reading…

Image: CD Projekt Red Cyberpunk 2077’s first big update is available now, and it’s packed with bug fixes for the notoriously buggy game. In a tweet, developer CD Projekt Red also said that the update “lays the groundwork” for future patches.

Photo by Johnny Louis/Getty Images Trading in stock of video game retailer GameStop (GME) was halted briefly Friday, as it soared more than 70 percent, due partly to the enthusiastic support of a group of Reddit day traders.The stock is up more than 250 percent year to date, rising sharply last week after GameStop announced Chewy CEO Ryan Cohen was joining its board, CNBC reported. Short-seller Citron Research predicted the price would drop, but members of the Reddit board r/wallstreetbets, who had been generating interest in the stock, criticized Citron on the Reddit message board and continued praising the stock on social media.GameStop is the most-shorted stock in the marketThe hype generated by r/wallstreetbets helped create what’s known as a “short squeeze” on... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge An intelligence agency has just confirmed that the US government does indeed buy location data collected by its citizens’ smartphones. In a memo sent to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and obtained by The New York Times, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) admitted that it buys location data from brokers — and that the data isn’t separated by whether a person lives in the US or outside of it.Data brokers are companies that, as the name implies, collect and sell people’s information. The companies collect people’s location information (and much more) by paying app makers and websites for it. Once the broker has the information, they can aggregate it and sell it to whoever’s willing to pay for it — including the US government.In the memo, the... Continue reading…

Vicarious Visions, the studio that developed Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and the remake for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, has been reassigned within Activision Blizzard, GamesIndustry.biz reports. Moving forward, the studio’s team of about 200 people will now be “fully dedicated to existing Blizzard games and initiatives.” That means for any games Vicarious Visions works on in the future, it will not serve as the lead development studio.“After collaborating with Vicarious Visions for some time and developing a great relationship, Blizzard realized there was an opportunity for [Vicarious Visions] to provide long-term support,” a Blizzard spokesperson told GamesIndustry.biz. The studio did not specify what projects Vicarious Visions... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Adequate COVID-19 vaccine distribution still seems like the greatest obstacle to slowing the spread of the pandemic, but if you’re looking to worry about the other threat that’s still blocking progress — an unwillingness to take the vaccine at all — and the creative efforts on Facebook that are going into stopping it, you should go read this FiveThirtyEight report.Facebook’s taken steps to combat misinformation related to the pandemic, removing false claims about COVID-19 vaccines and banning ads that discourage vaccine use, but reporter Kaleigh Rogers highlights some of the more direct outreach that pro-vaccine activists are doing to combat misinformation. From “honeypot” Facebook groups designed to capture the anti-vax curious to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The European Parliament is being investigated by the European Data Protection Supervisor after allegations that its COVID testing website didn’t meet EU privacy standards. Six members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have worked with data watchdog group noyb to bring the complaint, saying that the site illegally sent data to the US and that its cookie banners were deceptive.The website was set up to help MEPs schedule COVID tests, and while it didn’t handle any health information itself, sending data to the US for processing would still be illegal. According to the complaint, the testing website made over 150 requests to third parties, including Google and Stripe. Under EU law, data can only be transferred to the US if “an adequate... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is trying to delay a union vote in Bessemer, Alabama, appealing a US labor board decision to allow 6,000 warehouse workers to vote by mail on unionization. The company is arguing for the election to be held in person, according to documents filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Thursday.Amazon’s argument is that mail-in voting decreases voter turnout. It says the NLRB looked at the wrong COVID-19 infection data when determining how to hold the vote, using the positivity rate in Jefferson County, where the warehouse is located, rather than the positivity rate at the warehouse itself.Workers in Bessemer are set to vote on whether to unionize with the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union starting on... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Google is redesigning how search results look on mobile, the company announced in a blog on Friday. “We wanted to take a step back to simplify a bit so people could find what they’re looking for faster and more easily,” Aileen Cheng, who led the redesign, said in the blog.The redesign will have larger and bolder text that’s intended to be easier to scan quickly, and you’ll see more of Google’s font in results. Search results will also take up more of the width of your screen, thanks in part to reduced shadows. Google also says the redesign will use color “more intentionally” to help highlight important information without being distracting.To get an idea of how the redesign differs from the current experience, compare this render of... Continue reading…

