The Verge

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The desktop Google Photos website seems to be getting the ability to scan for text in an image and turn it into copy-and-pasteable text, thanks to Google’s Lens technology (via 9to5Google). Lens has been available in many places on Android for a while, but its optical character recognition (OCR) feature coming to the desktop could make Google Photos an easy and free way to get real-life text onto your computer.According to 9to5Google, the feature seems to be rolling out widely, but a writer at XDA-Developers didn’t have it show up for them. I was able to use it, though. To use it (or to check if you have it yet), load up the Google Photos site and go to a photo where you’ve captured some text (such as a page of a book, a sign, a... Continue reading…

Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on CNBC Monday that the ride-hailing company would consider getting into cannabis delivery “when the road is clear.”“When federal laws come into play, we’re absolutely going to take a look at it,” Khosrowshahi said.Khosrowshahi made the remarks as part of a conversation about Uber’s February acquisition of Boston-based alcohol delivery service Drizly. Not part of that $1.1 billion acquisition was Lantern, a cannabis delivery service Drizly launched in May 2020. Lantern continues to operate independently.Cannabis remains illegal at the federal level, but about three dozen US states have decriminalized the drug, either for medical or recreational purposes — some for both uses. Last month, New York... Continue reading…

Image: Tesla Tesla has dramatically increased the price for its solar roof, angering some customers who have responded by canceling their orders. The news was first reported over the weekend by Electrek.The price jumps come as Tesla reports increasing revenue from its solar business. During the fourth quarter of 2020, the company installed 86 mega-watts (MW) of solar energy, a 59 percent increase year over year. For the entire year, Tesla installed 205 MW of solar energy, an 18 percent increase compared to 2019.Tesla offers two solar products: solar panels, which are installed over a customer’s existing roof; and a solar roof, which replaces the current roof slats with ones capable of soaking up the sun’s rays and transforming it into energy.N... Continue reading…

Gundam is about to make the jump to live action in a big way — Legendary Pictures is working on a feature film version of Sunrise’s incredibly popular mech suit anime for Netflix, set to be directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts (best known for his work on Kong: Skull Island.)Legendary was first announced to be working with Sunrise on the live-action Gundam film in 2018, although today’s news doesn’t shed too much light on the upcoming project, which only has a working title at this point. Netflix hasn’t announced details on who might be cast or what the plot will be (or even if the movie will be adapting any of the dozens of different anime arcs, series, and films that already exist in Sunrise’s franchise). Brian K. Vaughan is attached to the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is recruiting people to give feedback for a new consumer-facing medical records tool, Stat News reported on Friday. The company wants to know how people want to interact with information pulled from their medical records.Right now, the company is recruiting around 300 people who use Android devices in Northern California, Atlanta, and Chicago.This is Google’s second attempt at creating a way for people to access their medical records. In 2008, it launched Google Health, which aimed to give people a way to see their health information online. It didn’t take off, and Google shut it down in 2012. “We haven’t found a way to translate that limited usage into widespread adoption in the daily health routines of millions of people,”... Continue reading…

General Motors is launching a new in-car mapping service for nearly 1 million of its vehicles. The new service is called Maps Plus, and it will be powered by Mapbox, the open-source-based map provider that competes against Google and Here for enterprise deals for customized and in-app maps.In addition to in-car navigation, Maps Plus will also integrate with other popular apps, including music streaming services like Spotify or voice assistants like Alexa, which will appear as individual widgets superimposed over the map. While plotting a destination, Maps Plus will also notify the driver of the current speed limit or if they will need to refuel along the way.Maps Plus is designed for vehicle owners who didn’t purchase the option for... Continue reading…

