The Verge

The Amazon Halo and its companion app | Image: Amazon Amazon has announced a new feature for its Halo fitness-tracking gadget: Alexa integration. With this new feature, Halo owners will be able to ask Alexa devices for various health stats, such as their sleep score or activity points obtained during the day. The integration will be off by default and owners will need the latest firmware on their Halo bands and the latest version of the iOS or Android app to enable it. Amazon says the feature rollout is starting today, March 4th, and will be continuing over the next week or so.The Halo band is Amazon’s first fitness-focused product and it’s had a less than stellar reception since it was announced last fall. Aside from the standard fitness things of tracking your movement and sleep... Continue reading…

Who has an entertainment center this big? Wait — no, don’t tell me. | Elgato Elgato, the Corsair-owned company known for its gaming and creator-focused streaming tech, is expanding into smart lighting. It has introduced the Light Strip, a thin strip packed with 108 dimmable LEDs that can be mounted via sticky adhesive, bent, and trimmed to fit wherever you’d like them to go. These can be controlled over Wi-Fi (2.4GHz only) through a free app on macOS, Windows 10, iOS, or Android, or from Elgato’s Stream Deck hardware, which apparently will offer deeper integration. Elgato is charging $59.99 for two meters (about 79 inches) of lights, including the controller the lights plug into and a power adapter. Image: Elgato The Stream Deck isn’t included, for the record. These are similar in... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Square, Inc., the financial services company founded by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, is acquiring a majority stake in Tidal, the high-fidelity audio and video streaming service led by Jay-Z. Square is paying $297 million in cash and stock for a “significant majority ownership stake” and says Tidal will operate independently alongside Square’s other ventures.Asking the obvious question in a thread on Twitter, Dorsey said: “Why would a music streaming company and a financial services company join forces?!” His answer: to find “new ways for artists to support their work.” Just as Square gave sellers new tools to make money, Dorsey says the company’s stake in Tidal will help artists find similar support in the new digital ecosystem.

Xiaomi has announced its Redmi Note 10 line, the latest in its phone series that’s titanically popular in India and beyond. As is tradition for the Redmi Note phones, the 10 series brings some high-end features to much lower price points.The Redmi Note 10 Pro is the main attraction here, with several variants including the Note 10S, Note 10, and Note 10 5G adjusting various specs to meet different price points. The Note 10 Pro’s standout feature is its 6.67-inch 1080p OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate.The Note 10 Pro also has a 108-megapixel primary camera alongside an 8-megapixel ultrawide, a 5-megapixel “telemacro”, and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. On paper, that puts its camera setup in reach of Xiaomi’s new Mi 11 flagship,... Continue reading…

Amazon’s new Alexa app on Xbox. Amazon is launching a new Alexa app for Xbox consoles this week. While you’ve been able to control Alexa from an Xbox for a couple of years now, this dedicated app will provide access to more of the visual parts of Amazon’s digital assistant. That includes being able to see your doorbell camera, reading emails and checking your calendar, and even seeing weather forecasts.It essentially turns your Xbox into more of an Echo Show-like experience for Alexa. All of the usual Xbox controls are still supported with this new app, including the ability to turn on an Xbox console using a compatible Alexa device.Amazon is gradually rolling out this new Alexa app for Xbox in the coming days, and it will be available across all Xbox One and Xbox... Continue reading…

Skydio’s X2 drone, which is aimed at enterprise and military customers. | Image: Skydio More than 20 police agencies around the US own drones from US manufacturer Skydio, according to Forbes, which calculated the figure based on a combination of freedom of information requests and public announcements. The report follows news that Skydio is the first US dronemaker to be valued at over $1 billion following a recent funding round.Working with police departments is thought to be part of Skydio’s attempt to make inroads against dominant player DJI, which is said to command between 70 and 80 percent of the commercial drone market. Skydio started offering its drones to government agencies for free last year, and over 30 public agencies reportedly took them up on the offer. America’s Custom and Border Protection is also testing... Continue reading…

