The Verge

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge You’ve probably been caught off guard by videos that play automatically on Facebook, Twitter, or just across the internet in general. They begin playing as soon as you load a page or (if they’re more deviously implemented) when you start scrolling through a page.Automatic video play is a feature that, while nice to have when it’s surfacing content that’s related to your interests, can be pretty annoying. Autoplay videos can be harmful, too, exposing you to violent, offensive, or otherwise unwanted content that you shouldn’t have to see by default.Whether you just want to put an end to autoplay videos on social media platforms or are looking for a more comprehensive fix, we’ve got some tips. Keep in mind that you’ll need to adjust... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images As online publishers grapple with how to replace dwindling ad revenue and find new ways to bring in money, Reuters, one of the largest news organizations in the world, is using a strategy that’s been around for years and putting its online content behind a paywall.Reuters.com draws 41 million unique visitors monthly, according to the company, but it has not charged for access like other news sites in its business-centric niche have done for some time. It will let users read five stories a month for free and plans to charge $34.99 a month for a subscription. That’s a bit pricier than a sub to The New York Times ($18.42 / month) but closer to similar news organizations of its type, including The Wall Street Journal ($38.99 / month),... Continue reading…

Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images Arcade Fire has a new single out — sort of. The Canadian indie rock band has released a new 45-minute instrumental composition called “Memories In The Age Of Anxiety,” but the new song is actually a collaboration with meditation app Headspace, and you can only listen to it there.The new track was created in collaboration with John Legend and, as Stereogum notes, is one of the first new pieces of music from the group since its cover of “Baby Mine” in the 2019 live-action version of Dumbo. (It’s the band’s first original song since its 2017 studio album Everything Now.)

Image: Apple The event kicks off at 1PM ET / 10AM PT on April 20th Continue reading…

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge It says 278,000 singles are on it in New York City Continue reading…

You scroll through people’s profiles, similar to a TikTok feed. | Video: Feels There’s a new dating app on the scene called Feels. Its unique selling point is an interface that feels closer to a Snapchat-style story or a TikTok feed rather than the swipeable cards found in other dating apps. TechCrunch reports Feels currently has around 100,000 users. Although the app is available globally, the company says its focus is primarily on the French market as it launches more widely.Feels is styling itself as an “anti-dating app,” but to be clear, this is very much still a dating app. You’re still reacting to profiles and having conversations, which, I’m sure, for a lot of people, will end up with them going on dates. At the same time, though, Feels’ interface, ahem, feels different enough from the competition to make... Continue reading…

Rec Room is a popular VR app Developers who have apps or games on the Oculus Store can now sell recurring subscriptions to their titles, as opposed to offering them for a one-time fee or choosing to handle the subscription process independently. This should give developers an easier, more sustainable way to offer new content, features, and tools to paid subscribers over time. Oculus told The Verge that the approval process for apps with subscriptions is similar to apps that have in-app purchases and add-ons.Oculus shared on its blog that starting today, FitXR, the hugely successful Rec Room, Tribe XR, Tripp, vSpatial, and VZfit are the first to begin operating on a subscription model in the Oculus Store — specifically, for the Quest platform versions of the apps.... Continue reading…

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in his final letter to shareholders as CEO that the e-commerce giant has to “do a better job for our employees.” The letter comes amid ongoing reports of untenable conditions for Amazon workers. And it outlines a strategy that seems odd for a company that has been accused of treating workers like robots: a robotic scheme that will develop new staffing schedules using an algorithm.Bezos pushed back on the idea that, according to news reports, Amazon doesn’t care for its employees. “In those reports, our employees are sometimes accused of being desperate souls and treated as robots. That’s not accurate,” he wrote.To address concerns about working conditions, Bezos said the company will develop new staffing... Continue reading…

When losing a job becomes a deportation risk Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter is starting a new initiative, Responsible Machine Learning, to assess any “unintentional harms” caused by its algorithms. A team of engineers, researchers, and data scientists across the company will study how Twitter’s use of machine learning can lead to algorithmic biases that negatively impact users.One of the first tasks is an assessment of racial and gender bias in Twitter’s image cropping algorithm. Twitter users have pointed out that its auto-cropped photo previews seem to favor white faces over Black faces. Last month, the company began testing displaying full images rather than cropped previews.The team will also look at how timeline recommendations differ across racial subgroups and analyze content recommendations... Continue reading…