Major League Baseball has announced its latest move to cash in on the NFT craze: official blockchain-based versions of classic Topps baseball cards. Topps is selling the new NFT baseball cards through the WAX blockchain, which the company has used for its earliest blockchain-based collectibles.The first “Series 1” cards will be sold starting on April 20th, with 50,000 standard packs (containing six cards for $5) and around 24,000 premium packs (offering 45 cards for $100) set to be sold in the first wave. Topps is also offering a free “exclusive Topps MLB Opening Day NFT Pack” to the first 10,000 users who sign up for email alerts for new releases.It’s a similar idea to the NBA’s white-hot Top Shot NFTs, which offer fans purchasable... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber saw record gross bookings in March 2021, according to a filing posted Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The increase may signal the beginning of a comeback for the ride-hailing business, which suffered mightily in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.Uber’s mobility segment, which includes its ride-hailing business, was up 9 percent between February and March 2021, with an annualized run rate of $30 billion. Uber’s food delivery segment UberEats, which helped the company stave off even bigger losses in 2020, doubled its annual run rate from March of last year, coming in at $52 billion.“As vaccination rates increase in the United States, we are observing that consumer demand for Mobility is recovering faster than... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Multiple Google services are currently experiencing outages, with some users unable to create new documents in Google Docs and Google Sheets. Google’s Workspace Status Dashboard is reporting that Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Classroom are all experiencing service disruptions.When trying to create a new document in Google Docs, the following error message appears:

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you missed out on Woot’s deal a few weeks ago that offered refurbished Kindle Oasis e-readers for $100, there’s another good deal happening today. The last-gen version of the Oasis is once again available, but it’s new with special offers (Amazon’s lock screen ads) and costs $170. For context, a new Oasis costs $250. As for what’s different between the current model and this one, you’ll miss out on a screen that can adapt its color temperature to your environment. But you’ll still get a waterproof e-reader that feels more like a book to use than other models, says my colleague Chaim Gartenberg.This deal loops in the 32GB model in gold. The sale will end later today, if it doesn’t sell out first.Best Buy is offering big discounts on... Continue reading…

Mobileye, the company that specializes in chips for vision-based autonomous vehicles, announced that it will launch a full-scale, fully driverless delivery service starting in 2023. The company, a subsidiary of Intel, is joining forces with self-driving delivery startup Udelv to run this new service.Deliveries will be made using a new type of cabin-less vehicle called The Transporter. While manufacturing plans are still in flux, Mobileye and Udelv say they will produce 35,000 Transporters between 2023–2028 — a signal of their seriousness to launch a driverless delivery system at scale.“This is a real commercial deployment,” Jack Weast, vice president of automated vehicle standards at Mobileye, told The Verge. “Thirty-five thousand... Continue reading…

Microsoft is buying AI speech tech firm Nuance for $19.7 billion, bolstering the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant’s prowess in voice recognition and giving it further leverage in the health care market, where Nuance sells many products. Microsoft will pay $56 per share for Nuance, a 23 percent premium over the company’s closing price last Friday. The deal includes Nuance’s net debt.Nuance is best known for its Dragon software, which uses deep learning to transcribe speech and improves its accuracy over time by adapting to a user’s voice. Nuance has licensed this tech for many services and applications, including, most famously, Apple’s digital assistant Siri. (Though to what degree Siri currently relies on Dragon to answer users’... Continue reading…

Boston Dynamics’ robot dog Spot exists in two realities. In one, it’s a terrifying harbinger of a dystopian future when robots hunt and kill humans. In the other, it’s the plaything of YouTubers who teach this robot quadruped to “piss beer” on command.The latter example comes from the talented, imaginative, piss-focused YouTuber Michael Reeves, who managed to get his hands on a unit before using his tech expertise and dirty mind to turn Spot into the ultimate drinking buddy. With some quick code and a few feet of tubing, Spot can identify cups on the floor, position itself over them, and release a stream of piss beer into the awaiting receptacle. It’s the future Isaac Asimov could only dream of.As Reeves notes in the video, it’s hardly... Continue reading…

