The Verge

The founders of Hipmunk are launching a new startup today that’s aimed squarely at taking on their own former product. Called Flight Penguin, it’s a Chrome browser extension that simultaneously searches a bunch of airline websites and then presents the results in a familiar format. Rather than taking a commission or affiliate fee, Flight Penguin will instead charge its users $10 per month — it’s designed for people who travel a lot (or, since there’s still a pandemic on, people who will imminently travel a lot).Flight Penguin is also not pulling any punches when it comes to its rhetoric: it promises that there will be “no collusion” with the airline industry, specifically noting that “Some of the largest travel sites hide flights from... Continue reading…

If you had to choose: would you choose a sharper screen on your smartphone, or a smoother-scrolling one? This year, budget phone buyers may be asking themselves that question: the OnePlus Nord N100, Moto G50, and the new Samsung Galaxy F12 and M12 all refresh their screens 90 times per second (which is good!) but with a lower-than-optimal screen resolution of 720p. That’s the same resolution as a Galaxy Nexus from 2011.Compared to your average iPhone, that’s a paltry number of pixels. Since the iPhone 4 debuted in 2010, every Apple handset has offered at least 326 pixels per inch (PPI), enough so you can’t make out those individual pixels with the naked eye at typical viewing distances. (The marketing term is “retina display.”) Here,... Continue reading…

Photo by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images Social audio app Clubhouse will let all users pay other creators starting Monday. It’s the first monetization tool built right into the app. Clubhouse says it won’t take a cut of payments, meaning that creators get the entirety of what somebody sends them. Not everyone will be able to receive payments just yet, though; that will be rolling out in waves, “starting with a small test group,” Clubhouse says.To pay a Clubhouse creator who can receive payments, tap on their profile, then tap on the “Send Money” button, and then choose how much you send them. You’ll also have to pay a “small card processing fee” that goes to Stripe, which is Clubhouse’s payments processing partner. The first time to try to pay someone, Clubhouse will ask you... Continue reading…

Photo: Sean Hollister / The Verge You would think that something as critical as a town or county’s drinking water supply would be well-protected — you know, like how America’s nuclear armament was isolated from the internet and even relied on eight-inch floppy disks until just recently? And yet we’ve now had two instances where someone was able to remotely log into a municipal water supply in a way that could have harmed people.Remember the story of the Florida water treatment facility where someone was able to change the chemical levels? Something similar happened in March 2019 in Kansas’ Ellsworth County, too, where 22-year-old Wyatt Travnichek now stands accused of shutting down the region’s water cleaning system “with the intention of harming” it, according to a... Continue reading…

Image: People Can Fly Outriders, the online shooting, looting, and superpower-slinging game from People Can Fly, finally has a way to pause, but to do it you’ll need to be using an Nvidia graphics card (via Kotaku). Despite working as a single-player game, Outriders requires an internet connection to play, which means pausing in the middle of a battle was impossible until this workaround. Even with your menu open, enemies could still attack you.Using Ansel, which is a feature of Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics cards that enables a kind of photo mode even in games without one built in, you can “pause” Outriders by pressing “Alt F2” on the fly, and get up and take care of business. Because Ansel is specific to the Nvidia’s Geforce Experience software, pausing is... Continue reading…

Yahoo Answers, one of the longest-running and most storied web Q&A platforms in the history of the internet, is shutting down on May 4th. That’s the day the Yahoo Answers website will start redirecting to the Yahoo homepage, and all of the platform’s archives will apparently cease to exist. The platform has been operating since 2005.Yahoo, which is now part of Verizon Media Group following the company’s sale to the telecom for nearly $5 billion in 2017, announced the change at the top of the Yahoo Answers homepage. The message links to an FAQ, which details the timeline of the shutdown. Starting April 20th, the platform will no longer accept new submissions, the FAQ explains.Users will also have until June 30th to request their data... Continue reading…