Photo by Dave Simpson/WireImage The Federal Trade Commission issued multimillion-dollar fines against three bot-powered ticket scalping operations. The FTC says these organizations bought over 150,000 event tickets over the past four years, nabbing them with automated tools that evaded online purchasing limits. After reselling these tickets for an estimated $26.1 million, they’ve been accused of breaking a 2016 anti-bot law — the first time this law has been applied.Regulators reached a proposed settlement with the ticket selling groups, including $31.6 million in fines. However, most of these fines were suspended because of an inability to pay. The three groups will pay a total of $3.7 million instead, and they’ll have to maintain records demonstrating their future... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft spent most of 2020 building up goodwill for its Xbox Game Pass service and next-gen consoles, but a new Xbox Live Gold price hike risks wiping all of that out. The Xbox maker announced a number of changes to Xbox Live Gold pricing today — you should read our full post for details — and the bottom line is that it’s moving from $60 a year to $120 for most people. That’s a huge jump and a badly timed one: it’s happening in the middle of a pandemic, just as Microsoft has reported big boosts to its gaming revenue throughout 2020.The reason for the move is obvious — get people on Xbox Game Pass — but Microsoft has done it in a clumsy and poorly timed way.Xbox fans are understandably angry. Microsoft stands alone in being the only... Continue reading…

Apple may finally be bringing an integrated SD card slot to its upcoming 2021 models of its MacBook Pro laptops, according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, in a move that would restore the popular port standard to the company’s computers.The MacBook Pro lineup hasn’t offered an SD card slot since Apple removed the feature in its 2016 redesign, which excised all the ports from the laptops in favor of four universal USB-C ports. This forced many professional users — who rely on the popular memory card format to import photos and videos to their computers for editing — to turn to much-reviled dongles to get the same functionality.The news comes after an earlier report from Gurman that originally detailed some of the changes... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge This week on The Verge’s flagship podcast The Vergecast, The Verge’s own Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Julia Alexander, and Chaim Gartenberg run through the news, reviews, and rumors in the world of tech this week.Dieter published his review of Samsung’s Galaxy S21 Ultra on Thursday, so The Vergecast discusses the updates and fixes in this iteration of the flagship phone. Has Samsung redeemed itself from the S20 Ultra?Second half of the show, there were a bunch of Apple rumors this week — reports of the company planning a Mac redesign, a foldable phone, and a VR headset — so the crew theorizes what these products could look like, what their function could be, and when these would actually be available.The show wraps up with some... Continue reading…

If you haven’t found time to watch Wonder Woman 1984 on HBO Max — and you still want to see what all the fuss is about — there are only a couple more days to do so.Wonder Woman 1984 will leave HBO Max on Sunday, January 24th. This was always part of the plan. It will play for many weeks exclusively in theaters before making its way to digital avenues again, WarnerMedia confirmed to The Verge in November. Wonder Woman 1984 will then go through the traditional windowing system (becoming available for purchase on digital retailers like iTunes and Amazon) before likely returning to HBO Max. In parts of the United States where movie theaters are open, that leaves people with a less than perfect option to see the movie, but an option... Continue reading…

Away CEO Stuart Haselden will step down in February, according to a company press release. The luggage brand’s president and co-founder, Jen Rubio, will take over as interim chief executive until Away finds a permanent replacement. The news was first reported by Axios.Haselden, a former Lululemon executive, joined the company in the wake of a Verge investigation, which found that former employees were critical of then-CEO Steph Korey’s management style. Korey stepped down shortly after this investigation, then retook her post and threatened to sue The Verge for defamation. Haselden and Korey served as co-CEOs until Korey resigned again in October.Haselden told employees that he is leaving to pursue another opportunity, Axios reports.... Continue reading…

