The Verge

Disney Plus has officially surpassed 100 million subscribers, less than a year and a half after the streaming service launched.Executives announced the milestone during Disney’s annual shareholders meeting. The last time Disney gave an update on Disney Plus’ subscribers number was in February during its first quarter earnings; there, it announced that, as of January 2nd, 2021, there were just over 94 million. Although executives didn’t say what pushed Disney Plus over 100 million subscribers, the recent success of WandaVision and Raya and the Last Dragon likely helped. The next big series for Disney Plus is The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, out on March 19th.“The enormous success of Disney Plus ... has inspired us to be even more... Continue reading…

A long, spoiler-filled chat Continue reading…

New Phone Hub feature in Chrome OS. | Image: Google Google is marking 10 years of Chromebooks by unveiling new features for Chrome OS today. The biggest addition is a new Phone Hub feature that connects an Android phone to a Chromebook. It allows Chrome OS users to respond to texts, check a phone’s battery life, enable its Wi-Fi hotspot, and locate a device easily.Phone Hub is packed into a taskbar widget that even expands to show you recent Chrome tabs that you have been browsing on your phone. It looks like it will be a super useful feature for Android and Chromebook owners. Google is also enabling its Wi-Fi Sync feature on more devices, allowing you to connect to Wi-Fi networks you’ve already configured and used on your Android phone and other Chrome OS devices. I... Continue reading…

Photo by Victor Boyko/Getty Images Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey now plans to convert the proceeds from the NFT auction of his first tweet to bitcoin and donate them to charity. The highest bid for the tweet is currently $2.5 million.The auction will end on March 21st, and he plans to donate the bitcoin to Give Directly, a nonprofit that lets donors send money directly to people living in poverty. He’ll be giving the bitcoin to Give Directly’s Africa Response fund for COVID-19 relief.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Cybersecurity researcher Daylam Tayari has found evidence in Twitch’s internal API that the site plans to implement something called a “brand safety score” for its streamers. That score would depend on a number of criteria: the streamer’s age, a rating given by Twitch staff, their ban history, the relationship the streamer has with Twitch, their automod settings, their partnership status, the ESRB rating of the game being played, and whether the stream is set to mature.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter has sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for opening an investigation into its moderation practices, arguing that the probe attempts to “intimidate, harass, and target Twitter” in retaliation for banning former President Donald Trump.Twitter filed the suit yesterday in California federal court. It’s asking the court to stop Paxton from demanding “volumes of highly confidential documents” on Twitter’s content moderation system. “Twitter sought for weeks to reach an agreement with AG Paxton that would put reasonable limits on the scope of this demand, but to no avail,” its complaint reads. “This retaliatory conduct violates the Constitution.”Paxton opened an investigation into Twitter — along with Google, Apple, Facebook, and... Continue reading…

League of Legends: Wild Rift, a spinoff of the PC game, is heading into open beta in North America on March 29th, developer Riot announced today. The beta will be available for mobile devices on iOS and Android.Riot announced Wild Rift in 2019; it promised a March open beta earlier this year. The game isn’t a true port but instead a “built from scratch” version with changed elements like the game’s controls and its maps. North American players will have “full access” to Wild Rift as part of the beta, with room for more players to join. Although Wild Rift’s open beta is currently only available to mobile players, the game is also expected to launch on consoles.Wild Rift was initially expected to launch last year but was delayed due to... Continue reading…

Image: Epic A new season of Fortnite is almost here, which can only mean one thing: a big in-game event. Today, Epic detailed what players can expect when season 6 of Fortnite’s second chapter kicks off. It sounds pretty ambitious and even includes a story-focused solo experience.The event has been dubbed the “Zero Crisis Finale,” and here’s how Epic describes it:

Photo by Liu Debin/VCG via Getty Images Russia and China have signed an agreement to build and work on an “International Scientific Lunar Station” orbiting the Moon, the countries’ space agencies announced Tuesday. The space powers had been in talks for months as Russia mulled over whether it would participate in NASA’s Gateway program, a rival lunar space station to be built by a coalition of other countries in the next decade.The International Scientific Lunar Station that Russia and China will work on is “a complex of experimental research facilities created on the surface and/or in the orbit of the Moon,” Roscosmos said in a statement. It will be designed to support a variety of research experiments “with the possibility of long-term unmanned operation with the prospect... Continue reading…

Now that so many people are working remotely, it’s become more accepted than ever for official documents to be sent digitally — and most are sent as PDFs.In case you’re not familiar with the background of that format, PDF stands for portable document format and was created by Adobe in the early 1990s to allow people and organizations to create exact digital versions of paper documents. The idea was that the document was an exact, unchangeable copy of the original (while some PDFs can now be edited, you can create a PDF that cannot).Since then, PDFs have become a standard for sending official documents. If you need to send something with any kind of legality, you’ll probably be asked to send it as a PDF.You can create a PDF from a... Continue reading…

Zipline’s drones fly autonomously to their destination, dropping packages off via parachute. | Image: Zipline The threat of COVID-19 has prompted many countries to draft new and emerging technologies to fight the pandemic, with the latest example taking flight in Ghana. This month, COVID-19 vaccines were delivered by drone for the first time in the West African nation, allowing the medicine to reach remote areas underserved by traditional logistics.Deliveries were made by US firm Zipline, which started couriering blood and drugs in Rwanda in 2016. Since then, the company has expanded its operations to Ghana in 2019 and the US in 2020, delivering medical supplies and PPE in North Carolina last May. Now, Ghana’s government has tapped Zipline to deliver the first vaccines supplied to Africa by the COVAX initiative, a project launched with the help... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo “MAR10 Day” is tomorrow, but several retailers have already begun the festivities by making more stock available for the limited-edition Nintendo Switch that is based on the mustached plumber.The Nintendo Switch Mario Red & Blue Edition was released last month but has been hard to find since its launch. Now it is back in stock at several retailers, including Best Buy and GameStop. Retailing for $300, which is the normal price for Nintendo’s hybrid console, the limited-edition Switch features an all-red console, a red dock stand, a pair of red Joy-Cons, a red casing around the screen, and a blue Joy-Con grip. The console also includes a screen protector and a special carrying case for no additional cost.Over at Best Buy, the retailer... Continue reading…

Photo illustration by William Joel / The Verge With #TeBuscamosWendy, Wendy’s brother kept attention on her disappearance Continue reading…

Image: Vudu Vudu, the digital video service that was owned by Walmart before Fandango bought it last year, is finally making its way to the Amazon Fire TV platform. The app is a big source of high-quality, 4K HDR movie rentals. You can also access your existing Vudu library — including Movies Anywhere titles — with the Fire TV app, which should be rolling out in the coming days.“We want Vudu fans to be able to watch movies and TV shows on all of their favorite devices, and Fire TV has been one of our customers’ most-requested devices for streaming content,” Kevin Shepela, Fandango’s chief commercial officer, said in a press release.With Vudu joining the roster of apps, Fire TV owners will get another go-to destination for Dolby Vision content.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter’s social audio feature Spaces continues to expand its test group, but currently if you miss a live session, you miss the conversation for good. That, however, might change soon. In an interview with The Verge’s Nilay Patel on his Decoder podcast, Kayvon Beykpour, head of consumer product at Twitter, says the company plans to build a way to natively record conversations.“I think it should be a choice,” he says. “If you think that the conversation was worth playing back, you ought to be able to do that. I personally am a little bit more bullish on two things. One, obviously the host should be able to save it and do whatever they want. Maybe you host a Space, you save it, then want to go edit it. You should be able to do that.”He... Continue reading…

A bookbinding creation by omgreylo. | Photo by omgreylo Book binders are making fanfiction physical, so it can sit alongside the authorized tales Continue reading…