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Microsoft is starting to modernize some of the basic parts of Windows 10 by improving the system icons that are available in the operating system. A new preview build of Windows 10 is rolling out to testers this week, and it includes system icons that now adhere to Microsoft’s Fluent Design style.The new icons include a more rounded and simplified look, and are available as a new font — Segoe Fluent Icons. Microsoft has also updated its new taskbar widget with the new icons, providing a good look at how basic icon changes can modernize even the smallest parts of Windows. Image: Microsoft Some of the new system icons for Windows 10. It’s a small change to Windows 10 that will appear later this year for most,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In the weeks before and after the 2020 US election, Facebook content from far-right sources of news and misinformation received more engagement than other sources elsewhere on the political spectrum, a new study from New York University has revealed.The findings suggest that far-right pages have an advantage energizing followers on the world’s biggest social network. “My takeaway is that, one way or another, far-right misinformation sources are able to engage on Facebook with their audiences much, much more than any other category,” Laura Edelson, a researcher at NYU’s Cybersecurity for Democracy initiative who helped compile the report, told CNN. “That’s probably pretty dangerous on a system that uses engagement to determine what... Continue reading…

Ikea’s Trådfri Shortcut Button and Motion Sensor. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge Once you figure out the setup, at least Continue reading…

Image: CE Brands A planned Motorola-branded Wear OS smartwatch with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Wear 4100 processor may have leaked (via 9to5Google). If the photos are real and not just renders, it could be a sign that the next Moto 360 (or whatever it’s called) could perform significantly better than the last, and may reap some of the efficiency gains brought by the jump from a 28nm process to a 12nm one.The 2019 Moto 360 used a Snapdragon Wear 3100 processor, which was only a minor update to 2016’s 2100. Despite Qualcomm’s claims that the new(ish) 4100 has an 85 percent faster CPU, two-and-a-half times faster GPU, and 25 percent more battery life, it seems like there’s only one watch on the market that actually has the chip.The image that shows the... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Nintendo is planning to release an upgraded model of the Switch this year with an OLED screen, according to a new report in Bloomberg. The report says Samsung Display is providing the screen, which will be a 7-inch 720p rigid OLED panel set to go into mass production this June.The current Switch has a 6.2-inch 720p LCD panel, while the Switch Lite’s screen is a 5.5-inch 720p LCD. Many Switch games struggle to hit native resolution in handheld mode, so the lack of an upgrade in resolution isn’t really a surprise. Bloomberg’s report does note, however, that the new Switch model will be capable of 4K graphics when hooked up to a TV, so the decision to stick with 720p in handheld mode could also be about preserving battery life.The report... Continue reading…

SN10 standing upright after landing | SpaceX SpaceX’s latest Starship prototype landed on Wednesday for the first time after carrying out a high-altitude test flight in Texas — but exploded minutes later on its landing pad. The rocket, an early test version called SN10, demonstrated a few complex dances in mid-air before clinching a soft touch down, aiming to nail a key milestone in Elon Musk’s campaign to build a fully reusable rocket system.After aborting an initial launch attempt earlier in the day, the prototype lifted off at 6:14pm ET and soared 6 miles above SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas facilities. Unlike the last two tests with SN8 and SN9, which launched successfully but exploded on their landing attempts, SN10 stuck a lopsided landing on a slab of concrete not far from its... Continue reading…

Image: Peak Design Peak Design, a maker of fine bags and accessories, has a problem: Amazon appears to have copied its popular bag, the $99.95 Everyday Sling, with its own $32.99 Amazon Basics Camera Bag. It was even called Everyday Sling until Peak Design’s video. Rather than do anything drastic, yet, Peak Design decided to make a video about what customers “gain” by purchasing Amazon’s version.The video presents Peak’s case clearly: the bags are similarly shaped, with pockets, labels, and straps in the exact same places. As someone unfamiliar with Peak Design’s bags, if I wasn’t paying attention or didn’t read “Peak Design” on the label, I’d probably mix them up. Image: Peak Design The Amazon Basics Everyday Sling on the left... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Samsung has submitted paperwork to Texas officials, requesting a billion dollars in tax incentives to make Austin the future home of the company’s $17 billion chip factory, as noted by Bloomberg and reported last month by the Austin American-Statesman. In the documents, which were filed in January, the company says it plans on bringing 1,800 permanent jobs to the factory over the first 10 years, with an average starting salary around $66K.In return, Samsung is asking for a break on its property taxes: it’s looking for a 100 percent break on its payments to Travis County for 20 years, which the company estimates would save it roughly $718 million, and a 50 percent break on the taxes to the City of Austin for five years, with an estimated... Continue reading…