Image: Razer Razer’s DeathAdder V2 wired gaming mouse is one of the best wired gaming mice you can buy right now, according to my colleague Cameron Faulkner. But if you are trying to minimize the number of cables on your desk, the DeathAdder V2 Pro is a nice wireless alternative — and it’s down to $100 at Amazon and Best Buy.The DeathAdder V2 Pro is a lightweight mouse weighing in at 88 grams, six grams heavier than its wired variant. It has the same support for five onboard profiles and the same 20K optical sensor.If you don’t mind wired gaming mice and you are on a budget, Amazon and Best Buy have also discounted the Razer Viper Mini, bringing it down to just $20. It’s a miniature rehash of Razer’s Viper gaming mouse. It can last for up to 50... Continue reading…

Microsoft is increasing the prices of its Xbox Live Gold subscription soon. The software giant has started notifying existing Xbox Live Gold members of the changes in certain markets, and it will see the price rise by a dollar to $10.99 per month in the US and $5 for a three-month membership.Twelve-month and six-month pricing is also going up, but the increase won’t affect existing subscribers here. Three months will now be priced at $29.99, with six months at $59.99. Microsoft is also allowing Xbox Live Gold members to convert their remaining Gold time into Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (up to 36 months). The conversion means if you have 11 months of Xbox Live Gold left on your account, you can upgrade to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and convert... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by The Verge Marques Brownlee on how he is scaling his brand Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Marino / The Verge It’s been nearly eight years since Radiotopia executive producer Julie Shapiro noticed that 70 percent of the most popular podcasts were hosted by men. It’s been six years since journalist and audio editor Charley Locke argued that podcasting’s biggest problem isn’t discovery but diversity. And it’s approaching three years since podcast producer Phoebe Wang’s infamous Third Coast call out of audio companies’ lack of diversity, which led, in part, to the POC in Audio directory.Despite the no-doubt earnest efforts of many well-meaning individuals, podcasting, it would seem, has had — and continues to have — a diversity problem. And while there are many factors which contribute to maintaining the industry’s status quo, there is one culprit... Continue reading…

It’s just a jump to the left and a step to the right for Wanda and Vision, who have time warped from the ‘50s and ‘60s to the 1970s.The third episode picks up right where the last ended: Wanda is pregnant, but she and Vision are still trying to figure out how they ended up in their perfect suburban life together with no past memories. It’s a wackier installment than the first two episodes, but it’s also key to piecing together what might play out over the next six weeks — including what it could possibly mean for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.[With that said, here is your spoiler alert for WandaVision’s third episode.]If the beginning of WandaVision’s third episode sets up that something isn’t right, as Vision tells... Continue reading…

Newell during a rare interview. | Image: 1 News Valve co-founder and president Gabe Newell has given one of his famously rare interviews with New Zealand’s 1 News. In it, he discusses his admiration for the island country, where he recently applied for residency after having sheltered there during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also used the interview to confirm that Valve does indeed have new games in development (though he declined to offer more details) and addressed rumors that the company plans to set up an office in New Zealand.Mostly it just seems like Newell is having an absolutely lovely time living in a country that hasn’t reported any COVID-19 deaths since September last year. He says he’s been attending motorsport races and pursuing an interest in neuroscience, all while Valve... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge YouTube is finally enabling HDR support on Microsoft’s Xbox consoles. The HDR support works across existing Xbox One S / X devices and new consoles like the Xbox Series X and Series S. As long as you have a TV or monitor capable of displaying HDR videos, the YouTube app will now automatically switch to output HDR content.The YouTube app on Xbox has never supported HDR previously, despite HDR being available on the PlayStation 4 since 2019. Both the PS5 and Xbox Series X launched in November without YouTube HDR support, and it’s still not available on the PS5 yet — a step back from what was available on PS4. The YouTube app on Xbox Series S. Engadget notes you can confirm that HDR is outputting correctly from the... Continue reading…

