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Random Stuff 2 Plenty of details about the Samsung Galaxy S21 have already leaked ahead of its expected January release date. But a new video gives a glimpse of the Galaxy S21 Plus model, showing a flat display with thin bezels around it, and a punch hole selfie camera.The quality of the video from user Random Stuff 2 isn’t the greatest, and it has some sort of distracting music playing under the user’s commentary. It also doesn’t provide a lot of detail about the back of the phone.Three Galaxy S21 models are expected: a standard, a Plus and an Ultra. A series of leaked teaser trailers, showed off redesigned camera bumps, showing what appears to be five cameras on the S21 Ultra and three each on the S21 and S21 Plus.Android Police reported last... Continue reading…

Alex Castro Software giant Oracle moved the company headquarters from Redwood City, California to Austin, Texas, Bloomberg reported, the latest tech firm to depart Silicon Valley for the Lone Star State.Oracle did not immediately reply to a request for comment Sunday, but told CNBC that it was putting into place “a more flexible employee work location policy,” and that the move to Austin would “best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work.”Oracle, founded in 1977, is one of the older Valley tech firms, and is a staple of the area; the San Francisco Giants play at Oracle Park, and the company’s Redwood City campus features its well-known cylindrical buildings. It already has a campus... Continue reading…

Photo by MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP via Getty Images Workers at an iPhone production plant in India reportedly smashed windows and set fire to vehicles to protest reductions in pay, the Times of India reported. The incidents began Saturday at a facility run by Taiwan manufacturing company Wistron Corporation, where the iPhone SE is assembled.According to the The Indian Express, during a shift change workers who said they had seen their pay reduced damaged the offices, some furniture, and factory equipment before things escalated outside. A local official told the Express that police were investigating the incident. About 2,000 workers were involved in the protest.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla will shut down production for its Model S and Model X for 18 days beginning December 24th according to an internal memo, CNBC reported. Why and what the company will do with the two lines during the shutdown wasn’t immediately clear, but workers on those production lines will apparently get a week’s pay, some paid holidays, and will have opportunities to work on other teams within the company.The memo also says the workers can volunteer to help with delivery of vehicles to customers while production is on hold.Auto industry analyst Edward Niedermeyer noted that Tesla asked California for tax exemptions in 2015 for equipment it needed to build 195,000 Model S and Model X vehicles by 2021. The company told the state of California... Continue reading…

Photo by Seymour Wally/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images In 1956, Elvis Presley got a polio vaccination on the Ed Sullivan Show. The shot was newly available and highly effective — but too few teenagers and young adults were getting vaccinated, so the devastating disease was still circulating. Officials turned to Presley to set an example and encourage people to get their shots. Along with other campaigns, the celebrity endorsement helped vaccination rates go up, and eventually, the disease was eliminated from the country.That bit of history raises a very important question: who will be the Elvis Presley of the COVID-19 vaccine? The vaccine won’t help slow the pandemic if people don’t take it, and many people still say they aren’t sure if they will.Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush,... Continue reading…

Giant AR cat is giant | Google Google has added 50 new augmented reality animals to Search which can be either cute, or in the case of the giant cat in the photo above, a bit disconcerting. Of course it’s possible that I find the giant kitty menacing because I hate fun (or so I have been told), but I do not think I want that creature to greet me, anywhere, ever, in AR or any other reality.I do, however, want this red panda to play with a pumpkin in my dining room as long as she wants to. Kim Lyons/The Verge Look how cute she is with her little pumpkin In addition to the red panda and cat, there’s a giraffe, cow, zebra, pig, and hippo among the new creatures you can welcome virtually into your home (or other space, but we’re all homebound... Continue reading…