Image: Apple The YouTube app on older Apple TV models has officially been discontinued as of today. If you have a third-generation device (the 2012-era model that predated the modern tvOS-based set-top boxes), you’ll only be able to stream YouTube through an iOS device using AirPlay starting today, as noted by 9to5Mac.While the news has been known for a while, the change highlights a key issue with the Apple TV ecosystem. Namely, that it’s been nearly three and a half years since Apple has last updated its streaming box hardware.If you own the old model with the now defunct YouTube app, your only Apple-made options are the 2017 Apple TV 4K or what Apple now calls the Apple TV HD, the older model from 2015. That’s particularly problematic, given... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has added a service that lets you automatically transfer photos, videos, and albums from your iCloud Photo Library to Google Photos (via MacRumors). The feature has a support document outlining the procedure, which simply entails going to privacy.apple.com, logging in, and going through the “transfer a copy of your data” process. Apple says the transfer will take between three days to a week.Some things won’t transfer: Apple says shared albums, smart albums, photo stream content, live photos, some metadata, and media that isn’t stored in your iCloud Photo Library won’t come along for the ride. The part about Live Photos is especially eyebrow-raising. iPhones take Live Photos by default, and Apple doesn’t make it clear if the... Continue reading…

The San Diego Zoo. | Photo by Daniel Knighton/Getty Images Several great apes at the San Diego Zoo received two doses each of a COVID-19 vaccine in February, National Geographic reports. The lucky recipients are four orangutans and five bonobos, who were distracted with treats as they got their shots. One of the orangutans is Karen, the first ape to undergo open-heart surgery in 1994.Ape vaccination is a welcome development at the San Diego Zoo, where a troop of eight gorillas tested positive for COVID-19 in January. The sick gorillas were symptomatic but have now recovered, according to the zoo. They’ll likely join their orangutan and bonobo compatriots in vaccination later in the spring.developed by a veterinary pharmaceutical company after the first recorded case of COVID-19 in a dogThe... Continue reading…

Image: Frogwares Valve has removed The Sinking City from its digital storefront Steam after the company received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) request from the game’s developer Frogwares, Vice reports. Frogwares claims that the game’s original publisher, Nacon, hacked and pirated the game and republished it on Steam without the studio’s knowledge.A Valve spokesperson told Vice on Tuesday evening that the company was able to collect “extremely strong evidence to indicate this version of the game was pirated,” and that the version of The Sinking City published on its digital storefront “contains content that Nacon has absolutely no rights to — namely The Merciful Madness DLC.”The Sinking City’s PC version is still purchasable as a... Continue reading…

Your best bet for a budget phone with a stylus Continue reading…

San Diego Comic-Con has announced this year’s show will not go on, at least not in person, and the 2021 Anime Expo has now officially canceled its physical event as well.That’s the second time in 50 years — the first was last year — that Comic-Con has been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There’ll still be a virtual event from July 23rd to the 25th, and organizers are planning a three-day in-person convention tentatively set for November, but they’re clear that the full shebang has been postponed until 2022 — and offering refunds and rollovers as appropriate.

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge The Arizona House of Representatives just passed landmark app store legislation in a 31-29 vote on Wednesday that could have far-reaching consequences for Apple and Google and their respective mobile operating systems.The legislation, a sweeping amendment to Arizona’s existing HB2005, prevents app store operators from forcing a developer based in the state to use a preferred payment system, putting up a significant roadblock to Apple and Google’s ability to collect commissions on in-app purchases and app sales. It will now head to the state senate, where it must pass before its sent to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.The amendment specifically prohibits stores exceeding 1 million downloads from requiring “a developer that is domiciled in... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Ford has finally shed some light on the scale of the delays it’s experiencing in rolling out its first mass-market electric car, the Mustang Mach-E SUV. After the company announced on Wednesday that it shipped 3,739 Mustang Mach-Es in February — the first full month of deliveries — it told The Verge in a statement that some 4,500 customers will have to wait longer than expected to receive the electric SUV.The automaker didn’t say specifically what’s causing the delay, just that it’s holding back the electric Mustangs “as part of our commitment to deliver a quality vehicle to customers.” Ford previously said in January it was delaying the delivery of “several hundred” of them for quality checks.To help make up for the delay, Ford is... Continue reading…