Nintendo has been rumored to be working on a bigger Switch for a while now, which reportedly could show up later in 2021. But YouTuber Michael Pick isn’t waiting around for a new model from Nintendo — he’s gone and built his own bigger Switch.Much bigger, as it turns out: almost six feet wide, compared to the regular Switch’s 9.4-inch size.“I really like the Nintendo Switch. It’s small, it’s portable — but it’s really easy to lose. And for me, that was a problem. So, I decided to fix that by making something that was just a little bit larger,” Pick said. That reads as a bit of an understatement when comparing Pick’s supersized model (which he says is the world’s largest) to the original. The gigantic version of the... Continue reading…

Image: Epic Games Epic is further stitching together its various platforms with a new Fortnite integration for its social video app Houseparty that lets you stream your gameplay to friends. The integration builds on an existing one that uses Houseparty’s video chatting capabilities to bring live video chat into Fortnite, and now this essentially does the reverse.That way, your friends can see you live both through your mobile phone camera and also the feed of your active Fortnite game. Think of it a bit like Twitch streaming without all the fuss and just for your friends instead of the broader public. Epic says the feature supports streaming from a PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, or PC right now. “We will let everyone know if we’re able to support more... Continue reading…

The LG V60 — launched in early 2020 — could be on the list for an Android 12 update. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge LG says it will continue to offer Android OS updates — including an upgrade to Android 12 — for some of its devices after it exits the smartphone business, but the company’s poor track record has us feeling skeptical it’ll follow through.In its press release and on a US FAQ page, LG says only that it will continue to provide some security and OS updates, but a page on LG’s Korean website spotted by XDA Developers specifically mentions that an “Android 12 OS upgrade will also be provided for selected models.” This page also notes that this is subject to change based on product performance, and that update availability may vary by region.LG wasn’t very reliable with updates even prior to its decision to get out of the phone businessLG... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Amazon’s bringing Zoom compatibility to more devices. The company announced today that it’s making the Echo Show 10 devices in the US compatible with the popular video calling software. Users who have their calendars linked up to the Alexa will have their meetings started automatically while people who haven’t done that can say, “Alexa, join my meeting” or “Alexa, join my Zoom meeting” to join one. This is the second Echo Show to gain Zoom access; the Echo Show 8 started supporting the videoconferencing platform in the US in December.The Echo Show 10’s camera tracks users as they move throughout a room, meaning callers can see the screen no matter where they sit or stand. Presumably, this functionality will work with Zoom, putting it on... Continue reading…

Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images Responding to a petition on Monday, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas laid out a comprehensive constitutional framework for regulating Twitter moderation, signaling that Thomas and other conservatives are eager to take action against social media platforms.Thomas was writing in response to a case brought in 2017 by Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, arguing that President Trump was violating the First Amendment by blocking critics on Twitter. A federal appeals court ruled in favor of the institute in 2019 and Biden’s White House has declined to contest that ruling, making it pointless to continue the case. But since an appeal was filed while Trump was still president, the court is formally required to respond.“... Continue reading…

Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images Health care company One Medical charged administration fees to some people receiving COVID-19 vaccines in Washington, DC, according to bills reviewed by The Verge. The company runs the COVID-19 vaccination site at DC’s Entertainment and Sports Arena. People vaccinated at this site were also prompted to sign up for a trial account with One Medical to receive the shots.One Medical told The Verge in a statement that an error in the billing system led to the charges, that impacted patients “are being notified,” and that they should disregard the bill. “We are monitoring daily to ensure that no new invoices are going out,” One Medical said.There is not supposed to be a charge associated with the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the Centers... Continue reading…

Image: Studio ZA/UM Disco Elysium: The Final Cut, an upgraded version of one of 2019’s most-acclaimed titles, hit consoles last week with the game’s release on PlayStation 4 and 5. But fans who have been looking forward to finally trying Disco Elysium on console (including myself) have run into many bugs, and developer ZA/UM still hasn’t released a promised update.Most of the bugs are small but annoying, like finicky controls or voice lines not triggering when they should. (That last one is particularly frustrating given that every line of dialogue is supposed to be voiced, which is a new change for The Final Cut.) But players are also reporting a bigger issue: some important quests can’t be completed at all. (Last night, I ran into one of these bugged... Continue reading…