Air France planes parked at Roissy Airport in Paris | Photo by THOMAS COEX/AFP via Getty Images French lawmakers have voted to ban domestic flights on routes that could be taken in a train ride in less than two-and-a-half hours, Reuters reported. The vote late Saturday comes as part of France’s larger climate bill, which seeks to reduce its 1990-level carbon emissions by 40 percent over the next decade.Last week, France’s government said it would contribute 4 billion euros ($4.7 billion) to recapitalize airline Air France-KLM. The airline warned it is expecting an operating loss of 1.3 billion euros when it reports its first-quarter earnings next month. The airline industry is reeling with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to a sharp reduction in global travel over the past year.“We know that aviation is a... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison said Sunday that a report claiming personal user data had been leaked was “false.” Cyber News reported a SQL database with users’ IDs, names, usernames, Twitter and Instagram handles and follower counts were posted to an online hacker forum. According to Cyber News, it did not appear that sensitive user information such as credit card numbers were among the leaked info.Clubhouse did not immediately reply to a request for more information from The Verge on Sunday. But Davison said in response to a question during a town hall that the platform had not suffered a data breach. “No, This is misleading and false, it is a clickbait article, we were not hacked. The data referred to was all public profile information... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is shutting down its mobile Shopping apps for both iOS and Android and directing users to its web Shopping site instead, 9to5 Google reported. On Friday, Xda Developers discovered that the term “sunset” had been added to several strings of code in the Shopping app, suggesting the apps were being discontinued.A Google spokesperson told 9to5 Google that the apps will continue to function through June. “Within the next few weeks, we’ll no longer be supporting the Shopping app. All of the functionality the app offered users is available on the Shopping tab,” the spokesperson said. We’ll continue building features within the Shopping tab and other Google surfaces, including the Google app.” The shopping.google.com site will remain... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images South Korean electric-vehicle battery makers SK Innovation and LG Energy Solution have reached a settlment in a US trade dispute, Bloomberg reported. Under the terms of the agreement, SK will pay $1.8 billion (2 trillion won) in cash and royalties to LG.In a joint statement the companies said they would “work to help the development of EV battery industry in South Korea and the US. through healthy competition and friendly cooperation,” adding that they would “work together to strengthen the battery network and environmentally-friendly policy that the Biden administration is pursuing.”In February, the US International Trade Commission imposed a 10-year import ban on SK Innovation— due to take effect Sunday— following allegations it... Continue reading…

The LG Stylo 6 is one of the company’s bestselling phones in recent history. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge The company leaves a void that brands like Motorola and TCL are well-positioned to fill Continue reading…

Photo by Fang Dongxu/VCG via Getty Images China has hit Alibaba, one of the country’s biggest online retailers, with a record $2.8 billion (18.2 billion yuan) fine, after an investigation found the ecommerce giant violated China’s anti-monopoly law, The New York Times reported. The fine, which represents 4 percent of Alibaba’s 2019 domestic sales, is three times higher than the $975 million fine China imposed on US chip company Qualcomm back in 2015.The Chinese government launched an investigation into Alibaba in December to determine whether the company was preventing merchants from selling their products on other platforms. China’s market regulator found that Alibaba’s practices had a negative effect on online retail competition and innovation. Alibaba used data and... Continue reading…

JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images A federal judge has granted the New York attorney general’s request to move a lawsuit against Amazon back to New York state court, Reuters reported. AG Letitia James’ lawsuit alleges that the ecommerce giant failed to protect workers at its Brooklyn and Staten Island warehouses from COVID-19 during the early months of the pandemic, and retaliated against employees who complained about the lack of safety measures.Amazon had sought to have the case moved to federal court, arguing that workplace safety issues were not under James’ purview. The company pre-emptively sued James on February 12th, and James sued Amazon four days later. Amazon then moved the lawsuit to federal court.“Amazon has forced its employees to work in unsafe... Continue reading…

NASA engineers have decided to delay the Ingenuity helicopter’s debut flight on Mars to at least Wednesday, April 14th, after running into a minor computer glitch during a rotor spin test late Friday night, the agency said on Saturday. The tiny craft is healthy, but engineers need some more time to review telemetry data from the unexpected hiccup before proceeding.Ingenuity, a mini four-pound helicopter that arrived on Mars February 18th attached to NASA’s Perseverance rover, was initially slated to carry out its first flight test late Sunday night (or, mid-day Mars time). The first bits of data on whether the flight attempt was successful was expected to come early Monday morning, around 4AM ET.But data from a high-speed rotor test... Continue reading…