Origin made its RestoMod PC to look like a throwback | Origin Origin has made a new, limited edition PC that has the guts of a new model but the face of an ancient 1990s machine, complete with a fake floppy drive. In case you want some nostalgia while you wait for Red Dead Redemption to load, perhaps.The RestoMod has a custom Corsair 4000D case, and the standard build has 16GB of memory, a 2.9 GHz Core i5 processor, 250GB of storage, and a 6GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card, for $2,080. The RetroMod can be customized as desired, Origin says, but they’ve only made 50 of them, so supplies are limited. Origin RestoMod: New but with an old look The front face of the machine is where you’ll get the old-school feel, Origin says:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Happy Saturday and welcome to the inaugural edition of the Verge Weekender, a short recap of some of the stories we covered this week on The Verge.The big event of the week was Disney’s investor day, where the company announced new Disney Plus series WandaVision, showed trailers for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and the much-anticipated series Loki; as well as slew of new Star Wars series on Disney Plus, including Rangers of the New Republic, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Star Wars: Lando. There’s also a new Alien TV series in the works. Check out the full roundup of everything Disney announced at its 2020 Investor Day.Perhaps the biggest news of the week/year/pandemic hit late Friday, as the FDA approved the Pfizer COVID-19... Continue reading…

Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity gliding home during a previous test flight. | Image: Virgin Galactic This morning, Richard Branson’s space tourism company Virgin Galactic had to abort its first powered test flight of its spaceplane from the company’s home in New Mexico, bringing the vehicle home before it could reach space. During the flight, the spaceplane’s engine cut out too early and the vehicle’s two pilots had to glide back down to the ground early.The aborted engine ignition was caught live by a Twitch livestream provided by the outlet NASASpaceflight. The video showed the spaceplane, called VSS Unity, dropping away from its carrier aircraft in mid-air as planned. The vehicle then briefly ignited its main engine, according to the video, but the ignition cut out after just a moment. On a typical flight, the spaceplane’s engine... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro It looked like Twitter was adding further restrictions to President Trump’s Twitter account on Saturday, as some users noticed the ability to like, retweet or reply to his tweets with “disputed” labels was not working. Copying the URL to one of the disputed tweets also appeared to be disabled, and quote-tweets were not appearing in search results.Some users were able to access and like Trump’s tweets — several Verge staffers confirmed they could engage with “disputed” tweets by clicking through the warning label— but others on Twitter could not.

Margaret Keenan, 90, the first patient in the United Kingdom to receive the Pfizer/BioNtech covid-19 vaccine outside of clinical trials gets ready to leave the hospital. | Photo by Jonny Weeks/The Guardian - Pool/Getty Images When researchers at pharmaceutical companies around the world started developing COVID-19 vaccines, experts reminded everyone to temper expectations. Vaccines usually take years. The frontrunners were made using unproven technology, and there were dozens of ways things could go wrong. The Food and Drug Administration said it would be fine with anything over 50 percent effective.Then, last month, Pfizer announced that it had a vaccine, and it was 95 percent effective. Moderna did too. It was better news than anyone dared hope for. Stéphane Bancel, chief executive at Moderna, said he cried when he first heard the data. With the FDA’s blessing, which came in late Friday night, health care workers in the United States could start getting... Continue reading…

Image: CD Projekt Red It’s a different kind of Cyber week. Cyber Monday is in the past, but the anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 game has finally launched, and it’s almost impossible to avoid seeing buzz about it online. One of this week’s best deals is aimed right at people who don’t have a console or a beastly gaming PC. The game is available on Google Stadia, and until supplies last, Google is offering a complimentary hardware bundle worth $100 to people who buy Cyberpunk 2077 on its cloud game streaming platform. Find details on this and a few more deals below.Get Stadia hardware when you buy Cyberpunk 2077A few Verge writers found that playing Cyberpunk 2077 is actually a fantastic experience on Stadia, Google’s cloud gaming streaming service that doesn’t... Continue reading…

Photo: iFixit iFixit has released its teardown of the PlayStation 5 and its DualSense controller — and it goes into even more detail than the one Sony did earlier this year. The gadget repair company discovered that the console has a ton of screws holding it together, and that there’s a weird catch to replacing the optical drive. Photo: Creative Electron (via iFixit) The company also released a always-fun X-ray of the PS5 It turns out that the optical drive is software-locked to the motherboard. The physical swap is apparently a piece of cake, but any replacement you put in won’t read disks, so if your optical drive fails you’ll be sending it to Sony. It’s a bummer, especially for me: I’ve had terrible luck with PlayStation... Continue reading…