The LG V30. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The US smartphone market just got more boring Continue reading…

The Pro 2 gives you more features for less money Continue reading…

Image: Disney / Marvel Marvel’s next spinoff series after WandaVision and the ongoing Falcon and the Winter Soldier will be Loki, a show dedicated to the trickster god of Asgard and the brother of Thor. And now we have another trailer, showing off longtime Marvel mainstay Tom Hiddleston in the title role and now a little more information on what exactly he’s been tasked with. The show will premiere on Disney Plus on June 11th.Loki is another dramatic tonal departure for Marvel, which has set up its spinoff series as experimental dives into various genres. This one feels more in line with the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s love of alternative universe capers, though it’s channeling some serious Umbrella Academy vibes as Loki is asked by Mobius (Owen Wilson) to... Continue reading…

Supreme Court 1 (Verge Stock) In a ruling on Monday, the Supreme Court found that Google could legally use elements of Oracle’s Java application programming interface (API) code when building Android.“Google’s copying of the API to reimplement a user interface, taking only what was needed to allow users to put their accrued talents to work in a new and transformative program, constituted a fair use of that material,” the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-2 opinion, with one justice (Amy Coney Barrett) not taking part in the ruling. It overturned an earlier federal decision, which found that Google’s use of the API had constituted infringement.“Google’s copying of the API...constituted a fair use of that material”The court’s opinion concludes that APIs — which let... Continue reading…

If you ask me, $300 for a QHD gaming monitor that has Nvidia’s G-Sync compatibility and a fantastic IPS panel is a great price. That’s how much LG’s UltraGear 27-inch QHD model costs — down $100 from its usual price at B&H Photo and Amazon. This monitor has a subtle design and slim bezels, and in terms of features, it has a 144Hz refresh rate, 1ms response time, and covers 99 percent of the sRGB color spectrum. In terms of ports, it has two HDMI ports, one DisplayPort, and a 3.5mm output for desktop speakers or headphones.For those lucky enough to have gotten a new Nvidia RTX 30-series graphics card, or a powerful AMD GPU for their PC, or who have an Xbox Series X, a 1440p gaming monitor like this is a must-own piece of tech. Games will... Continue reading…

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge Apple CEO Tim Cook rarely provides details on unannounced products, but he offered some hints about Apple’s thinking on augmented reality and cars in an interview with Kara Swisher for The New York Times this morning.When it comes to augmented reality, he agreed with Swisher’s framing that the tech is “critically important” to Apple’s future and said it could be used to enhance conversations.“You and I are having a great conversation right now. Arguably, it could even be better if we were able to augment our discussion with charts or other things to appear,” Cook said. He imagines AR being used in health, education, retail, and gaming. “I’m already seeing AR take off in some of these areas with use of the phone. And I think the promise... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has determined that Amazon retaliated against two activist employees when it fired them in April of last year, as first reported by The New York Times.The determination is part of the board’s ongoing response to a labor complaint against Amazon, although it’s not a legal ruling in itself. Still, the determination indicates the NLRB is prepared to accuse Amazon of unfair labor practices in connection with the case, and that puts the company under significant pressure to settle the case with the fired employees.“We are on the right side of history and the right side of the law”The two employees at the heart of the case, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, organized the Amazon Employees for... Continue reading…

LG’s Wing was a uniquely designed device released last year. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge LG is exiting the smartphone business, the company confirmed today. The decision will “enable the company to focus resources in growth areas such as electric vehicle components, connected devices, smart homes, robotics, artificial intelligence and business-to-business solutions, as well as platforms and services,” LG said in a statement.Existing phones will remain on sale, and LG says it’ll continue to support its products “for a period of time which will vary by region.” The company hasn’t said anything about possible layoffs except that “details related to employment will be determined at the local level.” LG says it expects to have completed the business’ closure by the end of July this year.The move has been rumored for several... Continue reading…

