The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Russia-linked SolarWinds hack which targeted US government agencies and private corporations may be even worse than officials first realized, with some 250 federal agencies and business now believed affected, the New York Times reported.Microsoft has said the hackers compromised SolarWinds’ Orion monitoring and management software, allowing them to “impersonate any of the organization’s existing users and accounts, including highly privileged accounts.” The Times reports that Russia exploited layers of the supply chain to access the agencies’ systems.The Times reports that early warning sensors that Cyber Command and the NSA placed inside foreign networks to detect potential attacks appear to have failed in this instance. In... Continue reading…

Titus Burgess as Remy in Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical The TikTok Ratatouille musical— aka the Ratatousical— debuted online on New Year’s Day and has already sold more than $1 million in tickets, in quite the feel-good start to 2021. A portion of the ticket sales will benefit The Actors Fund, which supports performers and workers in the entertainment industry.

Amphetamine’s developer says Apple told him to change the app’s name and remove the pill from its logo The developer of Amphetamine, an app that prevents Macs from going into sleep mode, says Apple told him it violated App Store guidelines, even though it’s been in the App Store since 2014, and has nothing to do with drug use. Not long after The Verge reached out to Apple for comment on Saturday however, the company reversed its decision, and the app will be able to stay up with its current name and logo.William C. Gustafson said in January 1st posts on Reddit and Github that Apple had informed him he had two weeks to “remove all references to the word ‘amphetamine’ and remove the pill from the icon.” If he failed to do so, Gustafson wrote, Apple said it would remove the app from the App Store on January 12th. The logo features a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla fell just shy of hitting CEO Elon Musk’s goal of delivering 500,000 vehicles in 2020, the company announced Saturday, having shipped a record 499,550 throughout the year — or 99.91 percent. Tesla said the final tally could vary by as much as 0.5 percent, though, so it’s possible that it will eclipse the 500,000 mark by the time it reveals the ultimate figures in its full year results, due out at the end of January.Either way, that’s more than double what the next-largest sellers of electric vehicles did in 2020, like China’s BYD or Germany’s Volkswagen. And it’s a remarkable recovery for Tesla considering the impact the coronavirus pandemic had on its operations during the first half of the year. While Tesla said in January 2020... Continue reading…

Image: CD Projekt Red In my opinion, Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t quite the disaster some have suggested. The game is fun. The bugs are fun! The bugs that really, really weren’t fun have been patched. Refunds were made widely available, and despite that refund option, the game sold 13 million copies in just two weeks.But publisher CD Projekt still has a broken reputation to fix and an investor lawsuit to fight, so I wouldn’t put too much stock in the headline you might have read today: that we’re all getting free DLC for the game in early 2021.It’s possible! And it’s totally what this official website promises. But that promise may be out of date. As Engadget points out, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine shows that this promise may have been... Continue reading…

Image: Wing This past week, the US government made the single biggest, most impactful set of changes to drone law we’ve yet seen — ruling that almost every drone in US airspace will need to broadcast their locations, as well as the location of their pilots, in order to “address safety, national security, and law enforcement concerns regarding the further integration of these aircraft into the airspace of the United States”.Google (technically, Alphabet) isn’t too happy about those new rules, as it turns out. The company’s drone delivery subsidiary Wing wrote a somewhat fearmongering post (via Reuters) titled “Broadcast-Only Remote Identification of Drones May Have Unintended Consequences for American Consumers,” which argues that the FAA’s decision... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge With all the mental burdens that came with living in 2020 — including gyms closing their doors — many have found it tough to get in their normal level of exercise. Here at The Verge, we coped with this as you might expect: with tech that could enable or motivate us to get some activity in. These are the gadgets, apps, games, and services we used to work up a sweat while still staying safe, and which might prove useful if your New Year’s resolution involves exercise.Beat SaberI named Beat Saber my favorite game of 2018, but I lapsed hard since, until Oculus released the Quest 2 in October. It’s the first VR headset I like wearing, and I used SideQuest to add bootleg custom tracks that support my embarrassingly narrow musical taste,... Continue reading…