A nurse in Belfast prepares a dose of the vaccine. | Photo by Liam McBurney / PA Images via Getty Images The Food and Drug Administration has authorized the use of a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, a landmark moment in the fight to suppress a virus that has killed nearly 300,000 people in the United States and sickened tens of millions around the world.“Today’s emergency use authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine holds the promise to alter the course of this pandemic in the United States,” Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a press release.The vaccine is authorized in the US for people over the age of 16. It was found to be 95 percent effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in clinical trials. “That is extraordinary,” Anthony Fauci, director of... Continue reading…

Image: CD Projekt Red Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red’s latest game, has been in development for nearly a decade. It was first announced in May 2012, and it’s had a rocky development cycle, with numerous delays and, in the final stretch of development, a required six-day workweek. But despite the long development, the game didn’t review quite as well as CDPR wanted, meaning developers who had been toiling for years could have been on the brink of losing performance bonuses that were tied to review scores.The studio’s developers won’t have to worry about review scores anymore, though: CDPR will now pay full performance bonuses regardless of the critical reception of the game, according to Bloomberg.“We underestimated the lengths and complexity involved to... Continue reading…

CD Projekt Red Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red (CDPR) is rolling out an update to the game that could reduce the potential for some sequences to induce epileptic symptoms. The risks of seizure were brought to light by Game Informer editor Liana Ruppert earlier this week. The 1.04 hotfix is now live on PlayStation consoles and PC, and CDPR is working to have the update out “as soon as possible” on Xbox.CDPR says it has changed the way its “braindance” sequences look. During these sequences, a device is placed in front of your character’s eyes that flashes red and white lights. The effect is similar to what actual neurologists do to trigger seizures for diagnoses, according to Ruppert, who reported that she suffered an epileptic episode when... Continue reading…

Familiars.io is a minimalist monster-catching game that went online last year, and right now, you can play it inside Twitter. As developer Nigel Nelson tweeted this afternoon, he ported (or in his words, “smuggled”) the entire game to an embedded Twitter card. That means that you can play it directly through Twitter’s web interface or mobile app.The game is built around Pokémon-style exploration and combat in a shared, lo-fi setting. You can wander around capturing enemies to expand your team of familiars, then use them to fight other players (or simply walk around saying “howdy,” if you prefer.)

Image: University of Hawaii at Manoa Norman Abramson, one of the pioneers behind wireless networks, has died at 88, The New York Times reports. Abramson and the team of graduate students and faculty he led were responsible for creating ALOHAnet, an early wireless network whose innovative techniques are still being used today in modern satellite, phone, and computer networks.Abramson died of skin cancer that had metastasized in his lungs, according to The New York Times.An engineer and student of communications theory — a discipline at the intersection of mathematics, information theory, and semiotics — Abramson studied at Harvard, and he received a master’s at UCLA and a PhD from Stanford. He was drawn to Hawaii partly because of his love of surfing, and in 1966, took a... Continue reading…

Microsoft tweeted a fake commercial for a pretend holiday album called Microsoft Holiday Hits, a not-real, four-CD album that claims it features “60 festive favorites.” I want to reiterate that this is not a real album — but the company actually went to the effort to record tidbits of Microsoft-themed versions of classic Christmas carols anyway for the lols. I dearly love puns, dad humor, and terrible jokes, but even I groaned at some of what Microsoft did here.Here are the lyrics to one eye-rolling carol:

Google Assistant on a Google Pixel While many new wireless headphones and earbuds are already equipped with support for virtual assistants, Google has extended that convenience to more users of wired headphones. As 9to5Google points out, it’s now possible to quickly access Google Assistant features on an Android phone using 3.5mm and USB-C headphones that were previously unsupported.Until now, Google Assistant integration was limited to wireless or wired options “optimized for Google Assistant support.” The company’s USB-C Pixel Buds were one of a few wired headphones to offer rich, hands-free integration with Google Assistant.That’s no longer the case: plugging in a set of “non-optimized” wired headphones will now trigger a notification indicating that you can summon... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you were worried about sending your kids back to school after the pandemic ends (or if you are a kid worrying about going back to school), I’m afraid this Gizmodo article is not going to help. Tom McKay and Dhruv Mehrotra have done a fantastic job reporting about how some US school districts are buying tools designed to break into phones to download texts and photos… even ones that have been deleted.