Samsung Samsung has announced its newest SSD, a follow-up to the 970 Evo called the 980. The drive is a NVMe M.2 PCIe 3.0 drive, and it’s an affordable one, too. It costs up to $129.99 for the 1TB version and as little as $49.99 for the 250GB model.There’s a reason for the low price — it’s Samsung’s first-ever DRAM-less NVMe SSD, a cost-cutting measure that many other storage manufacturers have already dabbled with to varying degrees of success. The 980 lacks fast dynamic random access memory typically used for mapping the contents of an SSD, which would help it quickly and efficiently serve up your data.Yet despite removing the feature, Samsung is touting some impressive performance compared to other DRAM-less options because this drive... Continue reading…

Image: Mobvoi Following the TicWatch Pro 3, Mobvoi has announced the TicWatch Pro S, a smartwatch that carries over some of the hallmark TicWatch features like a “Dual Display” that layers an always-on LCD over an AMOLED screen for longer battery life, and some custom health apps, for a slightly more affordable $259.99 price. But the older internals of the device might not make it so appetizing.The TicWatch Pro S costs $40 less than the Pro 3, but that price comes with pretty big tradeoffs. First and foremost, an old processor. As we highlighted in our review, the more expensive TicWatch Pro 3 has a new Snapdragon 4100 that brings more processing power and battery efficiency to address some long-standing Wear OS issues. But the TicWatch Pro S makes... Continue reading…

Microsoft has finalized its $7.5 billion deal to acquire ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Doom and Fallout studio Bethesda Softworks. The finalization comes just a day after Microsoft secured regulatory approval from the EU for the acquisition, and it will now bolster the company’s first-party Xbox games studios up to a total of 23.“This is the next step in building an industry-leading first party studios team, a commitment we have to our Xbox community,” says Microsoft’s gaming chief Phil Spencer. “With the addition of the Bethesda creative teams, gamers should know that Xbox consoles, PC, and Game Pass will be the best place to experience new Bethesda games, including some new titles in the future that will be exclusive to Xbox... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Kayvon Beykpour, head of consumer product, on the company’s new product plan Continue reading…

Fitbit Fitbit has introduced the third iteration of its Ace activity and sleep tracker for kids. The Fitbit Ace 3, designed for kids ages six and up, adds new animated clock faces, customizable accessories, and claims eight days of battery life in a “swim-proof” design with new color options, too.In addition to improved battery life, the Ace 3 has a 20 percent brighter screen and includes do not disturb and sleep modes. The new animated clock faces — including a bunny, a cat, a Martian, and spaceship designs — change and grow as kids make progress toward their fitness goals. Image: Fitbit Fitbit Ace 3 tracker for kids. The Fitbit Ace was designed to help kids build healthy habits and increase physical activity. It... Continue reading…

The Insta360 Go 2 looks like an oversized Tic Tac with an eyeball. At 26.5 grams and the size of my thumb, Insta360’s latest action camera, the Go 2, looks like an oversized Tic Tac with an eyeball. It’s the second generation in the Go lineup, which is Insta360’s only non-360-degree camera line. Where the first-generation Go left a lot to be desired, particularly in the image quality department, the $299 Go 2 comes with a new charging case, larger sensor, and improved image quality, making a strong case for a mobile-first action camera. The Go 2’s case is slightly larger than an AirPods Pro case. The case has a 1/4-inch thread for support mounting and a USB-C port for charging. The most noticeable changes to this tiny camera come in the hardware department.... Continue reading…

Photo by Javi Hernandez It’s more than just a hobby, with some enthusiasts hoping to strike it rich Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge After less than a year on the market, Sony’s latest gaming console, the PlayStation 5, has become one of the most sought-after devices. With supplies limited and demand high, it has been difficult to try to secure a unit. If you are still looking to grab a PS5 for yourself or a loved one, Target has the console in stock right now in both the digital edition and disc drive variants.If you are fortunate enough to buy Sony’s new gaming console, I have a few suggestions on some additional items you may want to buy. Of course, you’ll likely want to buy some games for your new console. The PS5 is home to some of the most popular titles right now, such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and the 2020 remake of Demon’s Souls, as well as some other... Continue reading…