Microsoft is launching a new Kids Mode for its Edge browser today. It’s built directly into Microsoft Edge on Windows and macOS as a free option that’s simple to enable and doesn’t require much work for parents to manage. The mode can be enabled by selecting it from the Edge profile option, and it will lock kids into the Edge browser with access only to approved sites.“It’s a free, protected online environment for kids 12 and under that gives parents peace of mind when their kids browse the web on a shared device,” explains Divya Kumar, product director of Microsoft Edge, in an interview with The Verge. Image: Microsoft Kids Mode in Microsoft Edge. Microsoft really designed this Kids Mode around the scenario... Continue reading…

And it’s two-tone? Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has created a $200 million fund to invest in forestry projects to help remove carbon from the atmosphere while also generating financial returns for its investors, the company said Thursday. The Restore Fund will invest in forest properties that are managed to increase carbon removal and produce timber. The goal is to remove 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually from the atmosphere.Apple said last year it wants to eliminate its contributions to climate change and become carbon neutral by 2030. The company says it will directly eliminate 75 percent of emissions from its supply chain and products by 2030, and the Restore Fund will help address the other 25 percent of its emissions. Apple’s partners in the Restore Fund... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto via Getty Images Facebook announced today that it exceeded one of its biggest environmental goals: it managed to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 94 percent in 2020. It had previously pledged to cut planet-heating emissions by 75 percent. The company said that it had also achieved its goal of “net zero emissions” — not putting any more emissions into the atmosphere than it can take out.Facebook also announced that it had achieved another goal: it now purchases enough renewable energy to cover 100 percent of its global operations, which includes its offices and data centers. But that doesn’t mean that all of its operations are actually powered by renewables like solar and wind energy — at least not yet.Renewable energy to cover 100 percent of its... Continue reading…

Apple is adding a variety of new workouts to its $9.99-per-month Fitness Plus service, including programs designed specifically for beginners and workouts tailored for both pregnant and elderly users.“With more options for getting started, and staying active and healthy during pregnancy as well as at any age or fitness level, we hope even more people will be inspired to keep moving with our amazing team of passionate trainers,” said Jay Blahnik, Apple’s senior director of fitness technologies, in a press release.The new “Workouts for Pregnancy” program consists of 10 workouts across Apple’s strength, core, and mindful cooldown categories. Each workout is about 10 minutes long and designed specifically for pregnant users, with... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Peloton debuted its Bike Plus with a much-desired feature: GymKit support. But now, the company’s pulling back some of that functionality. A Peloton spokesperson confirmed to The Verge today that GymKit no longer works with Bike Bootcamp classes and instead will “only be available in cycling classes for now.” The spokesperson also said: “Peloton is committed to bringing the GymKit integration to all workouts and disciplines within Apple’s terms of service,” seemingly suggesting bootcamp workouts didn’t fall under those terms.This change is a disruptive one for users who might have purchased the Bike Plus specifically for its GymKit support. It’s the first piece of hardware from the connected fitness company to support GymKit, and the... Continue reading…

Acer We already knew Acer was working on the first two Chrome OS devices powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7c chips. And today, the company has released two product listings for its Chromebook Spin 513, but you can’t buy this laptop just yet.As spotted by AboutChromebooks, the Chromebook Spin 513 with the Snapdragon 7c processor has two configuration listings that have appeared on Acer’s website, with a starting price of $479.99. Acer announced in October that the Chromebook Spin would start at $399.99. Additionally, both laptops also do not show 4G LTE for connectivity, which is something that was noted to be a configuration option.The key difference between the two is the RAM configuration, which is only a $20 price difference. Although... Continue reading…

Image: Manticore Games Core, the platform that hopes to help creators build games and players experience them, is launching for free in early access today. It’s available exclusively on the Epic Games Store and already includes over 20,000 free playable games across a wide variety of genres including team-based multiplayer shooters, RPGs, and side-scrollers. Core’s developer, Manticore Games, says that over a million players and creators have used the platform while it’s been in alpha over the past year.The aim with Core is to make it easier for creators to develop and monetize games, similar to what YouTube did for online video, while gamers get “an endless arcade of high-quality, user-built games and worlds.” The platform’s development tools are built on... Continue reading…