Christopher Nolan recently went on a very public tirade about the importance of movies, including his, being seen on the big screen — but if anyone’s interested in watching Tenet’s opening prologue, they can do so now on YouTube.Warner Bros. has posted the film’s first six minutes on YouTube ahead of the movie’s digital release next week. Don’t worry about spoilers for the time-warping heist film, there aren’t any. (I saw Tenet when it was released at a theater in suburban Canada; it was me and one other person at the other end of the theater.) The scene follows John David Washington’s Protagonist and a couple of other characters as they enter an auditorium to complete a mission. That’s really all you need to know. It’s a pretty fun,... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you’ve noticed that you’re receiving SMS texts and iMessages from people but aren’t getting any notifications about them, you’re not alone. Far from it. I’m one of many people experiencing an annoying bug where messages come through fine — but without any pop-up notification or even the usual red badge to indicate that there’s a new message waiting to be read.Last month, MacRumors wrote about increasing reports of the problem on the new iPhone 12, 12 mini, 12 Pro, and 12 Pro Max phones. But it seems to also be affecting people with older iPhones as well, so this is looking more and more like an iOS 14 issue. What’s more aggravating about the glitch is that it doesn't always happen. I’ve noticed some messages pop up on my lock screen... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge You may have never heard of the company X-Mode Social, but its code may be in some of the apps on your phone, tracking and selling your location data. Now, Google and Apple are trying to put a stop to it. According to a Wall Street Journal article, the tech companies have told developers to remove X-Mode’s code from their apps, or risk getting them pulled from their respective app stores.X-Mode works by giving developers code to put into their apps, known as an SDK, which tracks users’ location and then sends that data to X-Mode, which sells it. In return, X-Mode pays the developer a certain amount based on how many users the app has. According to the company, its technology is in over 400 apps, including many apps designed for Muslim... Continue reading…

United Airlines aircraft on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport in October. | Photo by Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty Images This week, United Airlines pledged to completely eliminate its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To make good on that promise, the company says it will invest in emerging technologies that capture planet-heating carbon dioxide from the air. It also plans to continue powering its flights with sustainable aviation fuel.United is the latest airline to respond to consumers’ growing concerns about climate change and make ambitious commitments to reduce its effects on the environment. Delta announced in February that it would spend $1 billion over 10 years to become carbon neutral by reducing and canceling out emissions with carbon offsets and carbon removal schemes. JetBlue joined a Climate Pledge initiative last week that commits it to... Continue reading…

By the end of Disney’s four-hour event, which felt like an amalgamation of a San Diego Comic-Con Hall H panel and an Apple keynote, executives made one thing clear: we can do this because we’re Disney, and we’re Disney because we can do this.A reminder of what transpired on Thursday night: a neverending stream of new Disney, Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, National Geographic, Hulu, FX, and more titles were announced in rapid-fire succession. Of those, 80 percent were streaming-only titles.That doesn’t account for Star, a new “streaming service” of sorts that will integrate into Disney Plus for international subscribers and essentially act as a version of Hulu. (This will also help Disney with its “lack of things for adults to watch”... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter has acquired Squad, an app that lets you hang out with your friends via video chat and screen-sharing, the company announced on Friday.Squad will help Twitter “bring new ways for people to interact, express themselves, and join in the public conversation,” Twitter’s VP of product, Ilya Brown, said in a tweet. The Squad team brings “a deep understanding of how people participate in interactive audio and video conversations” and will “accelerate our work to bring people new and creative tools to start and join conversations on the service,” Brown added in follow-up tweets.