Image: Genesis Hyundai’s luxury vehicle brand Genesis used 3,281 drones to create its logo over Shanghai’s skyline on March 29th in celebration of the brand’s arrival in China. That number of drones sets a new Guinness World Record for “The Most Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) airborne simultaneously,” according to a Genesis press release.You can see a picture of the Genesis logo formation at the top of this post. Genesis also made a video that showed off some additional drone formations, including a hand, two of the company’s cars, and... a double helix?Genesis’ record edges out the previous one held by Shenzhen Damoda Intelligent Control Technology, which used 3,051 drones in a display on September 20th. Here’s a video of that display, which I... Continue reading…

Image: Activision TiMi Studios, the Tencent-owned developer of huge mobile hits Call of Duty: Mobile and the MOBA Honor of Kings, earned a staggering $10 billion in revenue in 2020, according to an April 1st Reuters report.Reuters’ article says those earnings make TiMi the “world’s largest developer,” according to its sources. While it’s unclear exactly what metric that is defining, it’s a undoubtably a huge number. For comparison, Activision Blizzard (which publishes the Call of Duty franchise) posted 2020 revenues of $8.09 billion, nearly $2 billion less than TiMi’s reported $10 billion.TiMi’s games are some of the biggest in the worldWhile TiMi might not be a household name, its games are some of the biggest in the world. Call of Duty: Mobile... Continue reading…

Image: Marvel Studios Hi, it’s Jay, and I’m holding down the fort for Kim today, which means I get to do a trailer roundup. I apparently picked a good week to take this responsibility, as there were a lot of good trailers to pick from — it seems like media companies are gearing up for a big year in movies and TV shows.Let’s get right into it.Black WidowMy wife and I spent the first part of this year watching the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, and as we got further along, we couldn’t believe that Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow didn’t have her own movie yet. So as you might expect, we’re very excited to see Black Widow, especially after the new trailer that came out on Saturday.Black Widow will debut on July 9th in theaters and on Disney Plus as a $30... Continue reading…

Image: NASA NASA’s Perseverance rover, which is currently roaming around Mars, has dropped off the mini helicopter Ingenuity ahead of the four-pound aircraft’s historic first flight.Ingenuity dropped four inches from the belly of Perseverance to the surface of Mars. While four inches might not seem like a very big drop, getting Ingenuity to successfully stick the landing is still a significant milestone, as the helicopter had to go through a multi-day process of flipping from a horizontal position on the rover to a vertical position before it was set down. (It also had to survive a seven-month trip through space to get to Mars. NBD.)

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Personal data from 533 million Facebook accounts has reportedly leaked online for free, according to security researcher Alon Gal. Insider said it verified several of the leaked records.“The exposed data includes personal information of over 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including over 32 million records on users in the US, 11 million on users in the UK, and 6 million on users in India,” according to Insider. “It includes their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and — in some cases — email addresses.”If that 533 million number might sound familiar to you, that’s because this information is apparently from the same dataset that people could pay for portions of using a Telegram bot,... Continue reading…

Genesis Noir is set at the start of existence, reimagining the Big Bang and the natural expansion of the universe as the violent end result of a love triangle gone wrong. It’s a marriage of jazz and film noir in a point-and-click adventure game that sometimes works better as an audiovisual plaything than it does a series of puzzles. But the game’s visual style is a clear standout.The monochromatic, abstract, line-drawn look that makes Genesis Noir so unique comes from a host of influences: classic film, Italian literature, other indie games. The real mystery to solve was combining those ideas in a way that makes sense — and it actually ended in a playable game.Genesis Noir creative lead Evan Anthony’s jumping-off point was Cosmicomics,... Continue reading…