The new MacBook Air with the M1 chip. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple is reportedly working on a new design for its MacBook Air that will include the return of MagSafe charging. Bloomberg News reports that the updated MacBook Air may appear later this year or in 2022, and is designed to be thinner and lighter than the existing model.Apple may make the MacBook Air smaller thanks to reduced bezels on the 13-inch screen, and will reportedly include two USB 4 ports on the laptop. Apple is also likely to include the next generation of its ARM-based processors inside this new MacBook Air, after introducing the M1 on the existing MacBook Air in November. The old MagSafe charger. Apple’s magnetic charging system, MagSafe, is also supposed to return with this MacBook Air redesign. B... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Another company in the electric vehicle industry is going public by merging with a so-called SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company. This time, it’s EVgo, one of the leading providers of electric vehicle charging stations in the US.The deal is expected to bring in $575 million for EVgo. When it closes, EVgo will become a publicly-traded company on the New York Stock Exchange.In something of a poetic twist, the investment fund that’s merging with EVgo to take it public is one started by climate investor David Crane. Crane was once the CEO of energy company NRG, which helped start EVgo a decade ago. Roughly $175 million of the proceeds will come from Crane’s SPAC (called Climate Change Crisis Real Impact I Acquisition... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Samsung is considering spending over $10 billion to build an advanced new logic chipmaking plant in Austin, Texas, Bloomberg is reporting. The plant may be capable of making processors as advanced as 3nm, and would be Samsung’s third worldwide to use extreme ultraviolet lithography technology in its chip production. If the plans go ahead, construction at the plant could begin this year, with operations commencing as soon as 2023.An advanced US-based Samsung fabrication plant could provide Samsung a foothold in getting new contracts from US customers amidst ongoing trade tensions between the US and China. The move would also bring Samsung into closer competition with TSMC, which manufactures chips for Apple, among others, including the... Continue reading…

Honor has announced the new V40 5G flagship phone, its first since Huawei sold the company off to a Shenzhen-based consortium of Chinese partners. The phone is exclusive to China for now, but Honor’s V-series usually makes its way to the rest of the world under “View” branding.The V40 has a 6.72-inch OLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate and is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 1000+ processor. The primary camera has a 1/1.56-inch 50-megapixel sensor. The 4,000mAh battery can be charged wirelessly at 50W or at 66W with a cable.Huawei announced that it was selling off Honor in November due to “tremendous pressure” and a difficulty in securing an adequate supply chain. While Honor was operated independently from Huawei, it relied on the... Continue reading…

Photo: DANJAQ and MGM / Nicola Dove Hollywood has decided tonight’s the night to shove back their slate of films — including James Bond’s latest outing No Time To Die, the Uncharted movie, and Ghostbusters: Afterlife. No Time to Die now has a release date of October 8th, Ghostbusters will be pushed back five months to November 11th, and Uncharted now won’t arrive until 2022, Exhibitor Relations reports.Bond was the big film whose third delay was enough to force theater chains Regal and Cineworld to close all their US and UK locations. It was originally slated for April 2020, then got pushed back to November 2020 and now to April 2021. If you’re counting, this news marks the fourth delay. Instead of releasing the movie on streaming, as other studios have been doing, MGM... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Google is threatening to pull its search engine from an entire country — Australia — if a proposed law goes into effect that would force Google to pay news publishers for their content.“If this version of the Code were to become law it would give us no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia,” Google Australia and New Zealand VP Mel Silva told Australia’s Senate Economics Legislation Committee today.“We have had to conclude after looking at the legislation in detail we do not see a way, with the financial and operational risks, that we could continue to offer a service in Australia,” she added, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.The company, which has been lobbying against Australia’s plan for months,... Continue reading…