At first we thought this was going to be a slow news week. Now, it’s Friday and we have published two Vergecast episodes back-to-back to cover everything you need to know in the world of tech.To sum it up: We’ve got another new Apple product to talk about, an interview with the president of Qualcomm, and a discussion on the antitrust lawsuits against Facebook put forward by the Federal Trade Commission and 48 state attorneys general. (I hope you understand now why we separated these into different episodes.)In the first half of the first episode this week of The Vergecast, Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Chris Welch discuss the announcement of Apple’s new noise-canceling headphones, the AirPods Max. Nilay was able to try them out for... Continue reading…

Photo: Lucasfilm Ltd. “Empire. New Republic. It’s all the same to these people,” comments Migs Mayfield (Bill Burr) in the latest episode of The Mandalorian.For a while, it seems that the show believes it, dressing Mando up in stormtrooper armor as he goes to desperate lengths to save Baby Yoda (neé Grogu) from Moff Gideon. In “The Believer,” it’s not an X-Wing swooping in triumphantly to save our heroes; it’s Imperial TIE Fighters — a symbol that fans have come to associate with the forces of evil in the galaxy, potent symbology that The Mandalorian’s first season finale relied on to great effect.And director Rick Fukuyama works to really sell the audience on the victory of the Empire: soaring music plays in the background, as the base’s garrison rushes... Continue reading…

AMC Theatres is warning its investors that if it doesn’t find $750 million, it will run out of cash by the middle of January 2021.The company issued new public documents today announcing that because executives can’t predict what the supply of movies will be like, and it’s unclear if people will even file into theaters again soon, the company is unsure of how much money it can make. Specifically, AMC’s documents note that executives can’t know with “certainty the impact of the Warner Bros. announcement or any similar announcements regarding the release of movie titles concurrently to the home video or streaming markets.” Conversations with studios like Warner Bros. and Disney have yet to take place, the documents add.Now, AMC is... Continue reading…

Photo by Leonard Ortiz/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images Emphasizing privacy makes data collection difficult Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Oculus has knocked $100 off the cost of its Rift S tethered virtual reality headset, which brings the price down to $299. This makes it the same price as the Oculus Quest 2 standalone headset that doesn’t require connecting to a PC to play games and experiences — yet the Rift S doesn’t require a Facebook account to use it. Oculus announced earlier this year that it discontinued the Rift S, so this discount could be its way of clearing out stock. You can get this price at several retailers, including on Oculus’ site, Lenovo (the headset’s manufacturer), as well as Walmart and Amazon.If you’re considering your options, this price cut makes the Rift S far more affordable than the Valve Index, which currently takes weeks to deliver after... Continue reading…

Image: u/TheCreativeNick We interrupt your anticipation of new Marvel content to bring you news that if you photograph a squirrel juuuuust right, you can make it look like the woodland creature has just pulled off one hell of a superhero landing. People have known about the phenomenon for a little while (the first reference we could find online appears to be this Reddit post from July 2019), but frankly, we don’t think it’s had the attention it deserves.

EA Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, the new VR-only title from Respawn Entertainment, can’t get by on authenticity alone. It has the weaponry and set dressing players have come to expect from a first-person shooter set during WWII. But for a console shooter making the jump to VR, it’s sorely lacking in intimacy — a necessary ingredient for any virtual reality experience.The environments you’ll visit in the campaign range in size from an attic to the sprawling beaches of Normandy, France, but they rarely feel like real places. Outside of your main objective, there isn’t much else to get distracted by, which is often what I find to be the most fun thing about exploring worlds in VR. I want to turn dials on old radios to listen to music of... Continue reading…

When the Switch version of the Doom reboot was released in the same year that Nintendo launched its hybrid console, it took quite a few people by surprise. Not only was it rare to see an ultraviolent first-person shooter on a Nintendo platform, but it was downright impressive to see such a technically advanced game work on the mobile hardware in the first place. Sure, the resolution was a little blurry and it only ran at 30fps, but it was Doom in your hands, which felt impossible at the time.Doom was the first of several unexpectedly ambitious third-party Switch ports, a list that has grown to include the likes of Overwatch and The Witcher 3. So this week’s release of its sequel, the excellent Doom Eternal, doesn’t have quite the impact... Continue reading…

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge An Apple support page has confirmed that the company’s new MagSafe Duo wireless charger, which is designed to charge an iPhone and Apple Watch simultaneously, isn’t compatible with its older 29W USB-C power adapter. If you’re using an Apple power adapter it’s best to use one of the company’s newer 30W models, which replaced the 29W model in 2018 and retail for $49. It’s an unfortunate revelation for anyone with the old chargers since the MagSafe Duo doesn’t come with a charging brick in the box.Apple’s page doesn’t say exactly what happens if you plug the MagSafe Duo into one of the older 29W bricks. MacRumors reports that if you do it will only be able to charge a single device, an iPhone or an Apple Watch, rather than both at once.... Continue reading…