More good stuff, same light weight Continue reading…

Hummer has unveiled the SUV version of its electric pickup truck, which comes with up to 300 miles of range and will sell for a suggested retail price of up to $110,595 for its first edition. Reservations for that model are already full, according to GM’s website.GM, which is producing the electric Hummers under its GMC brand, said the SUV will go into production starting early 2023, with less pricey variants starting at $90,000 in the spring of 2023 and a low-end $80,000 variant with a 250-mile range in the spring of 2024. Previously, the company said that its electric pickup truck will start assembly at the end of 2021, starting with the most expensive trim level. Like the pickup, the SUV’s $90K-and-up trim levels... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Now that the street price of an Nvidia RTX 3070 is over $1,200, it’s temping to think scalpers, bots and cryptocurrency miners got them all — but the latest Steam Hardware Survey suggests at least some of them are making their way into gaming PCs, too. As TechSpot reports, the 3070 in particular appears to have become Steam’s fastest growing GPU, and the 17th-most popular graphics accelerator on Steam with a 1.29 percent share overall. The top 20 GPUs on Steam, as of March 2021. The RTX 3080 also commands 0.87 percent, the RTX 3060 Ti has 0.39 percent, and the pricey RTX 3090 claims 0.34 percent of the market — for a total of 2.89 percent Ampere cards.That not bad, especially considering AMD’s rival RX 6000 series... Continue reading…

Dark Patterns are user interfaces designed to trick you into doing what their creator wants. When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, he didn’t stop asking his supporters for money. The emails kept coming in. But by the end of his four years in office, according to a new report in The New York Times, they had begun to look an awful lot like a scam.By June 2020, the Trump campaign had begun using dark patterns, computer interfaces designed to trick users, to automatically sign up campaign contributors to donate far more money than they had intended — recurring monthly donations, recurring weekly donations, even a one-time surprise “money bomb” per month — by pre-checking the checkboxes for each option, burying the fine print under paragraphs of bold text, and forcing his supporters to wade through it all and opt... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Uber was sued in 2014 for discriminating against blind people and their guide dogs, and agreed to change that as part of a $2.6 million settlement two years later. But apparently, that didn’t entirely happen.Uber will now pay an additional $1.1 million to a blind woman who says said she missed work, missed her birthday celebration, missed Christmas Eve church services, and was left out in the dark, in the rain, and other such humiliations because Uber drivers refused to carry her and her dog on 14 different occasions — a number of which happened after Uber finalized its 2016 settlement.“Uber allowed drivers who discriminated against disabled riders to continue driving without discipline,” an arbitrator concluded this week (via The... Continue reading…

Internet data caps are not like pizza — where taking a slice could mean fewer slices for everyone else. I don’t think Verge readers have trouble understanding this concept? It’s been well-established that ISPs have no trouble delivering unlimited data, even during — say — a global pandemic when vast throngs of the population have suddenly found themselves working from home.This, however, did not stop WideOpenWest (aka WOW!) from using pizza to justify brand-new, possibly-never-before-seen data caps for its cable internet subscribers, starting June 1st, 2021, as Ars Technica reports.Here’s a portion of the email subscribers are receiving:

If you’ve been eagerly waiting for Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga to fulfill the incredible promise of its stirring trailer from last August (see above), I have some bittersweet news: the game’s been delayed again. Developer TT Games tweeted on Friday that “we won’t be able to make our intended Spring release date,” which itself was a delay from the game’s original 2020 launch window.

Since 1996, spacejam.com has been an internet time capsule like few others still in existence — a largely pristine sample of the early World Wide Web and all the most advanced multimedia offerings available at the time, such as animated GIFs and Windows 95 screensavers. But 25 years later, it’s finally been supplanted; the new sequel Space Jam: A New Legacy, starring LeBron James, has taken over the URL to showcase the new movie’s very first trailer.Here’s what spacejam.com looks like today: But before you go boycotting the sequel, you should probably know that the original Space Jam website isn’t dead yet. In fact, it’s just one click away at spacejam.com/1996, and the new website lets you that original Space Jam logo... Continue reading…