Image: Alphabet Alphabet is shutting down Loon, its division that provides internet from floating balloons, according to a post on the blog of Alphabet’s X moonshot division.“The road to commercial viability has proven much longer and riskier than hoped,” Astro Teller, who leads X, wrote in the blog. “In the coming months, we’ll begin winding down operations and it will no longer be an Other Bet within Alphabet.”Alphabet, the parent company of Google, launched Loon in June 2013, and Loon “graduated” from a moonshot to an independent company within Alphabet in 2018. Loon launched its first commercial internet service in Kenya in July, comprised of a fleet of about 35 balloons that covered an area of around 50,000 square kilometers. Loon has also... Continue reading…

Image: Capcom If you’ve got a PlayStation 5, you probably know there’s not a lot to play right now — particularly if you’ve already finished the likes of Miles Morales, Demon’s Souls and Astro’s Playroom. But here’s something to (very briefly) tide you over: you can now download the Resident Evil Village “Maiden” demo ahead of the full game’s just-announced May 7th release date. It wasn’t available in the PS Store at first, but it’s been there for about an hour now.In the PlayStation Store on my PS5, the game was featured front and center in the “What’s hot” section for me, and I was able to start the download with a couple button presses. But if you’re away from your PS5 and want to remotely download the demo so it’s ready to play later, there’s a... Continue reading…

Let’s consider why Miami doesn’t have a subway Continue reading…

Photo by Greg Nash-Pool / Getty Images Only hours after gaining full control of Congress, House Democrats are going after Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for the platforms’ perceived roles in inciting violence at the Capitol earlier this month.In letters addressed to the chief executives of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), along with dozens of other members, called for the companies to make sweeping changes to their platforms to curb violent and extremist activity on their networks.The lawmakers accused the companies of using certain product features and algorithms that boost content that evokes extreme emotions as a means of increasing engagement, pointing out specific features they want to see changed on each platform. For... Continue reading…

We’ve put him somewhere warm. You may have seen the many memes of Sen. Bernie Sanders sitting at President Joe Biden’s inauguration (we even did a rundown of the best ones), but now there’s a website that lets you easily drop Bernie and his chair all over the world with the help of Google Maps’ Street View (via Android Central). Simply put in a location or address in the website, and after one button click, you’ll have an image of Bernie sitting wherever you specified.The site, made by NYU masters student Nick Sawhney, is pretty bare-bones, and it’s not exactly fast — though the fact that it’s getting a lot of traffic could be partially to blame. As you can imagine, there are a lot of people, like me, using it for shenanigans.Here are a couple of examples Sawhney... Continue reading…

The eighth mainline Resident Evil game now has a release date. Today at a live-streamed event, developer Capcom announced that Resident Evil Village will be coming to the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC on May 7th, 2021 — as well as current-generation consoles, the PS4 and Xbox One. The company also announced that a demo will be available for PS5 owners later today. Capcom says that Village “will be eligible to upgrade from PlayStation 4 to the digital PlayStation 5 version and will support Smart Delivery for Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One consoles.”The event also provided a first proper look at the game with a new, rather unsettling trailer, which you can see above. It gives a good look at the disturbing castle where Village takes... Continue reading…

Image: Raspberry Pi Foundation The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s tiny computers can be used for anything from homemade cameras to cucumber sorters, and now, the group is branching out into microcontrollers and custom silicon. The Raspberry Pi Pico is the first step. It’s a new $4 microcontroller that’s smaller than the average Pi, features a custom chip powerful enough to be used in machine learning projects (according to The Raspberry Pi Foundation), and is on sale now.In its introductory blog post, the company explains that today’s Raspberry Pis are already often used alongside a smaller microcontroller:

Photo by Gary Hershorn / Getty Images President Joe Biden issued an executive order Thursday requiring masks to be worn on public transportation. It was the latest abrupt change from his predecessor Donald Trump, who actively blocked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from issuing a similar order last year.The order mandates that passengers and employees wear face coverings on planes, trains, buses, subways, and other modes of public transportation. “Ensuring that people can safely travel will be critical for families and to jump starting the economy,” the Biden administration writes in its COVID-19 response plan.The Trump administration killed an earlier effort to require masks on transportation, arguing the decision should be up to individual states and... Continue reading…