Photos: Samsung / 91mobiles Samsung seems to be close to launching a new Tile-like device for tracking lost items. The tracker, likely called the Galaxy SmartTag, has been leaking out over the past month, and there’s some speculation it could be announced alongside the Galaxy S21 later in January.The Galaxy SmartTag would use Bluetooth to connect with nearby devices and broadcast its location, so owners could find it later if they misplace whatever it’s attached to. It’ll be powered by a replaceable button cell battery, according to a regulatory filing spotted by GSMArena, so you won’t have to throw it out and buy a new one when the battery dies.Samsung’s tracker sounds a lot like a Tile, and it’ll apparently look a lot like one, too. Leaks show the SmartTag as a... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge You can now gain entry to any station of the New York City Subway with the tap of a phone, instead of the (famously finicky) swipe of a MetroCard.The Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced Thursday that it had completed the rollout of tap-to-pay scanners at all subway stations and on all of its buses throughout the city. The MTA has been installing the system, called OMNY, since May 2019 as part of a modernization effort to phase out the plastic MetroCards that have been in use since the ’90s. The new tap-to-pay system is available at 472 stations and on 5,800 buses in total, the MTA said.Tap-to-pay is supposed to speed up entry into buses and subways and reduce costs throughout the transit system, officials have said. It’s... Continue reading…

As Microsoft continues to investigate the massive SolarWinds attack, the company says it has discovered that its systems were infiltrated “beyond just the presence of malicious SolarWinds code.” In an update from its Security Response Center, Microsoft says that hackers were able to “view source code in a number of source code repositories,” but that the hacked account granting such access didn’t have permission to modify any code or systems.While Microsoft points to “a very sophisticated nation-state actor” as the culprit, the US government and cybersecurity officials have implicated Russia as the architects of the overall SolarWinds attack. The attack exposed an extensive list of sensitive organizations, and today’s disclosure from... Continue reading…

Adobe Flash Logo Adobe scheduled the end of support for its famous Flash software on December 31st, 2020, and today is the day. While Adobe won’t start blocking Flash content until January 12th, major browsers will shut it all down tomorrow and Microsoft will block it in most versions of Windows. It’s over.Flash enjoyed huge cultural relevance and looms large in web history, which might be why its funeral procession has lasted for years. Browsers started showing Flash the door early in the last decade, and in 2015 Adobe asked developers to move on to HTML5. Things became official in 2017, when Adobe announced it would end support.While Adobe is finally (mercifully) letting Flash go, it will live on in many historical artifacts. The Internet Archive is p... Continue reading…

The CueCat barcode scanner | Tomkinsc In a hopeless attempt to overthrow or cast suspicion on an American election, a ridiculous cast of characters has heeded outgoing President Donald Trump’s call to misadventure — including, now, the inventor of one of the worst gadgets of all time. His name is Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, and yesterday he gave a poor imitation of a TED talk before the Georgia state senate, claiming that he has the ability to prove whether ballots from the 2020 election were real or fake. He introduced himself to a subcommittee of state senators as an “inventor and pattern recognition expert,” just before implying that he’s a titan even bigger than Apple and Google combined. “I’m on approximately about 12 billion devices globally,” he said.We’ll definitely... Continue reading…

It’s New Year’s Eve, which means that your Instagram feed — if it’s anything like mine — is probably filled with people posting “top nine” grids of their most liked photos from this year. But, bafflingly, for yet another year, everyone will be turning to sketchy-looking third-party apps and sites to make them. Because once again, Instagram has failed to offer an official, automated way to curate the images within the app.As someone who personally enjoys using the top nine format to look back on a year of baked good photos, I’m left utterly confused by this. Users seem to love putting together the collages to look back on their past year of posts. Instagram even already offered grid tools for posting photos to your story in different... Continue reading…

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge If you just got a brand-new Android phone for the holidays, you probably want to play some games on your shiny device. Luckily, that’s especially easy to do this year with Google’s $5-per-month Google Play Pass games and apps subscription service, which offers free access to hundreds of games and apps without pushing ads or demanding in-app purchases.We’ve looked through what’s available on Play Pass, and the service has a lot of good games to check out. Here are just a few that we recommend. Since all of the games are also available individually — either free with ads and in-app purchases or for specific prices — we’ve included their Google Play links as well.We’ve rounded up our favorite and most-used games, apps, and entertainment.... Continue reading…