Photo by KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP via Getty Images A new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that Facebook spent more than $23 million last year on security for CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook’s annual reviews of company security “identified specific threats to Mr. Zuckerberg,” according to a proxy statement filed Friday.“He is synonymous with Facebook, and as a result, negative sentiment regarding our company is directly associated with, and often transferred to, Mr. Zuckerberg,” the proxy says of the Facebook CEO’s role.The company’s annual review of security programs showed the costs of protecting Zuckerberg and his family rose in 2020 mainly due to COVID-19 travel protocols, increased security coverage during the 2020 US election season “and other periods with... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Age of Empires games have always taken place against a historical backdrop, but Microsoft and Relic Entertainment want to take things even further with Age of Empires IV. The game will feature narrated documentaries throughout the campaigns, time period-accurate language and music, as well as art and game design that looks to take inspiration from both world history and the history of the Age of Empires franchise. On release, Age IV will focus on the Middle Ages, having players start with small agrarian villages and build up to castles and kings.While players can experience hundreds of years of history in a single match, the game will also feature campaigns that let players go through real-life stories that span generations. So far,... Continue reading…

We haven’t heard much about Age of Empires IV since it was announced in 2017, but we’ve finally been given a look at the game, which includes the Mongols and Delhi Sultanate as playable civilizations. Microsoft and developer Relic Entertainment showed off a healthy amount of gameplay footage as well as new features and civilizations coming to the series in a “Fan Preview” event. The game also has a release window: fall 2021.The last main entry in the long-running historical strategy series was released in 2005, and the new game looks to build on the formula created by previous entries, while adding features made possible by 15-ish years of technological improvements. That includes the obvious things — like 4K and HDR — to more strategy... Continue reading…

Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images For more than a year, a group of workers in Bessemer, Alabama have campaigned to unionize their warehouse under the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), hoping to force the retail giant to collectively bargain with its warehouse workers for the first time. On Friday, those hopes came to an abrupt end. In a unit-wide election, workers at the warehouse voted against unionization by a more than 2-1 margin, with 738 votes in favor to 1,798 against.It’s a devastating loss for the RWDSU and the labor movement broadly. The union is still fighting the result — filing objections and arguing that Amazon’s campaign violated labor law — but those challenges are unlikely to change the result. After dreaming of a domino effect that... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge It’s another day in 2021, and so of course it’s another day where someone, somewhere is launching an NFT in hopes of making a ton of easy money. This week’s NFT launches were headlined by some big names — M.I.A., Tfue, Spike Jonze — and collectively posed the question: can you still, nearly a month after Beeple’s blockbuster NFT sale at Christie’s, make a stupid amount of cash off these things in part by being in the right place at the right time?The answer, it seems, is mostly yes. And several of this week’s NFT creators were clearly here for just that possibility. Not that this NFT thing was always the exclusive realm of fine art — I present to you this golden Pringles can that raises its eyebrows at you as if to say come and try me —... Continue reading…

Image: Ngozi Ukazu Comics have never been bigger: with Marvel TV shows, DC movies, and indie adaptations growing by the day, comic books have never been more prominent in pop culture. This biweekly Verge column recommends comic series new and old, whether you’re a longtime fan or a newcomer.Comics can be pretty depressing these days. Existential drama, dark storylines, and epic battles for the fate of the galaxy are all regular occurrences. But on the other side of the spectrum is Check, Please, a heartwarming hockey comic that’s the feel-good equivalent of a slice of warm apple pie.What is it? Check, Please is a webcomic / graphic novel by Ngozi Ukazu. It’s set across the four years of college for Eric “Bitty” Bittle, a gay NCAA hockey player at the... Continue reading…

Image by Epic Games An Australian judge has ruled that Epic’s lawsuit against Apple in Australia will be temporarily suspended as the two sides prepare for a trial in the US, Gizmodo Australia reported. Apple had asked for a permanent stay of the case in Australia, arguing that the US and Australia cases were very similar, and that the matter should be settled in the original jurisdiction of the United States.The two companies are fighting over Epic’s battle royale game Fortnite, and the fees Apple charges. In August, Epic set up its own in-game payments system, effectively circumventing Apple’s App Store payments and avoiding the 30 percent surcharge Apple collects on App Store purchases. Apple then removed Fortnite from its iOS App Store for violating... Continue reading…