A render showing how Otter.ai’s Chrome extension works in Google Meet. | Image: Otter.ai You can now use automated transcription service Otter.ai to transcribe and provide closed captions for Google Meet calls with the help of a new Chrome extension. Meetings will be transcribed in real time, and transcripts will be saved right to your Otter account so you can access and share them later.Otter.ai says the extension works with all of its plans, meaning even free users will be able to take advantage of the tool.To set it up, first download the Otter.ai Chrome extension here. Once you’ve installed it, head over to meet.google.com and then click on the Otter extension. (You might need to click the puzzle piece icon to open the extensions menu to find it.) Then, you may be prompted to log in to use the extension, though I... Continue reading…

Photo credit should read Carlos Tischler / Eyepix Group/Barcroft Media via Getty Images President Joe Biden will direct federal agencies to use the Defense Production Act to ramp up the supply of masks, testing kits, and vaccine materials. The action is part of a blitz of executive orders Biden has issued during his first few days in office.“We’ve already identified suppliers and are working with them to move the plan forward,” Biden said in a briefing today.The administration hopes the DPA can accelerate vaccine production. The plan highlights the need for more vials that hold the vaccine doses, syringes to deliver it, and dry ice critical to their transport.“We’ll do whatever we need to do to ensure that we have an adequate supply of vaccine,” said Tim Manning, Biden’s COVID-19 supply coordinator.The administration... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images A Washington judge has denied social network Parler’s demand to be reinstated on Amazon Web Services. Following a hearing last week, Judge Barbara Rothstein declined to grant a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit against Amazon, saying Parler provided “dwindlingly slight” evidence for an antitrust complaint and “failed to allege basic facts” of improper business activity.While the case isn’t over, the ruling bodes ill for Parler’s chances in court. “Parler’s allegations at this time are both inaccurate and unsupported, and are disputed by evidence submitted by [Amazon Web Services],” Rothstein wrote in an order. Parler will need to find another web host or remain dormant while it continues its legal battle with Amazon.“Parler’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Bluesky, Twitter’s decentralized social networking effort, has announced its first major update since 2019. The Bluesky team released a review of the decentralized web ecosystem and said it’s hoping to find a team lead in the coming months. The review follows Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey discussing Bluesky earlier this month, when he called it a “standard for the public conversation layer of the internet.”The review outlines a variety of known decentralized systems. It includes ActivityPub, known for powering the social network Mastodon; the messaging standard XMPP, which powers WhatsApp and the now-defunct Google Talk; and Solid, a decentralization project led by World Wide Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The report covers how these... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Williams / CQ Roll Call President Joe Biden has appointed Democratic commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel to lead the Federal Communications Commission until an official chair is confirmed. Rosenworcel is the second woman to lead the agency as acting chair.Rosenworcel was first nominated to the FCC by President Barack Obama and served from May 2012 to January 2017. She was later confirmed for an additional term in August 2017 where she currently serves as the most senior Democratic commissioner at the FCC. Over the course of her tenure at the FCC, Rosenworcel voted to impose and maintain net neutrality and pushed to close what she’s called the “homework gap,” an effort to extend broadband to every child in the country.“I am honored to be designated as the... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge If you are looking for a smartphone with a good camera but don’t want to spend a ton of money, B&H Photo is selling a 64GB unlocked Google Pixel 3 XL for $300. The phone was released in late 2018, but it is still a solid contender for people who prefer Google smartphones and want a camera that offers solid image quality.The Google Pixel 3 XL includes a 6.3-inch QHD OLED screen display, a 12.2MP dual-pixel camera on the back, and two 8MP front-facing cameras. While this phone is almost three years old, it does come equipped with the latest Android 11 OS and will also receive Android 12, which will launch sometime this fall.The Google Pixel 3 XL was one of the tech giant’s two flagship smartphones released in October 2018, with both... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Mark Harris, writing for IEEE Spectrum, has come out with a chilling report about how military testing is leading to confusion among pilots — and sometimes putting them in danger. The piece goes into why the US military is jamming GPS in American airspace and recounts some of the times it’s almost gotten civilians killed. If you’re a frequent flyer or are interested in when military testing bleeds into everyday life, it’s well worth the read.The military is carrying out the testing, ironically, to help develop technology to counteract GPS jamming. To be fair, it’s an understandable goal, as the article details the troubles that pilots face when a technology they heavily rely on goes away. But when that happens, the pilot at least has... Continue reading…