Antigen tests run at a university in Wisconsin | Photo by David Joles/Star Tribune via Getty Images But the CDC system doesn’t fix the foundational issue Continue reading…

FedEx will spend $2 billion in “initial investments” to become carbon neutral by 2040, the company announced today. The move comes as many of the world’s biggest automakers are also pledging to phase out carbon-emitting vehicles within the next several decades.FedEx claims it is the largest cargo airline in the world, with more than 650 aircraft in operation. As such, it has a particularly large carbon footprint, making its pledge to go completely carbon neutral a uniquely massive challenge.The money will be spent in three key areasThe money will be spent in three key areas: vehicle electrification, sustainable energy, and carbon sequestration. FedEx will also donate $100 million to Yale University’s efforts to devise new ways to... Continue reading…

Microsoft is adding four sports games to Xbox Game Pass in March and April. Madden NFL 21 arrives today as part of EA Play for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers, and Football Manager 2021 will arrive tomorrow for both Xbox consoles and PC. NBA 2K1 will also launch on Xbox Game Pass tomorrow and will be available on xCloud game streaming, too.The fourth and final sports addition will be NHL 21 in April, arriving for Xbox console owners with an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription. Sports games aren’t the only new additions this month, though. Star Wars: Squadrons is coming in March for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers.Microsoft offers three different versions of Xbox Game Pass, and each will provide different levels of access to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Last week, AT&T announced it would be spinning off its TV business — including DirecTV, AT&T TV, and U-verse — in a deal it claimed would greatly benefit the company’s customers, employees, and shareholders. The deal provides AT&T with a $7.8 billion cash infusion to pay down debt and recent wireless spectrum purchases, and a 70 percent stake in the “new” DirecTV. But it also values the entire operation at around $16.25 billion, a massive loss from the $67 billion AT&T paid just a few years earlier for just DirecTV alone.“It’s fair to say that some aspects of the transaction have not played out as we had planned,” AT&T said of the deal, trying to put a good face on a more than $50 billion loss, “such as pay TV households in the US... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony’s latest gaming console, the PS5, is one of many gaming gadgets that are hard to find in stock right now due to mostly online-only sales. If you are trying to get your hands on one, Amazon has restocked both the PS5 Digital Edition and the PS5 consoles right now, while supplies last.Once you obtain your PS5, there are a few items you’re going to want to pick up for your console. Some of the most popular PS5 exclusives right now include Demon’s Souls Remake by Bluepoint Games. Additionally, Final Fantasy VII Remake was a popular game in 2020; it is backwards compatible and a PS5 port is coming on June 10th. If you buy the game now, you’ll get a free next-gen upgrade when that version is available.I strongly suggest buying a... Continue reading…

Image: Western Digital If you need compact external storage that can connect to game consoles, PCs, phones, and other devices, there are some options you can get a deal on today. One of them is Western Digital’s latest 1TB My Passport model, available at Best Buy and Amazon. This capacity usually costs $190, but you can get it for as low as $140. You can also save on Crucial’s X8 1TB USB-C SSD, which is $125 at Amazon (usually $140).For context, Western Digital and Crucial each claim up to 1,050MB/s read speeds, but only Western Digital is public with its write speeds of 1,000MB/s. Both of these models also offer a drop-proof build, so your decision might come down to design preference. Image: Activision Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2... Continue reading…

AMD’s Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge AMD is holding a hardware event today, March 3rd, where the company plans to announce the next graphics card in its Radeon RX 6000 series. This will serve as the fourth GPU in the RX 6000 line, following the GPU’s debut in November.Like the other three cards, the new Radeon RX 6000 GPU will feature AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture that includes real-time, hardware-accelerated ray tracing and variable rate shading.This latest RX 6000 card will likely serve as a competitor to Nvidia’s RTX 3000 series, which recently released a new budget GPU, the RTX 3060. Whether this new AMD GPU will serve as a flagship or a lower-end budget card is yet unknown.WHEN DOES AMD’S EVENT START?It starts today, March 3rd, at 8AM PT / 11AM ET / 4PM GMT.WHERE... Continue reading…