Images: Audi Audi has revealed the interior of its next EV, the Q4 E-Tron, which serves up mostly modern SUV vibes and features a few new technologies making their way into Audi’s vehicles.The centerpiece of what Audi debuted on Tuesday is a new augmented reality heads-up display in front of the driver, which offers a wider field of view and more accurate and advanced animations. Some examples Audi gave of it in use are:

Illustration by Ana Kova Google Translate still isn’t reliable enough to use for medical instructions for people who don’t speak English, according to a new study published last week. Sometimes, it works: it was the most accurate when translating emergency department discharge instructions into Spanish. But a lot of the time, especially with less common languages, it doesn’t — the study found it was only 55 percent accurate for Armenian. That’s a big problem when it comes to health information, where any misunderstanding can be dangerous.“All you need is one error that creates confusion for a patient, and they don’t take their blood thinner or they take too much of their blood thinner,” says study author Lisa Diamond, a health disparities researcher at... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge More than half a million people have signed up to a newly launched service called Dr. B in an attempt to snag a COVID-19 vaccine — and reduce the number of doses that might end up in the trash. Led by ZocDoc founder Cyrus Massoumi, Dr. B is a website that aims to function as a kind of emergency alert system for thawed coronavirus vaccines, which typically need to be injected within six hours of being thawed.“This vaccine is now the scarcest resource on earth,” says Massoumi. “We were concerned about the fact that a lot of the vaccine ends up in this last-minute shuffle at the end of the day.”“This vaccine is now the scarcest resource on earth”A longtime drag on conventional health care, missed appointments have become an unusually... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Microsoft once envisioned a future full of Cortana-powered fridges, toasters, and thermostats, but it never worked out. Harman Kardon’s Invoke speaker was the first and only Cortana-powered speaker to hit the market, but it’s now receiving an update on Wednesday to disable Microsoft’s digital assistant.Harman Kardon will push an update to the Invoke speaker tomorrow (spotted by Thurrott) to remove Cortana, after Microsoft announced its plans last year to shut down its digital assistant across multiple devices. “Please note that the Cortana service on the Harman Kardon Invoke will end in the coming months regardless of whether you receive the update,” says Harman Kardon. Cortana is also disappearing on iOS and Android, and even... Continue reading…

The Concept 1 is designed to illustrate the design elements that’ll drive Nothing’s products. | Image: Nothing Nothing, the new tech company from OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, has unveiled the Concept 1. It’s a render showing off the kinds of design features the company will use in its upcoming true wireless earbuds, its debut product due for release this summer. It was designed by Tom Howard, the company’s head of design who also serves as vice head of design at Nothing’s partner Teenage Engineering.To confuse matters, the Concept 1 isn’t something that Nothing actually plans to release and sell. It’s not even clear if it exists as a physical device. “While the same designs principles will be followed and there will be similarities to Concept 1, the end product will look different,” said a Nothing spokesperson in an email to The Verge.The way... Continue reading…

Dell has launched its new G15 gaming laptop, which will be available first in China before coming to other regions around the world. The laptop’s industrial design is all-new, though the most notable feature might be the paint job.Yep, those are paint flecks you see in the photos. Dell says the new G15 uses “low-VOC waterborne paint for a durable and environmentally conscious design;” it’s available in colorways including Spector Green with Speckles, Phantom Grey with Speckles, Dark Shadow Grey, and Obsidian Black. Our advice: go with the speckles. We don’t have full specs for the new G15 just yet, but it can be outfitted with Nvidia RTX 3000-series graphics and has “three performance options ranging up to 115W of TDP.”... Continue reading…

Image: Warner Bros. The Snyder Cut is set to release on March 18th, but some viewers already got a truly inexplicable sneak peek today — quite a few people trying to watch the Tom and Jerry movie on HBO Max were instead shown the upcoming R-rated version of Justice League (via The Hollywood Reporter). I guess you could say Warner Bros. really let the cat out of the bag.HBO confirmed that, yes, this did in fact happen: “Zack Snyder’s Justice League was temporarily available on HBO Max and the error was addressed within minutes,” a spokesperson tells The Verge. At this moment, It’s unclear if this error was worldwide, or if the Snyder Cut only showed up in certain regions.A few Verge staff tried the trick for ourselves, but were instead greeted by the... Continue reading…