The Predator in Fortnite. | Image: Epic Games Starting this week in Fortnite, you can have the Predator doing a Pelé victory dance while wielding TheGrefg’s gamepad pickaxe. On Thursday, a Faze Clan streamer played Fortnite with a Manchester City star while wearing Manchester City skins. The battle royale hit has long been known as a cross-promotional juggernaut, but developer Epic Games has recently taken things to a whole new level.Just this season, which kicked off on December 2nd, Epic has added:

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The PS5 and Xbox Series X have been on sale for over two months, and they continue to be some of the most desirable gadgets in the world — and extremely difficult to buy. If you are looking to secure either next-gen gaming console, Walmart will have both restocked on its website at 3PM ET / 12PM PT today, the company tells us.Visiting Walmart’s product pages for the PlayStation 5 or the Xbox Series X, you should see a message showing that a restock is confirmed for today. Due to these consoles’ high demand, they will likely sell out quickly, so if you want one, now may be the time to shoot your shot and secure a unit.Similar to restocks in the past, Walmart is exclusively selling both consoles through its website. It’s unknown when... Continue reading…

Instacart is laying off every employee who voted to unionize, Motherboard reports. The news comes as the company shuts down in-store operations at some grocery stores amid the coronavirus pandemic and doubles down on curbside pickups.The layoffs impact 10 unionized workers at a grocery store called Mariano’s, in addition to other Instacart employees. The group in Skokie, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, voted to unionize last year with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1546 (UFCW). It was a landmark victory for gig workers and represented “the first time employees of tech companies that rely predominantly on contract labor have formed a union to collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions,” a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Former FCC chairman Ajit Pai has left the building, but not without giving the telecom industry one last pat on the back: in his final Annual Broadband Report, he decided that 3Mbps upload speeds and 25Mbps download speeds are still more than good enough for Americans (via Ars Technica).“We find that the current speed benchmark of 25/3 Mbps remains an appropriate measure by which to assess whether a fixed service is providing advanced telecommunications capability,” the report reads.How come? Because the FCC feels that’s as much as it’s required to do by law: “We conclude that fixed services with speeds of 25/3 Mbps continue to meet the statutory definition of advanced telecommunications capability; that is, such services ‘enable[]... Continue reading…

Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images The 2021 Super Bowl won’t be available to stream in 4K or HDR this year when it airs on February 7th, CBS Sports Digital has confirmed to The Verge. The company is citing production limitations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason.Last year marked the first time that the Super Bowl was available in 4K and HDR, but that stream was broadcast by Fox Sports, which had a lot more experience broadcasting 4K NFL games, having previously offered numerous games in 4K during both the 2019 and 2020 seasons.CBS, on the other hand, has never offered an NFL game in 4K / HDR before. Given the additional complexities of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitating more remote operations than usual, the company had to change plans for this year’s big... Continue reading…

Microsoft is introducing new colorful themes for its Edge browser this week, alongside updated icons and a new sleeping tabs feature that improves the browser and overall PC performance. To celebrate a year of the Chromium-powered Microsoft Edge, the browser is getting new themes available from the Edge add-on site.Themes range from simple colors all the way to Halo, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and Forza Horizon themes. These new themes will include colors on new tab pages, tabs, the address bar, and other parts of the Edge browser. New Edge themes. Microsoft is also updating the icons used throughout Edge to better match the company’s Fluent Design system. “In our latest release you’ll notice subtle updates to... Continue reading…