There’s finally momentum in Congress to make serious changes to Section 230 — and not everyone’s happy about it. Last year’s antitrust hearings have given way to a full-court press on regulating big companies like Facebook and Google, and many in Congress see peeling back Section 230 as an easier way forward than GDPR-style privacy regulation or a full-scale antitrust breakup.So on Monday, we hosted an event exploring what those regulations might look like, starting with a keynote on tech regulation from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). After that, we had a panel of three experts — Vimeo’s Michael Cheah, Wikimedia’s Amanda Keton, and writer and strategist Sydette Harry — dig into the details of Section 230 and how the things they care about... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The artificial intelligence boom isn’t slowing yet, with new figures showing a 34.5 percent increase in the publication of AI research from 2019 to 2020. That’s a higher percentage growth than 2018 to 2019 when the volume of publications increased by 19.6 percent.China continues to be a growing force in AI R&D, overtaking the US for overall journal citations in artificial intelligence research last year. The country already publishes more AI papers than any other country, but the United States still has more cited papers at AI conferences — one indicator of the novelty and significance of the underlying research.These figures come from the fourth annual AI Index, a collection of statistics, benchmarks, and milestones meant to gauge... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is slowly phasing out third-party tracking cookies, and today, it’s making it clear that it won’t just replace them with something equally invasive despite the impact the change will have on Google’s lucrative advertising business. In a blog post, Google explicitly states that it “will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web” after the third-party cookies are gone.“Instead, our web products will be powered by privacy-preserving APIs which prevent individual tracking while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers,” writes Google. “Advances in aggregation, anonymization, on-device processing and other privacy-preserving technologies offer a clear path to replacing... Continue reading…

The LIFX Clean is a smart bulb that can kill bacteria. | Image: LIFX These things take time Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Parler has withdrawn its antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, ending its two-month effort to legally compel the company to reinstate its hosting account. Parler made the decision in a motion filed late Tuesday night in federal court for the Western District of Washington. The company gave no explanation for the move, but reserved the right to refile on similar grounds in the future.Notably, the decision to withdraw came on the same day Parler was due to file an amended complaint in the case. Parler had failed to meet an earlier February 16 filing deadline and received a two-week extension from the court — but with the case withdrawn, that deadline is now moot.Amazon first suspended service to Parler on January 9th, in the wake of an... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Valve is significantly expanding your ability to share games at home and with your friends for free using Steam.One change is the introduction of a Linux version of its Steam Link app, which lets you stream games from a computer to a device with the Steam Link app installed on the same local network. This new Linux version means that you can now stream games from a computer to a Linux-based set top box hooked up to a TV, for example. The app is also available on Android, iOS, and Raspberry Pi.Valve has also rolled out a big update to its Remote Play Together feature, which lets you stream games on your computer over the internet so you can play them with friends. Just last week, Valve introduced a way to let you play games with friends... Continue reading…

Yusaku Maezawa announcing his plan to fly on SpaceX’s Starship rocket in September 2018. Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa invited the public on Tuesday to apply for a spot on SpaceX’s Starship in his private mission around the Moon, reaching out to a “wider, more diverse audience” two years after announcing he’d only ride with a select group of artists. The trip is currently slated for 2023, but that date might not hold.“I want people from all kinds of backgrounds to join,” Maezawa said in a video posted Tuesday afternoon, when the contest’s application went live. “It will be 10 to 12 people in all, but I will be inviting 8 people to come along on the ride.”Maezawa, the founder of Japan’s largest online fashion retailer, is worth about $2 billion. He was revealed as Starship’s first signed passenger back in 2018... Continue reading…