Image: Disney When the clock strikes midnight this New Year’s, The Great Gatsby and other works copyrighted in 1925 will enter the public domain, becoming freely available for re-publication and — most importantly — puppet-themed adaptation. More than anything in 2021, I need the Muppet version of The Great Gatsby.Picture this: Kermit in period-specific 1920s dress, playing the mysterious host to a huge party in West Egg. Or Miss Piggy, decked out in flapper regalia, in an abusive relationship with Fozzie Bear as her cruel, philandering husband, Tom Buchanan. There’s obvious aesthetic charms to The Muppets version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great American novel, but beyond that, The Muppets’ takes on classic stories are often better. Writers for Bright... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge This time last year, Apple Arcade was still a fledgling service, but one with a lot of potential. For $5 a month, you could get unlimited access to a big library of interesting games, the kind that no one really sells in the App Store anymore. It’s still not a place to find the latest blockbusters, but Arcade has steadily evolved into one of the best deals in gaming. Its lineup of games is varied and consistently surprising, with everything from family-friendly multiplayer games to engrossing puzzlers to weird story-driven adventures.If you just picked up a new Apple device and have signed up for Arcade (a new device gets you three months free) the sheer number of games available can be overwhelming. Here are a few great places to... Continue reading…

Built IRL If you’ve ever watched a Batman movie or played Just Cause, you’ve probably thought “wow, using a grappling hook would be so much fun.” YouTuber Built IRL, whose name is JT, thought so too — and he’s been working on making that happen for the past year. The end result is a grappling hook gun that functions pretty similarly to the ones we’ve seen in movies and games.As you’ll see in the video above, this new grappling gun is more impressive than many previous attempts. For one thing, it’s self-contained — the entire unit fits on his arm, including the CO2-powered blasting mechanism that shoots the hook using standard cartridges, and a very powerful 10,000W motor that’s properly fast and can completely pull him up into the air. (He shows... Continue reading…

The cost for an annual subscription for ESPN Plus subscribers will increase from $49.99 to $59.99 in 2021, according to Variety. ESPN raised the monthly price of ESPN Plus earlier this year to $5.99, and now the annual subscription is getting the same treatment.New subscribers will start paying $59.99 on January 8th, 2021, and the new price will reportedly trickle down to existing subscribers a few months later in March. Disney had already announced that Disney Plus and the company’s bundle of Hulu, Disney Plus, and ESPN Plus would each cost $1 more starting in March 2021, raising those prices to $8.99 and $13.99, respectively. Streaming price hikes have been a theme of 2020; YouTube TV raised its price, Fubo followed not long after,... Continue reading…

Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images Ticketmaster has agreed to pay $10 million for breaking into a competitors’ network. The company and its parent Live Nation admitted to hiring a former employee from rival ticket seller CrowdSurge, then using his knowledge — including old usernames and passwords — to learn CrowdSurge’s inner workings and “cut [the company] off at the knees.”“Ticketmaster employees repeatedly — and illegally — accessed a competitor’s computers without authorization using stolen passwords to unlawfully collect business intelligence,” said acting US attorney Seth DuCharme. “Further, Ticketmaster’s employees brazenly held a division-wide ‘summit’ at which the stolen passwords were used to access the victim company’s computers.”The hacking allegations were r... Continue reading…

Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge LG’s screen-swiveling Wing was one of the most interesting looking smartphones of 2020, but its unique design was held back by poor software support. A new software update, out today for the Verizon-exclusive device, looks to help address those issues by adding some new dual-screen functionality.Specifically, Droid Life reports that the new update makes it much easier to send apps to and from the smaller display to the main one (a process that previously involved some convoluted menu wrangling.) With the new update, there’s now a “send” button that shuttle apps from one display to the other, along with a “restart” button to relaunch apps that transition over poorly. You can also use a third-finger gesture to accomplish a similar task.... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Gazelle, one of the longest-running used smartphone buyers in the US, has announced the end of its core trade-in program, which let phone owners mail in phones and other electronics devices in exchange for cash.The news, revealed in an email Gazelle sent to some customers on Wednesday and shared with The Verge, means any prospective Gazelle customers will have to receive a quote and initiate the trade-in process by January 31st, 2021 (allowing 30 days to mail in the phone) if they want to take advantage of the program. The service will shut down officially on February 1st, while any active trade-ins will be honored, the company says.Gazelle will still accept used smartphones through its ecoATM kiosksThis isn’t the end of Gazelle’s... Continue reading…