A vaccine site that opened in Louisville, Kentucky on April 2, 2021, as cases rose in the state. | Photo by Jon Cherry/Getty Images This is a surreal moment in the pandemic, brimming with hope and fear.Here in the US we’re at the last leg in a marathon — vaccines are here, and appointments to get those shots are becoming more plentiful. People are planning for the moments they’ve put off for a year or more. The finish line is in sight.At the exact same time, our will to power through to the end just slammed into a wall. Restrictions are lifting while cases are still high, sending case counts through the roof. Hospitals are getting crowded again. Testing has dropped, leaving us with incomplete information as new variants take hold.“We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope,” said Rochelle... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Welcome to April. This month began with, frankly, too many brands insisting on making fools out of themselves. But now that the prankster holiday is behind us, we’re focused on deals that are still happening. This has been a fun week to write about deals because a little bit of everything has seen a discount. There have been several deals lately on game subscriptions, so my colleague Taylor Lyles put together a big up-to-date guide to help you find the best prices.Nomad’s Base Station Pro is half off until Saturday nightIf you have an iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods and are still lamenting the fact that the AirPower charging mat never released, check out this deal. Nomad’s Base Station Pro does what the AirPower promised to do —... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon has issued a rare public apology — but not to its workers, and with no real admission of guilt.Over a week ago, the company was caught publicly lying to Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) that its workers never feel the need to pee in water bottles (which is, in fact, a well-documented issue at Amazon because of how it robotically tracks and fires its laborers).Now, late on the Friday evening before Easter weekend, when few (hat tip to GeekWire) are paying attention, the company is apologizing to Pocan — and no one else. Amazon only apologizes for not being “accurate” enough, too — not for actually creating and contributing to situations where workers pee in bottles.The @AmazonNews account didn’t bother to tweet any of this, BTWIn... Continue reading…

A pressure vessel from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket was found in a man’s farm last weekend. | Grant County Sheriff’s Office A pressure vessel from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stage fell on a man’s farm in Washington State last week, leaving a “4-inch dent in the soil,” the local sheriff’s office said Friday.The black Composite-Overwrapped Pressure Vessel, or COPV, was a remnant from the alien invasion-looking breakup of a Falcon 9 second stage over Oregon and Washington on March 26, local officials said. The stage reentered the atmosphere in an unusual spot in the sky after sending a payload of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites to orbit.A Grant County, Washington property owner, who told authorities he didn’t want to be identified, found the errant COPV — roughly the size and shape of a hefty punching bag — sitting on his farm one morning last weekend. He reported... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google will soon be more selective about which apps on the Play Store can see all of the other apps you have installed (via XDA-Developers). As Ars Technica points out, your list of installed apps, innocent as it seems, can communicate to developers personal traits like dating preferences and political affiliations. So starting on May 5th, 2021, developers will have to provide a very good reason for why Google should let you access info like that.Android 11 apps that currently request the “QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES” permission can see the full list of apps you have stored on your device. But Google recently updated its Developer Program Policy and now considers that info to be “personal and sensitive user data,” restricting which apps are... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Two Coinbase employees have managed to find a heartwarming use for NFTs by incorporating them into their wedding, exchanging the digital tokens as part of the ceremony.Rebecca Rose and Peter Kacherginsky say that alongside their traditional Jewish ceremony, the couple also sent each other digital tokens as “virtual rings” to each other. In a Twitter thread about the wedding, Rose said that their virtual rings now exist on the blockchain “for all to see as proof of our commitment to each other.”

A leaked image of Spotify’s Car Thing. | Image: Spotify / Steve Moser Spotify’s much-anticipated in-car gadget, a voice-controlled music player known colloquially as the Car Thing, has just shown up in a handful of in-app renders unearthed by MacRumors contributor Steve Moser, who found the images in Spotify’s app code. These renders match up quite closely with photographs of the real deal submitted as part of filings to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which The Verge reported back in January.Thanks to these renders, we have a much cleaner look at the evolved Spotify Car Thing design, which includes a large knob on the right, a color screen, and four buttons on top. Earlier official company renders from back when the product was formally announced in 2019 showed off a much smaller screen.Y... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google’s next Pixel flagship — the presumably named “Pixel 6” — will reportedly feature a Google-designed GS101 “Whitechapel” SoC (system on a chip), a first for the company, as reported by 9to5Google and XDA-Developers.9to5Google’s report claims Google is working on two phones that will feature the Arm-based GS101 — presumed to be a flagship device to succeed last year’s Pixel 5 and a Pixel 4A 5G follow-up.XDA’s report, meanwhile, goes into further detail on the new SoC, claiming the GS101 chips will feature a “three cluster setup with a TPU (Tensor Processing Unit)” for machine learning applications. (For reference, Qualcomm’s own flagship Snapdragon 888 uses Arm’s Cortex-X1 / Cortex-A78 / Cortex-A55 as a triple cluster CPU setup.)... Continue reading…