Intel may owe quite a bit of cash to a semiconductor company that hasn’t existed for 20 years. A Texas jury has asked Intel to pay $2.18 billion for infringing two patents owned by VLSI Technology, according to Bloomberg.VLSI seemingly rose from the dead in 2019 specifically to sue. The last time it was an independent company was in 1999, when Philips purchased the semiconductor design firm for $1 billion. Its assets later traveled to Philips spinoff NXP (which you may know from its tap-to-pay NFC chips, among other things). NXP will reportedly get some of Intel’s money, too.One of VLSI’s claims to fame was being part of the original project with Apple and Acorn to produce the first ARM processors — and the ARM company — responsible... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Hulu has fully reenabled picture-in-picture support (PiP) on iOS, MacRumors reports, which means half-watching network TV is once again possible for Hulu subscribers on iPhone and iPad devices. Hulu joins a collection of major streaming services that support the feature on iOS, leaving YouTube as the major exception.PiP for iPhones was enabled for Hulu around iOS 14’s original release, but it was later disabled to “work on a few updates to provide the best experience for our viewers,” Hulu said. Now that the feature is back, users can enable PiP mode by starting a show or movie and touching the PiP button to pop the video into a resizable, floating player. Image: Hulu The picture-in-picture button inside Hulu’s... Continue reading…

NASA’s brand-new Perseverance rover is the most advanced machine that’s ever landed on Mars. But when it comes to rovers, “state of the art” is a subjective term. Perseverance is running on none other than a PowerPC 750, a single-core, 233MHz processor with just 6 million transistors that’s most famous for powering the original “Bondi blue” iMac from 1998. It’s the same type of processor that NASA already uses in its Curiosity rover.That may seem like a waste to some. After all, even with the difficulty of buying computer parts these days, surely NASA could have found the budget for something like Intel’s $500 Core i9-10900K CPU (with 10 cores and a max clock speed of 5.3GHz) somewhere in the $2.7 billion cost of Perseverance. But as N... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter has opened its audio chat room, Spaces, to Android users, the company tweeted Tuesday.Twitter introduced a limited version of the Clubhouse competitor on iOS in January. While any users of Twitter’s iOS app can join and listen to Spaces, only a few can host them at the moment. Twitter said it was giving Spaces to “a very small feedback group” to start, with women and people from other marginalized groups given priority. Now, users of Twitter’s Android app can join and listen to Spaces as well.

The upcoming Galaxy A52 5G is shaping up to be a competitive midranger indeed. | Photo by Evan Blass Samsung’s upcoming midrange device, the Galaxy A52 5G, appears to be in line to receive monthly security updates. First spotted by Galaxy Club, the yet-to-be formally announced A52 5G appears on Samsung’s security update page for its monthly update cycle. Along with earlier rumors of high refresh rate screens — and a new leak that suggests the main camera will offer optical image stabilization — this looks like Samsung is taking the A51’s successor very seriously.Samsung generally reserves spots on the monthly update schedule for flagship and higher-end devices. While this isn’t the first time a midrange A-series device has been scheduled for monthly updates, last year’s Galaxy A51 and A51 5G are on the quarterly update schedule.... Continue reading…

Image: Razer Razer’s small form factor Tomahawk gaming desktop is finally available for sale — mostly. The PC’s main appeal, apart from its size, is that you only need to worry about two parts: the NUC and the graphics card. Razer has a listing for a version that comes with just the NUC, which would allow users to slot in a graphics card they already own, but it seems to be marked as out of stock. The version that’s available for sale today comes with an otherwise extremely hard-to-get RTX 3080 Founder’s Edition.If you have the $3,199.99 to spend on the version with the 3080, today’s launch seems like the real deal — you can add it to your cart, and Razer’s site says it will ship the next business day. As for the NUC-only version, it’s still listed... Continue reading…

Image: Devolver Digital Fortnite creator Epic Games is acquiring video game studio Mediatonic, the maker of smash hit Fall Guys, for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced on Tuesday. The deal marks one of Epic’s higher-profile acquisitions of late, following its 2019 purchases of social video app Houseparty and Rocket League developer Psyonix.According to the blog posts and FAQs detailing the announcement, Fall Guys will remain available on Steam for the time being, and the developer is still bringing the game to both the Xbox and Nintendo Switch platforms. Epic and Mediatonic say there are no plans right now to make the game (which currently costs $19.99) free-to-play, as Epic did with Rocket League. Epic later confirmed it plans to make the PC version... Continue reading…

Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, the time-traveling epic that hasn’t quite been a hit at the box office, will come to movie theaters in New York City on Friday, Deadline reported. It gives NYC theaters — which can reopen at limited capacity starting Friday — a marquee film for theatergoers who want to see Tenet on the big screen.The movie’s release was pushed back several times because of the coronavirus pandemic and resulting movie theater closures, making it a litmus test of sorts for summer movies during a rampant pandemic. Warner Bros. released the movie in international markets including Australia, Canada, France, and the UK in August, and some US theaters on Labor Day weekend.But most US moviegoers didn’t seem to think venturing into... Continue reading…