White House / Flickr A White House order issued Thursday morning directs the US government to expel ten diplomats and place a range of new sanctions on Russian individuals and assets in response to the SolarWinds hack. The order also places significant new restrictions on Russia’s sovereign debt, which will make it more difficult for the country’s government to raise money and support its currency.“Treasury will target Russian leaders, officials, intelligence services, and their proxies that attempt to interfere in the U.S. electoral process or subvert U.S. democracy,” said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. “This is the start of a new U.S. campaign against Russian malign behavior.”Uncovered in December, the hack saw more than 250 federal agencies and... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge B&H Photo is once again offering the lowest price yet on the Verizon variant of the OnePlus 8. Originally priced at $800, you can get this model for $400. This phone typically costs more than the original OnePlus 8 model because it is compatible with Verizon’s mmWave network. However, because B&H is selling it as unlocked, it will work on AT&T and T-Mobile networks if either is your preferred phone carrier.The OnePlus 8 includes a 6.5-inch OLED screen, a 90Hz refresh rate, and 128GB of storage. Despite its successor, the OnePlus 9, debuting a few weeks ago, at $400, this is still a great deal for people looking to upgrade to a 5G-ready smartphone and not spend a lot.Woot is once again offering the lowest price on the Samsung Galaxy... Continue reading…

Copy editing amid art Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In his final annual letter to Amazon’s shareholders, CEO Jeff Bezos — who will step down in Q3 2021 to make way for Andy Jassy — shared that the number of Prime subscribers has reached 200 million. Its Q4 2019 earnings included the milestone of surpassing 150 million subscribers to its Prime service that offers fast shipping, original TV content, and more. Essentially, Amazon convinced 50 million people to join Prime during the pandemic, accounting for an approximate 33 percent growth of the base.If you haven’t paid attention to the company’s earnings in the past year, Prime subscribers certainly aren’t the only numbers Amazon has been able to grow. 2020 was the company’s most profitable year yet, growing bigger during a time when many... Continue reading…

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The US could be on the verge of passing the first federal law against nonconsensual pornography or “revenge porn.” If it does, it could reignite a debate over the balance between punishing serious harms and limiting free expression.Lawmakers in 46 states (as well as Guam and the District of Columbia) have already passed bans on nonconsensual pornography: nude or sexually explicit images distributed without their subjects’ consent. But activists have long called for a federal law to replace the patchwork of state laws — and now, they’re on the cusp of getting it.A new measure that would ban knowingly or recklessly distributing “intimate visual depictions” of non-consenting subjects has been added as an amendment to the Violence Against... Continue reading…

A 2020 OWL match in Dallas, Texas. | Photo: Dallas Fuel. When the Overwatch League shifted to online play last season, it meant that the dream of a global esports league — one with teams spread across three continents — would have to wait. It also meant that fans wouldn’t be able to see the best teams compete against each other. The league split up into two divisions, with some teams based in Asia and others in North America. Because of issues around latency, those regions never competed against each other until the Grand Finals, which took place in Korea and featured some of the best matches of the season.So when the league start thinking of ways to make the 2021 season better, figuring out a way get teams from Seoul and Shanghai to face off against San Francisco and New York was paramount.... Continue reading…

A much better camera in a familiar body Continue reading…

Google Earth is getting a new 3D time-lapse feature that lets you observe how Earth has changed from 1984 to 2020, allowing you to see just how much the devastating effects of climate change have already shaped the geography of the planet.“It’s best for a landscape view of our world,” Rebecca Moore, director of Google Earth, Google Earth Engine, and Google Earth Outreach, said in a call with reporters this week. “It’s not about zooming in. It’s about zooming out. It’s about taking the big step back. We need to see how our only home is doing.”The feature (which Google calls “Timelapse,” one word) will be available in Google Earth starting Thursday. To access it, launch Google Earth and then click or tap on the Voyager tab (which has an... Continue reading…