James Bareham / The Verge Logitech said Friday it is discontinuing its line of Harmony universal remotes, ending years of speculation that the devices were on their way out. Models that are currently in stock at retailers will be available while supplies last, and the company says it will continue to provide support and service for the Harmony remote “as long as customers are using it.”“While Harmony remotes are and continue to be available through various retailers, moving forward Logitech will no longer manufacture Harmony remotes,” according to a blog post on Logitech’s support page. “We expect no impact to our customers by this announcement. We plan to support our Harmony community and new Harmony customers, which includes access to our software and apps to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Photographs of people getting triumphantly vaccinated against COVID-19 are all over social networks, as are announcements of upcoming appointments, first and second injections, and how well (or badly) they reacted to the vaccine. Like births, weddings, and graduations, the act of getting your Pfizer, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson injection has become a cause for public celebration.So don’t you want something to mark the occasion? A souvenir of the first indication that you can begin to think seriously about hugging your relatives, entering a store without tension, and even <gasp!> eating comfortably in a restaurant?Sites such as Etsy, Zazzle, and Redbubble are overflowing with T-shirts, hats, and buttons proclaiming “Fully Vaccinated,”... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A mobile carrier allowed anyone with one of its customers phone numbers to access their personal information, including name, address, phone number, and text and call history, according to a report by Ars Technica. The carrier, Q Link Wireless, claimed to have over two million customers in 2019.Ars Technica noted a Reddit post saying that the app used by the carrier and its subsidiary Hello Mobile never asked for a password or any identifying information when the user was logging on with a phone number. Looking through the reviews, there are references to the poor security practices (to put it mildly) going back to December of 2020. While it’s unclear when the credential-less login system appeared, there is an update note from two years... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Firefox will no longer support Amazon Fire TV or Echo Show devices starting April 30th, Mozilla announced on Friday (via Android Police).“You will no longer be able to install [Firefox] on FireTV, receive security updates, or be able to reinstall the app if you uninstall it starting on April 30, 2021,” Mozilla said in a support document. “If you have Firefox set as your default browser on Echo Show, you will be redirected to Amazon Silk for web browsing starting April 30, 2021.”Mozilla first brought Firefox to Fire TV devices in December 2017, giving Fire TV owners a way to watch YouTube in the midst of a bitter feud between Google and Amazon. In July 2019, however, Google brought the YouTube app back to the Fire TV, giving users one... Continue reading…

Image: Lil Nas X In the latest virtuoso move to promote his hit song “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” Lil Nas X posted a lo-fi remix of the track to YouTube channel Friday evening. According to his Twitter, it’s his birthday, and it seems he has given us all this gift in celebration.The video, which has the full title “Lil Nas X - MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name) but it’s lofi and something you can study to lol,” is honestly perfect. It sounds exactly like something you’d hear on Lofi Girl’s channel; if it ever gets slipped into the rotation on the channel’s iconic “lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to” video, I wouldn’t bat an eye (ear?). Lil Nas X’s video even has five anime drawings of iconic looks from the rapper, clearly taking inspiration... Continue reading…

Transformers are some of the most iconic toys around — an action figure and a car! All in one! A true bargain! But as modern Transformers toys have gotten more complex, they have also become an absolutely huge pain to actually transform from car to robot and back again, often requiring multiple shame-filled trips back to the trashcan where you threw it in a fit of hubris.Hasbro is finally fixing that problem. Not by making the toys simpler, but by making them a lot more complicated and expensive in the form of its new $700 Optimus Prime Auto-Converting Programmable Advanced Robot, which thanks to the power of real robotics technology (in the form of 27 servo motors and a mobile app) can actually transform all by itself.The new... Continue reading…