If you’ve never gotten around to buying and playing Metro: Last Light, the remastered version is free on the GOG store today and tomorrow (via Polygon). The game has been out for a while now, but it’s still as terrifying as ever, even if you’re playing it for a second or third time. And, when you get a game from GOG, it comes without any DRM, so your copy of the game isn’t tied to any particular platform. You can download the files to your hard drive, and it’ll still run without GOG’s launcher installed.The process of claiming the game is a little non-obvious, as the “Metro: Last Light giveaway” link at the very top of the page just leads to GOG’s search screen. To claim the free game, you’ll first want to log in (or create an account... Continue reading…

Sony has announced its January lineup of games that are free for PS Plus subscribers to download.Starting January 5th, you’ll be able to get the PS5-only version of Maneater, the eat-em-up game that Polygon’s Chris Plante described in his entertaining review as “the best shark game... ever?”, as well as two other PS4 games, Greedfall and Shadow of the Tomb Raider — both of which are playable on PS5. Unfortunately, the PS4 version of Maneater isn’t available for people who haven’t yet made the jump to the PS5, so PS4 owners get just two games this month. This bundle will no longer be available after February 1st, 2021.It seems like Sony has established a formula for its monthly batch of complimentary games, with one PS5 game serving as... Continue reading…

Amazon Wondery, one of the last major independent podcast networks, might soon be owned by Amazon. The companies announced an acquisition deal today, ending speculation about who might eventually buy the network, which is most well-known for true crime podcasts like Dirty John. (Apple and Sony were also reported to have at least discussed a possible purchase.)Amazon didn’t disclose the acquisition price, although earlier reports from Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal suggested Wondery’s value was at least $300 million. Wondery would technically be part of Amazon Music, which launched podcast support in September this year. Wondery CEO Hernan Lopez will step down and leave the company when the deal closes, and COO Jen Sargent will take... Continue reading…

A traveler at Los Angeles International Airport takes a COVID-19 test December 22nd. | Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images Health officials in the United States may be able to use a fluke of COVID-19 testing to monitor the spread of a more contagious form of the virus, which was identified in the country for the first time this week. The variant is spreading widely across the United Kingdom, and has been found in over a dozen countries so far — including the US.Experts don’t think the coronavirus variant is more deadly than other forms of the virus, and the vaccines already developed should still protect against the new strain. But the variant does appear to spread more easily, and uncontrolled outbreaks would overwhelm hospitals more quickly.So far, two US cases have been detected in patients with COVID-19, one in Colorado and one in California.... Continue reading…

Peloton is now a place to debut music. The popular fitness startup, already known for its use of popular music during its classes, announced today that it’s debuting new Elvis remixes in its app that’ll be exclusive to the platform for a month. The company worked with Chromeo, Big Boi, and DJ Dillon Francis to create the remixes.The songs premiere in the app today as part of an “ultimate remix collection,” which includes yoga, strength, core, and outdoor running classes. As part of a New Year’s promo, the company is also extending its 30-day free trial to two months.A spokesperson says the idea behind starting with Elvis was to find a “new expression of the classic catalog in a contemporary way” — which to me reads as finding a way... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge When the calendar flips over to 2021 this Friday, January 1st, some of the best deals that we’ve been featuring for the past few months could come to an end. Assuredly, not every single one will end, but judging from previous years, the start of a new year means the holiday season is over and most companies will likely want to raise their prices. Here are a few mainstay deals that might not be around for much longer.If you sign up for YouTube TV by December 31st, you’ll get a free Google Chromecast with Google TV (pictured above), the latest streaming device that supports 4K HDR playback and includes a remote.Next up, this great Walmart-exclusive deal combines a Switch Pro controller with a download code for Super Mario Odyssey for... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge It’s not easy to make it to a library right now, and with a long winter stuck at home looming ahead for many of us, there’s never been a better time to hunker down with a good book. If you’ve been lucky enough to receive a new Kindle (or a non-Amazon-branded e-reader or just a device with an e-book app on it), you might be looking for some new books to read.To help, here are some of the best new science fiction books released in 2020 (along with some additional recommendations for other books in a series, where applicable), which should be the perfect pairing with your new e-reader.We’ve rounded up our favorite and most-used games, apps, and entertainment. Check out our app picks for iPhones, Android phones, Windows PCs, and M... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Samsung’s One UI 3.0 update has started hitting older Samsung devices, starting with the Galaxy Note 10 and Galaxy Note 10 Plus, according to SamMobile. The update, which brings Android 11-specific feature changes and some small visual and interface tweaks to Samsung smartphones, is only arriving on last year’s Note 10 devices in Germany, Spain, and Switzerland for now, but a wider release is expected at some point early next year if not in just a few weeks.Samsung first began beta testing One UI 3.0 this past fall following the release of Android 11, and it’s been at various stages of availability for different smartphones depending on your region. The Note 10 and Note 10 Plus versions have been available in beta since October, and in... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you received a virtual reality gaming headset this holiday season, congratulations! Whether you’ve got the newly released Oculus Quest 2, one of the last few units of the now discontinued Oculus Rift S, or another headset like the PlayStation VR, there are a ton of video games for you to explore with your new head mount display. Here are ten games I personally enjoy and think are worth your time and money.We’ve rounded up our favorite and most-used games, apps, and entertainment. Check out our app picks for iPhones, Android phones, Windows PCs, and M1-equipped Macs; our favorite mobile games from Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass; and our top choices for gaming PCs, the PS5, Xbox One and Series X / S, Nintendo Switch, and VR. We’ve... Continue reading…