One of Boston Dynamics most famous robots is Spot, pictured. | Image: Boston Dynamics Hyundai is officially purchasing a controlling stake in robot maker Boston Dynamics from SoftBank in a deal that values the company at $1.1 billion, the company announced today. The deal has been in the works for a while, according to recent a report from Bloomberg, and marks a major step into consumer robotics for Hyundai. Hyundai is taking approximately an 80 percent stake in the company while its previous owner, Softbank, will retain around 20 percent through an affiliate.Hyundai says its investment will help its development of service and logistics robots, but that over time it hopes to build more humanoid robots for jobs like “caregiving for patients at hospitals.” Other areas of interest include autonomous driving and smart... Continue reading…

There weren’t any bombshells on the scale of last year’s Xbox Series X reveal, but the 2020 edition of The Game Awards was still packed with news and trailers. There were game reveals like Perfect Dark and Open Roads, more characters for Fortnite and Super Smash Bros., and a lot more. If you missed the show, or just need a refresher, here are the biggest moments.Master Chief comes to FortniteAs has been long-expected, Epic revealed that Halo star Master Chief is coming to Fortnite. He’s available today, and joining him later this season will be characters from The Walking Dead.Among Us gets a new mapThe breakout social hit Among Us is getting a bit bigger. At The Game Awards the development team revealed a brand-new map, which... Continue reading…

The Mass Effect franchise isn’t done just yet, according to a strange new teaser at The Game Awards. In a short clip, a hooded figure uncovers a piece of equipment bearing the game’s N7 logo from the snow. The teaser closes with words “Mass Effect will continue.”On Twitter, BioWare said that the next game is now in “early production.”Bioware’s beloved space series wrapped its original trilogy with Mass Effect 3 in 2012. Curiously, the teaser appears to feature Liara — or, at least someone bearing a strong resemblance to her — one of the game’s Asari shipmates and possible love interests. Asari live for hundreds of years, however, meaning any future games don’t necessarily have to take place during the Shepard era of the trilogy.The... Continue reading…

Image: Billie The Federal Trade Commission announced it would sue to block Proctor & Gamble’s purchase of razor and body care company Billie on December 8th, citing P&G’s existing dominance in the wet razor market. Billie originally launched in 2017 but has grown since, likely prompting P&G’s interest and the FTC’s concern.Like Dollar Shave Club (but aimed more at women), Billie tried to pitch its razors as a cheaper direct-to-customer alternative to the pricier razors sold at retail. It proved successful, and investors were interested. But if P&G added Billie to its existing brands Gilette, Joy and Venus, it could have eliminated one of its fastest growing competitors, something the FTC feared would lead to consumers paying higher prices.This isn’t... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is going to be coming to HBO Max on the same date as its theater release, and the director is not happy. He’s written an article for Variety blasting Warner Brothers and AT&T, saying that the the move to release movies on streaming on the same day as in theaters is “a desperate attempt to grab the audience’s attention.”“With this decision AT&T has hijacked one of the most respectable and important studios in film history,” he writes. “There is absolutely no love for cinema, nor for the audience here. It is all about the survival of a telecom mammoth, one that is currently bearing an astronomical debt of more than $150 billion.”He's not alone in his anger at WB and HBO Max — last week Christopher Nolan, director... Continue reading…

At the 2020 edition of The Game Awards, developer Epic revealed the latest character to join the cast of Fortnite: Master Chief from Halo. The news isn’t a huge surprise, as his inclusion was leaked a few days ago. The good news: he’s available tonight. Epic also revealed that characters from The Walking Dead will be in the game this season as well.It’s been a busy few weeks for Fortnite. December kicked off with a season-ending event starring Galactus, which ushered in a new season featuring new characters like The Mandalorian and Baby Yoda. Epic also just launched a new subscription service, called Fortnite Crew, with exclusive in-game items for a monthly fee. Continue reading…