The Aya Neo — a Nintendo Switch-style handheld gaming PC that promises to offer a full-fledged PC gaming experience in the palm of your hands — is now available to back on Indiegogo, starting at $6,120 HKD (~$789 USD) for the 500GB model.This version of the Neo is technically the second, following the limited, sold-out run of the “Founder’s Edition” that Aya offered back in January. The new, broader release promises several improvements over that initial version, including:

Despite years of promotion, Verizon’s 5G network still lags behind 4G. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon 4G appears to be getting even better than its nationwide 5G network, according to new tests conducted by PCMag’s Sascha Segan. After last week’s tweet suggesting that users turn off their phone’s 5G to conserve battery life, there seems to be a multitude of reasons for Verizon customers to stick with 4G right now.Additional spectrum is making the difference for Verizon 4G right now, and not the C-band spectrum that’s been in the news recently. This is CBRS, a set of frequencies that sits near C-band. Verizon bid $1.89 billion on CBRS licenses last year and has been putting the newly acquired spectrum to work for its 4G service in certain locations (there are likely technical reasons, which Segan explains in his post, why Verizon... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge In 2019, an article in The Washington Post by Geoffrey Fowler described the author’s shock when he discovered just how many of his iPhone apps were collecting and uploading information about his usage while he slept.As we all know by now, data is a huge commodity these days. If you use a phone, laptop, or any type of computing device (unless you’re a security expert or a high-end hacker with access to sophisticated blocking tools), you’re paying for your apps by contributing marketing and other info to the companies that supply them.As Fowler’s article demonstrated, iPhone users are not immune to this. Since his article was published, Apple has made some laudable changes to its privacy policies. But it’s still a good idea to take... Continue reading…

Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge Keep the routine fresh Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge For a while, Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 3 was one of the best laptops you could buy. Microsoft is now planning its successor, the Surface Laptop 4, and it appears WinFuture has obtained details about this upcoming device. Per this report, the laptop is coming sometime in April.The biggest news is that the new Surface Laptop will come with both Intel and AMD options. The AMD models will include chips from the Ryzen 4000 mobile series, including the Ryzen 5 4680U and the Ryzen 7 4980U. These aren’t AMD’s top guns; the current-gen Ryzen 5000 mobile series was announced earlier this year. The Intel models will have Intel’s latest 11th Gen CPUs, though, including the Core 15-1145G7 and the Core i7-1185G7.Apart from the chips, it seems like... Continue reading…

A train of Starlink satellites in low-Earth orbit passes over Uruguay. SpaceX is asking the FCC for approval to beam Starlink internet into moving vehicles. | Photo by Mariana Suarez / AFP via Getty Images SpaceX is seeking regulatory approval to connect its rapidly growing network of internet-beaming Starlink satellites to cars, trucks, shipping boats, and aircraft. The request, filed last Friday with the Federal Communications Commission, marks SpaceX’s biggest step yet toward connecting Starlink to the automotive sector, a potentially lucrative line of business that would expand the company’s current stationary offerings from rural homes.The March 5th FCC filing asked for “a blanket license authorizing operation” of Starlink terminals on so-called Earth Stations in Motion — an umbrella term for cars, trucks, maritime vessels, and aircraft. “No longer are users willing to forego connectivity while on the move, whether driving a truck... Continue reading…