It’s unclear if Samsung’s existing TVs will be updated to support the feature. | Image: Samsung HDR10+ Adaptive is a new feature coming to the high dynamic range standard that’ll optimize TV picture quality based on a room’s ambient brightness, Samsung announced today. HDR content is typically designed to look its best in dark rooms with as little ambient light as possible, but the new feature promises to use your TV’s light sensor to react to bright environments and adjust its picture quality accordingly. Samsung says the feature will launch globally with its “upcoming QLED TV products.”HDR10+ isn’t the first HDR standard to have introduced such a feature. At last year’s CES, Dolby announced Dolby Vision IQ, a new feature for its own HDR standard that similarly promises to optimize HDR content for the room it’s being watched in.... Continue reading…

Photo: GmanModz Taking an old console and making it as small as possible is a well-established tradition in the modding community, and there may be a new victor in the race to shrink the Nintendo 64 as far as possible (via Input). GmanModz has cut down an N64 to the point where it’s smaller than a GameCube controller — and only slightly bigger than the cartridges it takes. Photo: GmanModz The mod versus an N64 controller. Yes, cartridges. This isn’t an emulator, this is an actual Nintendo 64 that was cut, soldered, and otherwise modded to fit into a handheld package, complete with screen, battery, and controls (the joysticks are from a Nintendo Switch, chosen for their diminutive size).At three and a half inches, the screen... Continue reading…

A promotional screen from Vybe’s now-defunct website. An iOS app called Vybe Together that promoted private parties during the COVID-19 pandemic has been removed from the Apple App Store, had its account on TikTok banned, and scrubbed most of its online presence. The app’s creators told The Verge that Apple was the one to take it off the App Store.Vybe Together billed itself on TikTok and its website as a place to organize and attend underground parties, using the tagline “Get your rebel on. Get your party on.” Organizers would have to approve everyone who wanted to attend, and those who got approved would receive the address two hours before the event. Most of these gatherings would have been illegal under current US pandemic restrictions — which may explain why the app required you to... Continue reading…

Photo by Rod Lamkey / Getty Images On Tuesday night, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced a new bill tying increased stimulus payments to a full repeal of Section 230, according to bill text obtained by The Verge. The bill comes amid new momentum for direct $2,000 stimulus payments, and increasing pressure on party leaders to appease President Donald Trump’s escalating demands.Democratic party leaders criticized the inclusion of Section 230 repeal as an effort to scuttle stimulus talks. “Senator McConnell knows how to make $2,000 survival checks reality and he knows how to kill them,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement Tuesday. “Will Senate Republicans go along with Sen. McConnell’s cynical gambit or will they push him to give a... Continue reading…

For anyone who’s been lucky enough to spend the majority of the pandemic working from home, the idea of escaping the room (or couch) that’s become a makeshift office is probably a relatable one. Enter this series of “escape rooms” built in Google Docs, that let you do just that, inside web software you’ve probably become far too familiar with. “Part 3” of the game was finally released Tuesday, but you’ll never fully escape using Google Docs.“Escape: A Game” by Anthony Smith is styled as a choose-your-own-adventure game set in a series of interlinked Google Docs. You “wake up” from a mysterious dream in a cabin room filling with smoke, and are tasked with getting out. “Part 2” has you do the same thing in a hotel corridor, and “Part 3,”... Continue reading…