Google is just starting to test its replacement for third-party cookies, but DuckDuckGo is already announcing that it wants to block that tech with its Chrome extension. Google’s FLoC, or Federated Learning of Cohorts, technology is designed to be a more privacy-centered way to track users and serve ads to them, but some privacy advocates, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have claimed that it could be harmful to consumers.We have a great explainer on what FLoC is for those who want to go in-depth, but the overview is that the tech works to sort users into groups based on their behavior. Advertisers can then target those groups instead of individual people. Privacy advocates argue that, while it’s better than the third-party... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Senate Judiciary Committee leaders are demanding that Apple provide a witness for an upcoming hearing on app stores and digital competition after the iPhone manufacturer has refused to participate, according to a new letter to the company released Friday.In the letter addressed to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Mike Lee (R-UT) say the company “abruptly” decided not to provide a witness for an April hearing on digital markets focused on Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store.“Apple abruptly declared that it would not provide any witness”“Apple has been aware for weeks that the Subcommittee was planning a hearing on this topic and was engaged in discussions with our staff regarding who would testify on Apple’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge More than 500 Alphabet employees have signed an open letter demanding Google stop protecting the subjects of harassment complaints. The move comes two days after former Google engineer Emi Nietfeld wrote an op-ed in The New York Times alleging that she was forced to have one-on-one meetings with the man who harassed her — and sit next to him in the office — even after she filed an HR complaint.“This is a long pattern where Alphabet protects the harasser instead of protecting the person harmed by the harassment,” the letter reads. “The person who reports harassment is forced to bear the burden, usually leaving Alphabet while their harasser stays or is rewarded for their behavior.”Workers lay out two demands in the letter. First, that... Continue reading…

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge The podcasting world’s been waiting and watching for Apple to debut a full-blown revenue-producing podcast business. Spotify and other tech giants have been making moves in the space — signing exclusivity deals, acquiring companies, and generally trying to dominate the market. Yet, Apple has stayed mostly quiet, despite operating one of, if not the most, popular podcast apps on the market. Recently, however, it’s started to dabble in creating its own shows.This week, Apple premiered a new investigative nonfiction podcast looking at US Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who was charged with committing war crimes. The show, called The Line, serves as a complementary but separately reported program to a forthcoming Apple TV Plus show of the same... Continue reading…

Image: Paramount Pictures Top Gun: Maverick, the sequel to the ’80s classic Top Gun starring Tom Cruise, will now premiere on November 19th, according to Deadline. It was previously slated to open on July 2nd — which itself was a delay from December 23rd, 2020.Maverick’s delay is the latest shift in this summer’s movie slate, which, like last summer’s, has been impacted significantly by the COVID-19 pandemic. Disney delayed Black Widow from a May release date to July 9th and is also opting to make it available as a $30 Disney Plus Premier Access title the same day. The company also made Pixar’s Luca a Disney Plus exclusive and said Cruella will be a Disney Plus Premier Access release when it hits theaters on May 28th. MGM delayed No Time to Die, the next James... Continue reading…

Image: NASA Acting NASA administrator Steve Jurczyk said Friday that under President Biden’s budget request, the agency’s Artemis mission has a new goal: in addition to landing the first woman on the Moon, it will also send the first person of color to the lunar surface. So far, the only Earthlings to touch the Moon’s surface have been white men.“The president’s discretionary request increases NASA’s ability to better understand Earth and further monitor and predict the impacts of climate change,” Jurczyk said in a statement. “It also gives us the necessary resources to continue advancing America’s bipartisan Moon to Mars space exploration plan, including landing the first woman and first person of color on the Moon under the Artemis program.”B... Continue reading…

JerryRigEverything Lenovo’s new Legion Phone Duel 2 is a gaming phone that has two USB-C ports, a pop-up camera, and even built-in fans. There’s so much tech inside that Lenovo decided it’d be best to shove its most crucial, hard-working components into the middle of the phone, making it easier for the fans to keep it all cool during gameplay. As a result, it’s thicker in the middle, flanked by two batteries. That didn’t seem like a huge red flag at first. If anything, it seemed clever — that is, until YouTuber JerryRigEverything got ahold of the phone (via Android Police).As part of the channel’s signature rigorous testing of durability, each device is eventually bent to see how much flex it can withstand before breaking. Most devices can hold up but... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Charging is a common concern with electric vehicles. But some owners of the brand-new Mustang Mach-E have run into a peculiar problem: their electric SUVs won’t start even when the main battery pack is full.That’s because, The Verge has learned, there’s a problem with some early Mustang Mach-E SUVs that involves how the much smaller 12-volt battery gets charged. It’s the latest in a growing line of small issues that have come to light during the rollout of Ford’s first long-range electric car.As is the case in other electric cars, the Mustang Mach-E keeps its 12-volt lead-acid battery topped up by essentially sipping power from the much larger lithium-ion battery pack. Based on owners’ accounts across multiple forum threads, including... Continue reading…