A prototype version of Pokémon Go on HoloLens. | Image: Niantic Microsoft is launching its new Microsoft Mesh mixed reality platform today, and part of the announcement includes a brief demonstration of Pokémon Go running on the HoloLens 2 headset. Niantic has partnered with Microsoft to create this proof-of-concept version of Pokémon Go, demonstrating what might be possible for the game in the future.The demo shows how HoloLens users could spot a Pokémon in the wild and feed it berries ahead of a typical gym battle with another player. There’s a menu that HoloLens users tap to access different parts of Pokémon Go, but Niantic stresses it’s not a dedicated app or ready for consumers yet.“While this demo is not intended for consumer use, it offers an early glimpse into the future evolutions in both... Continue reading…

The Oshkosh-designed mail truck. The new fleet will only be 10 percent electric, though the vehicles can supposedly be converted. | Image: USPS Commercial EV startup Workhorse will have a “face-to-face” with the United States Post Office on March 3rd to find out more about the agency’s decision to have defense manufacturer Oshkosh build the new fleet of mail trucks. Workhorse was the last remaining bidder pitching to build an all-electric fleet, an idea that President Biden supported with an executive order shortly after he took office.“This is not the result we had anticipated or hoped for,” CEO Duane Hughes said on a conference call Monday morning following the release of Workhorses financial results for 2020. “To be clear, we intend to explore all avenues that are available to us.”Asked about the meeting, USPS spokesperson Kim Frum said she has “no information I am able to... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Update March 1st, 2021 1:49PM ET: The Xbox Series X is sold out at the Microsoft Store for now. But the Xbox Series S and Series S bundle is still available at Microsoft and Antonline respectively.If you are having a hard time finding an Xbox Series X or Series S, you have another chance to buy one. Microsoft’s direct website has restocked both of its next-gen consoles, the Xbox Series X and Series S. Like some other gaming gadgets released late last year, these consoles are extremely difficult to buy, but if you move quickly, you can grab one right now.If you are new to the Xbox console family, Antonline has a compelling bundle for the Series S. For $405, you get the Series S console, an extra controller, plus three months of Xbox... Continue reading…

The Medium Workers Union is pausing organizing efforts after it failed to win a simple majority of support in an online vote last Friday.“This election did not have the outcome we hoped for, but we’re not going anywhere,” the union said in a statement. “The vote was never to decide whether our union exists, but whether management would recognize us as a bargaining unit.”The final tally was 75 yes votes, 68 votes for no, and seven abstentions, putting the organizers just one vote short of the previously agreed threshold of 76 yes votes. Notably, organizers believe these same votes would allow them to win recognition in a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election due to abstention rules, which would give them 52 percent of the total... Continue reading…

Pixel owners can now access backups and share their recordings on the web. | Image: Google Google’s latest feature drop for Pixel phones makes it easier to share audio recordings, adds better integration for an underwater housing accessory, and wraps up a couple of other updates into a neat little package for Pixel owners. The update is available starting today for some owners of Pixel 3 phones and newer, and it will continue to reach others over the next two weeks.First up, recordings made via the Recorder app will now be backed up at recorder.google.com where they can be shared with anyone. The site, discovered last week by 9to5Google, offers the same transcription and search features included in the app itself. It’s somewhat similar to Otter.ai, a tool for transcribing Zoom meetings.The update also includes better support... Continue reading…

Satellite imagery of Tropical Storm Arthur on May 18th, 2020. | Image: NOAA Next year’s Atlantic hurricane season could begin on May 15th if officials decide this year to move its formal start date up by two weeks. The decision will likely be made this spring, during meetings held by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO).2022 is the earliest that the start date can be officially changed, a spokesperson for NOAA’s National Hurricane Center told The Verge in an email. But come May 15th of this year, the agency will start issuing its Tropical Weather Outlooks, which are routine forecasts that it typically doesn’t start releasing until hurricane season starts on June 1st.The proposed changes come as climate change makes hurricane season more... Continue reading…