Photo: Intel From consoles to cars, it seems like everyone is having a hard time getting enough chips Continue reading…

Photo by Peter Kneffel/picture alliance via Getty Images Microsoft has updated its events website to reveal the dates of Microsoft Build 2021. Per the new listing, the annual conference will take place from May 25th–27th this year. It will also be held virtually, along with many of Microsoft’s 2021 events.A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the dates to The Verge. “Please stay tuned for more information to come,” the spokesperson said.“Microsoft Build is where developers, architects, start-ups, and students learn, connect, and code together, sharing knowledge and expanding their skillset, while exploring new ways of innovating for tomorrow,” the website reads.

The global chip shortage has been a growing concern in the tech industry (and it has even grabbed the interest of the US president) as it starts to affect the production of more and more products, from cars to graphics cards to game consoles. For a great explanation of all the factors that have led to the shortage, you should read Bloomberg’s breakdown. It digs into factors like pandemic-fueled demand and the small number of companies actually able to produce the chips that now power so much of our digital lives.One of the most interesting features of the article is an interactive graphic that shows the customers and industries that make use of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which gives a great idea of the scale and... Continue reading…

Boost Mobile, owned by Dish Network, serves 9 million customers — more than half of which rely on the older CDMA network. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Dish Network issued a new letter to the Federal Communications Commission this week, as reported by Axios, highlighting the urgent situation it faces if T-Mobile moves ahead with its planned January 2022 CDMA network shutdown. “We believe that T-Mobile’s actions raise significant competition and public interest concerns,” the letter states. It would be a blow to Dish’s business, but most importantly, millions of Boost Mobile customers would feel the impact as a result.Boost Mobile, a former Sprint MVNO sold to Dish as part of T-Mobile’s acquisition, serves 9 million customers. According to the letter, more than half of them rely on CDMA service. Its prepaid service is an accessible alternative to contract plans for low-income customers;... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Google is killing off its dedicated Google Wifi app for managing its routers, rolling that functionality over to the Google Home app as the company continues to “help our customers control and manage all their connected products in one place and enable routines across them.”The switchover to the Google Home app will come in two phases: first, Google will disable most of the functionality of the Google Wifi app on May 25th. Starting then, users will only be able to view the current status of their networks — but any changes, including adding new routers or access points — will have to be done in the Google Home app.Starting on May 25th, users will have to use the Home app to make any changes to a Google Wifi setupThen, sometime in... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla delivered nearly 185,000 cars in the first quarter of 2021, more than it produced over the three-month period, according to numbers the company shared on Friday. Tesla has been ramping up production capacity and just nearly missed CEO Elon Musk’s goal of delivering 500,000 cars in 2020.Of the cars Tesla delivered in Q1 2021, nearly 183,000 were Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, more than the 180,000 of those models produced in Q1. On top of the Model 3 and Model Y deliveries, the company also sold an additional 2,020 Model S cars that had been produced in previous quarters.Tesla could beat last year’s 500,000-car goalTesla announced redesigns for the Model S and Model X in January 2021, which added new powertrains, higher range... Continue reading…

Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for The Recording Academy Bruno Mars is the latest celebrity to jump into the virtual world of Fortnite. Today, developer Epic Games announced that the battle royale game would be getting a new Mars emote — essentially an in-game dance — set to the singer’s song “Leave the Door Open.” Players will be able to buy it starting at 8PM ET tonight.Fortnite is steadily becoming a place filled with real-world stars, whether it’s streamers like Tyler “Ninja” Blevins or the upcoming appearance of Brazilian soccer star Neymar. Music, in particular, has been a big focal point for the game. Marshmello and Travis Scott both held massive in-game concerts with millions of virtual attendees, BTS debuted a music video, and Epic even created its own soundstage to host shows from... Continue reading…