This piece is called Transformative Tacos On Sunday evening, Taco Bell was serving up more than just tacos — it was also delivering NFTs: the fast-food chain tweeted that it was selling taco-themed GIFs and images on NFT marketplace Rarible. Of course, everyone saw that it was a brand hopping on a bandwagon (one that could potentially be detrimental to the environment), and promptly ignored it. No one bought them, and no articles were written.Just kidding! Taco Bell said that the demand for the NFTs was hot, and that the 25 tokens apparently sold out in 30 minutes. The NFTs are, of course, taco-themed, with four out of the five designs being animated GIFs. GIF: Taco Bell Taco cradle. Taco Bell does say that all the proceeds will go to the Live Más... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Friday, cybersecurity journalists Brian Krebs and Andy Greenberg reported that as many as 30,000 organizations had been compromised in an unprecedented email server hack, believed to have originated from a state-sponsored Chinese hacking group known as Hafnium.Over the weekend, that estimate has doubled to 60,000 Microsoft Exchange Server customers hacked around the world, with the European Banking Authority now admitting that it’s one of the victims — and it looks like Microsoft may have taken a little too long to realize the severity and patch it. Krebs has now put together a basic timeline of the massive Exchange Server hack, and he says Microsoft has confirmed it was made aware of the vulnerabilities in early January.That’s... Continue reading…

Two of the biggest entertainment events of the weekend could have been Paramount Plus exclusives: Oprah’s highly anticipated interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, and Eddie Murphy’s eagerly awaited Coming 2 America. Instead, the former is now only available on CBS’s website (free) and the latter is streaming exclusively on Amazon.For a company whose executives just touted the vital importance of leaning into streaming, having launched Paramount Plus within days of the interview and film being released, not finding a way to have one or the other — or both, ideally — available on demand is head-scratch worthy.One absence is more understandable than the other. Harpo (Oprah’s production company) did not make the streaming video... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrej Sokolow / picture alliance via Getty Images In a bid to prove that its robot drivers are safer than humans, Waymo simulated dozens of real-world fatal crashes that took place in Arizona over nearly a decade. The Google spinoff discovered that replacing either vehicle in a two-car crash with its robot-guided minivans would nearly eliminate all deaths, according to data it publicized today.The results are meant to bolster Waymo’s case that autonomous vehicles operate more safely than human-driven ones. With millions of people dying in auto crashes globally every year, AV operators are increasingly leaning on this safety case to spur regulators to pass legislation allowing more fully autonomous vehicles on the road.Waymo has turned to counterfactuals, or “what if?” scenariosBut... Continue reading…

The OnePlus 9 will be formally announced March 23rd. | Image: OnePlus Along with a confirmed release date, we got our first official look at the OnePlus 9 today and another tidbit of information: it will come with a charger, unlike recent flagships including the Galaxy S21 and iPhone 12.In a message thread on the company’s community forum, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau said that the 9 will ship with a charger in the box. Recently, Apple and Samsung stopped including chargers with their flagship devices, citing environmental benefits and saying that customers already had the adaptors anyway. The jury’s still out on the environmental impact of the move, but it’s sure to have helped the companies’ bottom lines.OnePlus is in a slightly different position, of course. One of its phones’ differentiating features has... Continue reading…

Image: Victura Nearly a month after distancing itself from political statements, the publisher of the controversial military shooter Six Days in Fallujah has backtracked and now says the events in the game are “inseparable from politics.” The game, which takes place during the Iraq War’s Second Battle of Fallujah, has come under scrutiny for seemingly portraying a US-centric focus on a campaign in which an estimated 800 Iraqi civilians were killed, according to the Red Cross.“We understand the events recreated in Six Days in Fallujah are inseparable from politics,” publisher Victura said in a statement on Twitter. “We believe the stories of this generation’s sacrifices deserve to be told by the Marines, Soldiers, and civilians who were there,”... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is looking into allegations of racial bias and hiring practices at Facebook, a probe which the agency has designated as “systemic,” Reuters reported.In July, Facebook employee Oscar Veneszee, Jr., who is Black, filed a complaint with the EEOC along with two people Veneszee recruited but whom Facebook did not hire. The complaint alleges that the social platform discriminates against Black job applicants and employees and promotes racial stereotypes. Veneszee told NPR that Facebook has “a Black people problem,” and that the company has failed to create a culture to attract and retain Black workers.The EEOC has not brought allegations against Facebook, Reuters notes, and the agency’s... Continue reading…