Photo by Grant Halverson / Getty Images “Panthers’ Russell Okung Becomes First NFL Player to Be Paid in Bitcoin,” the headline proclaimed — and soon, ones just like it started sprouting up across the web, with sports publications, tech publications, and mainstream media outlets alike jumping to tell how the Carolina Panthers offensive lineman finally fulfilled his spoken desire to get paid in cryptocurrency.Unfortunately, the headline isn’t true. “Not accurate,” an NFL spokesperson tells me, adding that “his people are converting some of the money into bitcoin” after he gets paid in US dollars, just like every other NFL player.More like “NFL player decides to spend half his salary on bitcoin”Okung’s own team, the Carolina Panthers, also confirmed to The Verge that teams pay... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has lost an early challenge in its lawsuit against Corellium, a security firm that offers a virtualized version of iOS for security testing. Ruling on a motion for summary judgment, the judge presiding over the case has dismissed Apple’s copyright infringement claim over Corellium’s software, finding that Corellium’s use of Apple code constituted fair use. The judge deferred ruling on a separate Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) charge, but the result is still a significant setback for the iPhone manufacturer’s legal case. The news was first reported by The Washington Post.In particular, the judge found that additional features within Corellium’s tool strengthened its case for fair use, particularly the ability to modify the... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge A major Chinese supplier of consumer electronics components, Lens Technology, has been accused of using forced Uighur labor workers from the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang, China, according to a report from the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) shared with The Verge.The report says Lens Technology — a gadget glass supplier to companies like Amazon, Apple, and Tesla — has used thousands of such workers as part of the Chinese government’s ongoing detention and forced labor campaign against the Uighur minority. The Washington Post first reported TTP’s findings on Tuesday.TTP’s investigation cites media reports from Global Times of China and government records, which allegedly show Lens Technology was sent thousands of workers... Continue reading…

Boston Dynamics’ Atlas and Spot robots can do a lot of things: sprinting, gymnastic routines, parkour, backflips, open doors to let in an army of their friends, wash dishes, and (poorly) get actual jobs. But the company’s latest video adds another impressive trick to our future robotic overlords’ repertoire: busting sick dance moves.The video sees Boston Dynamics entire lineup of robots — the humanoid Atlas, the dog-shaped Spot, and the box-juggling Handle — all come together in a bopping, coordinated dance routine set to The Contours’ “Do You Love Me.” It’s not the first time Boston Dynamics has shown off its robots’ dancing skills: the company showcased a video of its Spot robot doing the Running Man to “Uptown Funk”... Continue reading…

The mammoth, last-minute deal that will govern the United Kingdom and European Union’s trade relations going forward post-Brexit has been finalized in the nick of time. But some security researchers have noted some puzzling aspects of the deal, including mentions of the defunct, 23-year old Netscape Communicator email software and recommendations of outdated encryption standards.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Pixel 5 and 4a 5G users can no longer use their ultrawide cameras to take pictures of the stars: Google apparently removed the lens’s astrophotography capabilities with the Google Camera 8.1 update. The feature was a selling point of the Pixel 4, and was available on the regular and telephoto cameras. When the 4a 5G and 5 were announced with new wide-angle lenses, the feature was added to those as well. Now it’s been taken away.The astrophotography feature lets users capture the night sky by pointing their phone up and keeping it still, either by balancing it on a nearby object or putting it on a tripod. The feature is still available on the phones’ other cameras, but if you go to Night Sight mode and switch to the ultrawide camera,... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge If you bought a new Windows laptop on Black Friday or received one as a gift, you may be struggling to figure out which apps to download. Never fear. I have scoured the internet, the Microsoft Store, and my own downloads folder to find all the best Windows apps for whatever purpose you may need.You might be surprised how many online services you already use that have their own dedicated Windows app. I find that the main benefit of many Windows apps is to help mentally separate my life. It can get hard to navigate all of my various streaming services, work apps, chats, and social media using Chrome tabs — and it also puts me at greater risk of getting distracted.There are also some services that are significantly better in app form... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge You can snag a refurbished set of the Beats Powerbeats Pro, the company’s latest truly wireless earphones, for $90 at Best Buy. This deal is exclusive to the green “moss” color variant shown in the picture above. Looking at new options, the price ranges from $130 to $180 depending on the color you want, so today’s deal is worth jumping on if you don’t care as much about what the headphones look like. And hey, if this shade of green happens to vibe with your look, then even better.Though these are refurbished, they’ve been cleaned and tested by Best Buy. They come with a 90-day warranty, as well as all original accessories including ear tips and the charging case.Also at Best Buy, Apple’s latest iPad with 128GB of storage is $50 off of... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge This year marked the introduction of the first Macs to be powered by Apple’s own silicon instead of Intel chips. As is evidenced by our reviews of the M1 MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini, these machines are incredibly powerful and offer wicked fast performance. This is especially true for apps that are designed to run natively on them and take full advantage of Apple’s latest technologies.So in that vein, this year’s Mac apps list is going to focus on some of the software that has already been optimized for this new era of Apple hardware. Last year’s picks remain just as relevant and useful today if you’re on an Intel machine. But if you’ve been gifted (or are gifting yourself) one of these new speed-demon Macs, these are... Continue reading…