Xfinity Mobile offers cell service on Verizon’s network in addition to 20 million Wi-Fi hotspots across the country. | Image: Xfinity Mobile Comcast’s wireless service, Xfinity Mobile, is changing the pricing structure on its unlimited plans. The company will now discount additional lines on its unlimited plan: a single-line plan will still cost $45 per month, but additional lines become cheaper the more you add. With four lines on a plan, you’ll pay $30 per month per line. That’s in contrast to a previous policy of charging the same fee per line, regardless of the number of lines on a plan — a practice touted on its website as recently as yesterday.The company points out that its $45 per month unlimited plan is still cheaper than single-line plans among the major wireless carriers, which is true: postpaid unlimited plans from the big three cost between $60 and $70 per... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Lyft launched a program that will let health care organizations send patients prepaid passes that they can use for rides to doctor’s appointments.“We’ve automated an important piece of health access that allows patients to be self-sufficient and in control, while allowing our partners to focus on the services they provide, rather than on administrative processes,” said Megan Callahan, vice president of Lyft Healthcare, in a statement.The program, called Lyft Pass for Healthcare, lets health care organizations or social services agencies create a budget and set approved pickup and drop-off locations. They can share the pass with patients, who can apply it to their ride.Non-emergency medical transportation is estimated to be a $3... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge If you were hoping to pickup a new RTX 30-series GPU in the coming months, Nvidia is warning about supply shortages for the rest of 2021. “We expect demand to continue to exceed supply for much of this year,” said Colette Kress, Nvidia CFO, on an investors call earlier this week.That means the difficulties of finding a new 30-series GPU will likely continue, possibly into 2022. Nvidia previously warned that supplies would “likely remain lean” through its fiscal Q1, and now that we’re approaching that milestone (end of April) it’s clear that supply hasn’t improved significantly to meet demand.TSMC and Intel are also both warning that chip supply issues could last through 2022. The global chip shortage has forced some car manufacturers... Continue reading…

The Axon 30 Ultra 5G offers a whole bunch of rear-facing cameras. | Photo: ZTE ZTE has unveiled the Axon 30 Ultra alongside two other 30-series devices — the Axon 30 and Axon 30 Pro — though the Ultra has at least one unique feature: it will be sold in the US and Canada. Exact availability and pricing are still TBD, but we do know that the 30 Ultra has all of the trappings of a high-end Android device. It will offer a Snapdragon 888 processor with 8GB or 12GB of RAM, a 6.67-inch 1080p OLED with adaptive refresh rates up to 144Hz, four rear cameras including a 5x zoom, and 66W fast charging.The 30 Ultra features a prominent camera bump that houses plenty of pixels, starting with a 64-megapixel f/1.6 main camera with optical image stabilization. There’s another 64-megapixel camera — unstabilized with a... Continue reading…

Photo by SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images TSMC, which makes processors for Apple, Qualcomm, AMD, and numerous other big consumer tech companies, has warned that chip shortages could last through 2022. “We see the demand continue to be high,” TSMC CEO C. C. Wei said in comments reported by Bloomberg, “In 2023, I hope we can offer more capacity to support our customers. At that time, we’ll start to see the supply chain tightness release a little bit.”Wei’s comments mirror predictions made by Intel’s new CEO Pat Gelsinger earlier this week, who warned that it could take a few years to address the shortage, The Washington Post reported. “It just takes a couple of years to build capacity,” Gelsinger said. Likewise, Nvidia’s CFO Colette Kress recently said the graphics card... Continue reading…

File Explorer concept. | Alur2020 (Reddit) Microsoft’s Windows File Explorer has existed in the operating system since Windows 95, and it has served as a focal point for design concepts ever since. I’ve seen a variety of mockups over the years that try to redesign the File Explorer and modernize it, but Reddit user Alur2020 has really nailed what modern file management should look like in Windows 10. This is the best Windows File Explorer concept I’ve ever seen.The concept, spotted by Neowin, is immediately striking for its sheer simplicity and usability. The default home area imagines a location where you can quickly see pinned items, drives, and recently used files. It’s a simple location to find anything important. Alur2020 has also incorporated Microsoft’s new Windows 10... Continue reading…

Nvidia has released a new feature for its GeForce Experience software that helps users of creative applications make sure they’re getting the best performance out of their GPUs. GeForce Experience can now tell you whether you have the best settings enabled for more than 30 creative apps including DaVinci Resolve, Adobe’s Lightroom and Illustrator, and Autodesk’s AutoCAD. If certain GPU features aren’t active, you can turn them on from within GeForce Experience itself “with a single button press.”For example, DaVinci Resolve users can automatically optimize settings for GPU acceleration in various modes, which may or may not have been switched on already. The idea is that GeForce Experience can now be a central hub for creative apps that... Continue reading…