Some people spent the pandemic writing the next King Lear, others lamenting the fact that they weren’t. It doesn’t really matter. There are plenty of inspiring pandemic projects to go around, but one of the most striking (and brain-breaking) has to be this model train video created by Jason Shron of the YouTube channel Rapido Trains.Shron is a devoted train enthusiast and talented model maker. But his model train project re-creating the Canadian VIA rail line connecting Toronto to Montreal is really a treasure only a lot of time (due to COVID-19 lockdowns) and passion (from a lifetime appreciation of the rail) can create. Just look at this video:That’s footage shot from one of Shron’s model trains, superimposed over the window of a... Continue reading…

Sony Pictures has signed a new deal with Netflix that will see the streamer become the exclusive home of films like Uncharted and Morbius when they finish their theatrical and home video runs beginning in 2022, via Deadline.The new deal sees Netflix replace Starz as Sony’s partner for the “pay one window” for what Deadline says is a “recording-setting price tag.” Netflix is an obvious choice for Sony, given that the company already has a pay one deal for its animated releases. But the new deal is far more comprehensive and will see Sony’s theatrical films from its Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures Classics, Screen Gems, and TriStar Pictures studios all head to Netflix.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge New filings show both sides’ legal strategies at work Continue reading…

Image: Amazon Amazon is adding a new streaming option to its Luna cloud gaming platform that will cap resolution at 720p to help improve stability for players on slower internet connections.Right now, Luna streams only at 1080p, with 4K coming at some point in the future. Yet even at 1080p, internet connections that struggle to keep up with the high bandwidth demands of cloud gaming might result in latency, lag, and audio issues for the player when using a service like Luna. Now, Amazon says those using Luna in its early access beta — the platform has yet to release to the public — can toggle on the 720p streaming mode in the settings panel to help with performance.“One of the most requested features is the ability to play at lower resolutions to... Continue reading…

Image: AWR Music Productions Square Enix has released a 16-minute trailer for the Final Fantasy VII Remake Orchestral World Tour, and if you’re a fan of the game’s fantastic soundtrack, I highly recommend watching this video from beginning to end. Watching the songs performed by a live orchestra brought a huge smile to my face.The trailer features three songs: a medley of the game’s opening, including the bombastic title fanfare that still gives me goosebumps; “Stand Up,” the song used during the Honeybee Inn dance scene; and a medley of the classic battle theme, “Let the Battles Begin!”More than 100 musicians perform the arrangements. If you want to try to catch a show for yourself, you can see the schedule of upcoming performances on the tour’s website. Sadly,... Continue reading…

Trevor DeHaas/Twitter Trevor DeHaas is auctioning his 2017 tweet of the “dinner” he received at Fyre Fest as an NFT. But unlike the Fest itself, the tweeted photo of the limp cheese slice on wheat bread with some greens and a sad tomato in a styrofoam container isn’t a grift; as first reported by Axios, DeHaas is hoping to raise $80,000 which he plans to put toward his medical bills.“With how hot the NFT market is right now I figured I’d give it a shot and could hopefully raise enough money that I wouldn’t need to rely on a GoFundMe to pay for my medical expenses,” DeHaas said in an email to The Verge. “The last thing I want is to guilt trip someone into buying the NFT and copyright to pay for my medical expenses but I would like the auction winner to know... Continue reading…

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge The wisdom of the crowd Continue reading…

The 8 Pro uses a new 108-megapixel image sensor that could bring better photo capabilities to the midrange class Continue reading…