Photo by Jon Cherry / Getty Images The US government is feeling optimistic about vaccines. By the end of May, it should have enough to vaccinate every adult in the country, President Joe Biden said on Tuesday.Not only that, but Americans are feeling pretty good about the vaccine, too. About 69 percent of Americans had either already gotten the vaccine or were willing to get one when they could, according to a new survey from Pew Research Center.That’s a huge relief to public health experts. Last year, they watched vaccine polling numbers drop dramatically during just four months. In September 2020, only half of people polled said they’d be willing to take a hypothetical vaccine. Not exactly surprising, given that, at the time, the Trump administration was promising to... Continue reading…

The iMac Pro was first introduced in 2017 | Photo James Bareham / The Verge In a sign that the iMac Pro is on the way out, the only model currently available for purchase on the Apple Store website is the $4,999 base configuration, “while supplies last.” As first reported by 9to5Mac, all build-to-order configurations for the iMac Pro have been removed from Apple’s site (but may still be available at third-party retailers like Amazon). Apple tells The Verge once supplies of the base model run out, iMac Pro will no longer be available. Kim Lyons/The Verge A screengrab of the Apple Store listing for the iMac Pro on March 6th, 2021 It’s not a huge surprise that Apple may be phasing out the iMac Pro; there have been well-sourced reports that the company will be introducing a redesigned iMac... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge This was another week of gaming dominating our deals coverage. That’s mostly because my colleague Taylor Lyles has been diligently keeping readers in the know about every (fleeting, sadly) restocking of the PS5 and Xbox Series X / S consoles. Outside of consoles, there are some good game deals happening, in addition to tech that might be able to make gaming more enjoyable.Save on this speedy 1TB external SSD from CrucialWhether you need a fast external drive for plugging into a PS5, Xbox Series X, or PC, this Crucial model is a good deal at $125. Its low-profile design means it can fit easily in most entertainment centers or desk arrangements, and it ships with a USB Type-A adapter in case your device doesn’t have a USB-C port.T... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Four exploits found in Microsoft’s Exchange Server software have reportedly led to over 30,000 US governmental and commercial organizations having their emails hacked, according to a report by KrebsOnSecurity. Wired is also reporting “tens of thousands of email servers” hacked. The exploits have been patched by Microsoft, but security experts talking to Krebs say that the detection and cleanup process will be a massive effort for the thousands of state and city governments, fire and police departments, school districts, financial institutions, and other organizations that were affected.According to Microsoft, the vulnerabilities allowed hackers to gain access to email accounts, and also gave them the ability to install malware that... Continue reading…

A trail of wheel tracks left by NASA’s Perseverance rover after making its first drive on the Martian surface | NASA/JPL Perseverance, the car-sized rover NASA landed on Mars last month, has taken its first spin on the rocky surface of Jezero Crater, NASA announced today. The rover’s six wheels drove about 21 feet to carry out a key mobility test on Thursday, as engineers back on Earth prepare to execute the mission’s core science objectives.The rover’s six aluminum wheels left tracks on the Martian dirt — as captured by one of its on-board cameras — after driving straight for 13 feet, then turning around to back up 8 feet. Anais Zarifian, Perseverance’s mobility testbed engineer, told reporters it went “incredibly well” and performed better than it did during pre-launch tests on Earth. Image: NASA/JPL An animation showing... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is suing AT&T for providing nonpublic information to 20 different analyst firms so they would lower revenue estimates ahead of earnings, according to a press release. That let AT&T “beat” expectations for the quarter when the information-sharing took place, turning what could have been some nasty headlines in the financial press into a win instead.According to the SEC’s complaint (PDF), AT&T learned in March 2016 that its quarterly results would fall short of estimates due in part to “a steeper-than-expected decline in smartphone sales.” As you might recall, we used to live in a world where carriers like AT&T subsidized part of the cost of your smartphone, but by then AT&T had passed that... Continue reading…