Indie developer Innersloth revealed its fourth map, The Airship, for the online social deduction game Among Us during The Game Awards on Thursday, following the game’s win for best multiplayer title of the year.The Airship features new tasks for players to accomplish, and is far more elaborate than previous maps, including ladders and elevators that players will need to use to access different areas of the ship. The new map will also offer players multiple spawn points following a meeting, to allow them to avoid grouping up (and avoid being easily picked off by any imposters.) The map, first teased last month by the official Among Us Twitter account, features a greater level of color and detail than the existing maps the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Disney just made a deluge of announcements at its 2020 Investor Day, including updates on new Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney Animation studios projects, as well as updates on Disney Plus and Disney’s other streaming services.Here’s everything you need to know from the event:Marvel Disney Plus Series

Microsoft Flight Simulator was always planned to come to Xbox consoles as well as PCs, and now Microsoft has finally given a timeframe for its release. It’ll launch at some point in summer 2021 and will be available on Game Pass from day one.Notably, it sounds like the title won’t be coming to the Xbox One, One S, or One X — it’s described in the trailer as “coming to the all-new Xbox,” with Series S and Series X logos. That would make Microsoft Flight Simulator the first next-gen-exclusive Xbox Game Studios title; the company has pledged to bring other upcoming games like Halo Infinite to the older machines for the time being.Microsoft Flight Simulator can be very demanding on PCs, so it may well not have been practical to get it... Continue reading…

Ark: Survival Evolved is returning for a sequel with Ark 2, starring Fast and Furious actor Vin Diesel. The news was announced today during The Game Awards with a trailer. Diesel will play a character named Santiago.Ark: Survival Evolved was released in 2017 by Studio Wildcard. In the action-adventure game, players find themselves stranded on on a dinosaur-filled island. The developer also announced an animated series featuring the voices of Michelle Yeoh, Jeffrey Wright, Elliot Page, Russel Crowe, Gerald Butler, and more. Diesel will play a part in the show as well.More details, including an expanded look at the game, will be released tomorrow.

Disney Plus is following Netflix and introducing a $1 price hike for subscribers in the United States, raising it to $7.99 a month.The move comes after a lengthy presentation showing what Disney is bringing to Disney Plus. The price hike will begin on March 26, 2021, coming in at $7.99 per month or $79.99 per year. Also, the Disney Bundle — that has Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN Plus — will see a $1 increase to $13.99 a month.As the company invests in content, the company has to raise prices to recoup that loss. This is the first time that Disney Plus has received a price hike. It arrives just a couple of months after Netflix announced it was increasing prices for subscribers in the United States, including raising its most popular plan... Continue reading…

Marvel Studios is moving forward with the Black Panther franchise, but the studio will not recast Chadwick Boseman’s King T’Challa.Instead, the movie will pay tribute to the character and the late actor and rely on other characters that appeared in the film, according to Kevin Feige, Marvel Studios chief. Ryan Coogler is still on board to write and direct the film. It’s scheduled to be released on July 8th, 2022.Boseman died earlier this year at the age of 43 after battling colon cancer for four years. The actor, who appeared in a number of films including Disney’s Captain America: Civil War and Black Panther.“Chadwick’s passing is absolutely devastating,” Kevin Feige, head of Marvel Studios, said in a statement at the time of his... Continue reading…

Marvel Studios Kevin Feige has announced that the company is working on a new Fantastic Four movie, set to be directed by Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home director Jon Watts.There’s virtually no information on the project outside of Watts’ name and a teaser logo, but the news is exciting, given the Fantastic Four’s history with the Marvel franchise. Known as “Marvel’s First Family,” the Fantastic Four have received several film adaptations in the past from 20th Century Fox already.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge This fall, Apple changed how we thought about laptops overnight. It replaced the Intel processors in its MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro and Mac Mini with its own homegrown ARM chips instead — and though we were initially skeptical about Apple’s silicon transition, the final product blew us away.Now, Bloomberg reports that Apple’s chip chief has internally revealed that a second chip transition is also already in the early stages: a cellular modem that could mean far less need (if any) for Qualcomm chips in Apple’s products.“This year, we kicked off the development of our first internal cellular modem which will enable another key strategic transition,” Apple hardware SVP Johny Srouji reportedly said, according to Bloomberg.It’s... Continue reading…