Image: Apple Demo New images and video purporting to show an Apple Watch prototype, concealed by a security case that resembles a tiny iPod, offer a rare look behind the product-development curtain of the notoriously secretive company built by Steve Jobs. First teased a few months ago by Twitter user Apple Demo, this is our first look at the device turned on and running Apple’s own internal development apps on a pre-watchOS 1.0 software build.The video starts by showing what appears to be the original cardboard packaging used to deliver the prototype hardware to testers. “This product is classified as Apple Confidential and is designated an ‘Ultra’ security program,” reads the label. “This prototype MUST be returned when recalled or when your,” says the... Continue reading…

LG’s new QNED TV uses Mini LEDs as the light source. | Image: LG LG might be the company that’s most synonymous with OLED TVs, but tonight it’s announcing what to expect from its LCD-based sets in 2021. Like other manufacturers including TCL have already done (and Samsung is expected to soon join in on), LG is adopting Mini LED technology for its premium LCD 8K and 4K TVs coming next year.LG says Mini LED allows for “a giant leap forward in LCD TV picture quality.” The best LCD TVs today have what’s called “full-array local dimming,” where LEDs — in some cases hundreds of them — serve as the backlighting behind the screen. These can be controlled in zones, and each zone can be dimmed as appropriate for dark scenes, which helps improve black levels and contrast.Mini LED changes up the strategy a... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Yu Chun Christopher Wong / S3studio / Getty Images Coinbase announced today that it is halting all trades of XRP on its cryptocurrency exchange, according to an official blog post (via Coindesk). Certain kind of trades became restricted today, and the full suspension will go into place January 19th, 2021 at 10AM PT. Coinbase is the largest cryptocurrency exchange, and suspending a currency like XRP naturally casts doubt on the currency’s future, even before the SEC lawsuit over it is settled.Coinbase says it made the decision to suspend XRP “in light” of the suit the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed against XRP’s original creator, Ripple. With the suspension in place, people will no longer be able to trade XRP on Coinbase, though they will still be able to deposit and... Continue reading…

When we think about privacy and who can access our location data, we’re often focusing on our phones, and not on the machine that actually takes us places: our car. A recent report from NBC News goes into just how much data is collected by our vehicles, and how it can be used by police and criminals alike.Your car, depending on how new it is and what capabilities it has, could be collecting all sorts of data without your knowledge — including location data, when its doors were opened, and even recordings of your voice. The NBC article uses the example of Joshua Wessel, a man who’s been charged with murder because the victim’s truck has a recording of his voice at the time of the killing. The report also looks at a company called Berla... Continue reading…

Photo: Sean O’Kane / The Verge If you intend to fly a drone in the US, you’re going to want to pay attention: the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) just issued the single biggest set of changes to US drone law since the agency first took an interest in the technology. With the proper license, you’ll soon be able to fly at night and over people. But the biggest change is this: in 2023, it may be illegal for you to fly some drones at all unless you retrofit them with their own broadcasting equipment.In 2022, the US government will require every new mass-produced drone weighing over 0.55 pounds (0.25kg) to broadcast your location — and I do mean your location, not just the location of your drone. You’ll also be broadcasting an identification number that law... Continue reading…

Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical has some big Broadway talent on board for its January 1st streaming performance. Adam Lambert, Wayne Brady, Kevin Chamberlin, Mary Testa, and Priscilla Lopez will play key roles, with Tituss Burgess starring as Remy, the sophisticated rat who loves fine food.