The Emerge’s design was “inspired by the compact form factor of a book.” | Image: Bang & Olufsen Bang and Olufsen’s latest connected speaker is the Emerge. Its thin form-factor should blend right in to most bookshelves, and that’s no accident. In a press release announcing the speaker, the company says its design was “inspired by the compact form factor of a book” with side panels that wrap around like a cover, and a logo on the front that’s meant to evoke a title printed on the spine.It’s a nice contrast from some of Bang and Olufsen’s previous speakers, which have had huge, hulking form-factors that are hard to imagine in any normal home. Instead, the Emerge takes a similar approach to Ikea’s Symfonisk speakers, which have pulled double duty as lamps or shelving to help them blend in with the rest of your furniture. ... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge We may never see LG’s incredible rollable phone come to market, now its smartphone days are done, but at least the rollable TV we’ve been eagerly tracking for years is finally making it to the United States. You can now “inquire to buy” one at the company’s website, as spotted by HD Guru (via Engadget).While the company doesn’t list a price, we highly doubt you’ll nab one for the $60,000 originally promised; the motorized TV-in-a-box went on sale in South Korea last October for 100 million won, or over $89,000 in today’s US dollars. We also wouldn’t be surprised if you have to pay for more than just the TV itself, seeing how we reached the voicemail of a “custom integration specialist” when we called the provided number.While the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Spotify’s desktop app refresh seems to be rolling out to users, and it brings with it a very handy feature: album downloads. The app has supported downloading playlists to your computer for quite a while. The update should make it easier to keep your library managed if you want to keep the music going even when you’re offline. It is worth noting that this feature is limited to Premium subscribers — according to Spotify’s documentation, free users are only able to download podcasts.Downloading an album works similarly to downloading a playlist: just navigate to the album’s page and press the download button. It should then be available the next time you go into Offline mode. This should make it easier to manage your offline library if... Continue reading…

Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images Use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine remains paused in the United States as officials gather more information about the rare clots reported in six people who got the shot. An independent advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it didn’t have enough information yet to say which groups might be at risk of the clots or to recommend who should get this vaccine.“I don’t think we have enough information today,” said Grace Lee, associate chief medical officer for practice innovation at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in California, during the committee’s meeting on Wednesday. The group will reconvene as rapidly as possible — likely next week — after gathering more data and evaluating that... Continue reading…

Windows 10 is officially losing its once-ambitious Timeline feature, Microsoft announced today. Timeline, first launched in 2017, was designed to make it easier for users to swap between multiple devices — transitioning seamlessly from a Windows 10 PC to an Android or iOS phone and back again.It’s no surprise that Timeline is getting deprecated: it was a feature that heavily relied on Microsoft’s Cortana assistant, which would prompt users to resume tasks from device to device. Cortana was a particularly important part of building out the Timeline experience on iOS and Android devices, where Microsoft (obviously) had less control.Given that Cortana’s prevalence in Windows has been heavily diminished and the mobile apps completely... Continue reading…

Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images Amazon, Apple, Google parent company Alphabet, and Facebook have joined hundreds of corporations, executives, and celebrities in signing a public letter today supporting voting rights and condemning legislation that would “restrict or prevent any eligible voter from having an equal and fair opportunity to cast a ballot,” The New York Times reports.The public letter appeared as a full-page ad in The New York Times and The Washington Post on Wednesday and was organized by former American Express credit card company executive Kenneth Chenault, Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier, and the Black Economic Alliance. You can see an image of the ad, shared by NYT reporter David Gelles, below: Image: The New York Times The letter... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The nice thing about Coinbase going public today is that if you want to get involved with cryptocurrency without ever leaving the almighty dollar, now you can.On Tuesday, Nasdaq set $250 as a reference price for Coinbase, though no one necessarily bought at that price because this is a direct listing. Coinbase closed trading today at $328.28, giving it a market cap of $85.8 billion, more than that of the company behind the Nasdaq exchange. It’s yet another marker for how normal cryptocurrency has become — and how much easier it is for normies to get involved.Recall, if you can, the early 2000s: banking crisis, panicked market, excited cypherpunks. The idea behind bitcoin was relatively simple: it emerged from a specific distrust of... Continue reading…

After a public break with Facebook and Twitter, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell is getting close to the launch of a new conservative-focused social network, giving more detail on the project in a video posted online this week. Called simply “Frank,” the social network plans to open its doors to a limited set of users on April 16th.Developed in the months since the 2020 election, Lindell has described the project as a combination of “print, radio, and TV,” offering both text posts and live stream capability. Perhaps the strangest promise is that conservative personalities will have significantly more followers on the fledgling network.“People are going to have more followers,” Lindell said in a March interview with Steve Bannon, “10 times... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A city in France has had a real rollercoaster of a week, after its Facebook page was accidentally deleted for violating the terms and conditions of the site. Of course, the city of Bitche, France (in the Moselle department in northeastern France) hadn’t done anything in particular to violate any of Facebook’s rules — it just sounded a whole lot like it did.According to a report from Radio Mélodie (via Politico), Bitche’s troubles first began on March 19th, when the city’s official page — titled “Ville de Bitche,” which translates to the perfectly normal “City of Bitche” — was suddenly removed. Valérie Degouy, the city’s communication manager, attempted to contact Facebook to try to appeal the decision but was unsuccessful, and she... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The FBI partnered with an Australian security firm called Azimuth Security to gain access to an iPhone linked to the 2015 San Bernardino shooting, a new report from The Washington Post reveals. Before now, the methods the FBI used to get into the iPhone were kept secret. It was only clear that Apple wasn’t involved, as the company had refused to build a backdoor into the phone, kicking off a legal battle that only ended after the FBI successfully hacked the phone.The phone at the center of the fight was seized after its owner, Syed Rizwan Farook, perpetrated an attack that killed 14 people. The FBI attempted to get into the phone but was unable to due to the iOS 9 feature that would erase the phone after a certain number of failed... Continue reading…

A protester seeks shelter from the rain in front of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Science March in Washington on Earth Day, Saturday, April 22, 2017. Thousands of pro-science and environmental activists rallied on the National Mall before marching towards the Capitol. | Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call After years of turmoil, the EPA looks for a fresh start Continue reading…

Photo by Andy Hawkins / The Verge New York City’s days as one of the last remaining holdouts in the dockless electric scooter boom is finally at an end. The city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) announced the selection of Bird, Lime, and VeoRide as the participants in its inaugural e-scooter pilot.The companies are expected to begin operations in the Bronx by early summer with 1,000 scooters each. The pilot is only expected to last for one year, but DOT has the option to renew the licenses at the end of the term. The department also said it expects most scooter rides to cost less than $5 for customers on average.NYC’s days as a stubborn holdout are overIt’s been over a year since New York State finally lifted its ban on throttle-based electric bikes and... Continue reading…

If I were the Microsoft marketing executive pitching a once-in-a-lifetime giveaway of an incredible custom-built Flight Simulator PC (via PC Gamer), I would do two things:1) I would probably make it look like a full jet engine, not half an exposed jet engine, to avoid reminding people how airplanes can rarely (but terrifyingly) fail:2) I would make sure it has the very best parts on the market, both for wow factor and so my one-of-a-kind Flight Simulator PC can hopefully play the notoriously demanding game at max settings someday.Weirdly, this PC will come with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 (not a 3080 or 3090!), as well as a Core i7-11700K rather than Intel’s new flagship Core i9-11900K. We recently tested that Core i9 with an RTX 3090,... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Update: April 14th, 2021 3:04PM ET: Bundles for both the PS5 and Xbox Series X are now sold out at GameStop.Due to the global electronic component shortage, it has been extremely difficult to buy any next-gen hardware. Whether you want Sony’s PS5 or Microsoft’s Xbox Series X, the restocks are far and stock is limited. Fortunately, GameStop is restocking a limited number of bundles for both systems today, while supplies last.The PS5 Digital Edition bundle — which includes the console, plus one-year subscriptions for PS Plus and PS Now, an extra DualSense controller, and a $20 GameStop gift card — is selling for $600, which may sound like a lot until you factor the retail price for each item separately.The second bundle costs $730. At... Continue reading…

Images: Audi Built on Volkswagen’s EV tech Continue reading…

Image: Respawn Battle royale shooter Apex Legends now has more than 100 million unique players globally, EA and Respawn announced on Wednesday. The free-to-play game surpassed the big milestone just over two years after its February 2019 launch.Apex Legends’ success is just the latest indication that free-to-play battle royale shooters remain very popular, despite the genre becoming quite crowded over the past couple of years. Activision’s Call of Duty: Warzone hit more than 75 million players last August, reaching that mark less than five months after its March 2020 launch. And Epic Games said that its smash hit Fortnite had an eye-popping 350 million registered players last May — presumably, that number has only climbed.Since Apex Legends’ launch... Continue reading…

Blue Origin Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin carried out another suborbital launch of its New Shepard rocket on Wednesday, testing its reusable booster and capsule system, which is designed to carry humans to the edge of space and back. Like the last 14 launches, no humans were aboard this time. But with an extensive pre-launch exercise with “stand-in astronauts” on Wednesday, the company indicated its first crewed flight may be around the corner.The five-story-tall New Shepard rocket lifted off from Blue Origin’s test launch facilities in Van Horn, Texas, at 12:49PM ET on Wednesday. It soared roughly 65 miles above the ground before jettisoning its crew capsule, which sat atop the rocket booster carrying the company’s test dummy named... Continue reading…