The Verge

The Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and PlayStation 5. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Choosing between a console is a more philosophical choice this generation Continue reading…

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images President Donald Trump prematurely claimed victory in the 2020 election early Wednesday morning, telling a live TV audience that he’d already won — while also threatening to take legal action against votes that have yet to be counted, even though many states are continuing to process legitimate mail-in ballots.“Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump said, while also suggesting he would take legal action to keep further ballots from being counted.Initially, Trump stopped short of declaring a win, instead focusing on individual states where he’s done well. Even there, however, he appears to have lied about some of the details — prompting NBC News to cut him off and fact-check him in real time:

California voters approved Prop. 22, which would exempt companies such as Uber and Lyft from having to classify their workers as employees, according to The Associated Press. The $200 million campaign in support of the measure was the most expensive in state history.The ballot measure mandates that drivers for Uber, Lyft and DoorDash will receive new benefits, such as minimum hourly earnings. But drivers won’t get the full protections and benefits that come with employment, as they may have had to under another law, AB5 — which originally took aim at gig work. Labor groups, which opposed the law, raised only a tenth as much money.The ballot measure passed 58 percent to 41 percent, with about 71 percent of the vote counted in... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / Th Portland, Maine has passed a ballot initiative banning the use of facial recognition by police and city agencies. The Bangor Daily News is reporting that voters have passed a ballot initiative bolstering a ban on facial recognition by city agencies.The initiative follows a city council vote in August, which put a preliminary ban in place as an ordinance. Today’s vote replaces that ordinance with a stronger measure, which cannot be revoked for at least five years.The ordinance was placed on the ballot earlier this year by the Southern Maine chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, as part of a raft of other progressive initiatives including a $15 minimum wage and new limits on rent increases.The new measure also adds concrete... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After a night in which President Donald Trump falsely claimed victory in the presidential election, Facebook has added a notification at the top of Facebook and Instagram feeds saying there was — as yet — no winner.Earlier in the night, both Twitter and Facebook chose to label a message — identical on both platforms — from Trump reading, “We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!” Twitter also placed sharing restrictions on the tweet.Twitter calls it “a potentially misleading claim about an election”Early returns were promising for the president, but a number of pivotal states are still counting votes, including Georgia, Pennsylvania,... Continue reading…

Image: Soft Matter Jorunal Physicists from Leiden University have 3D-printed a miniature version of an Intrepid-class starship from Star Trek (via PC Gamer). The idea of a tiny starship is probably something you haven’t considered outside of the plot of a Star Trek episode, but this microscopic model is actually part of a larger research experiment the physicists published in the scientific journal Soft Matter.The five micrometer long ship looks like the USS Voyager and was microprinted by the physicists for their microswimmer research. Unlike the impulse engines and warp drive of its TV counterpart, this Voyager is propelled through liquid by chemical reactions between its platinum coating and the hydrogen peroxide solution the physicists placed it in. Their... Continue reading…

Photo by Bill McCay/Getty Images for Vote.org Twitter is warning users about misleading tweets from Philadelphia’s polling locations, offering an early preview of how it will handle the rest of the night. The platform has already restricted a tweet from Trump’s director of election day operations, Mike Roman, among others.“Misinformation being spread online has driven more calls to the Election Task Force hotline than actual incidents at polling sites,” complained the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office to New York Times reporter Nick Corasaniti.Roman posted a video showing a woman in Philadelphia apparently returning multiple ballots to a dropbox and claimed Democrats were “trying to STEAL THE ELECTION in broad daylight.” But Philadelphia DAO spokeswoman Jane Roh noted that... Continue reading…

Photo: Google The Pixel 5 is one of several flagship phones to offer a reverse wireless charging feature, but Google’s done something particularly clever with its implementation of the feature here: whenever you plug in a USB-C cable, your Pixel 5 will automatically turn on its reverse wireless charging feature, effectively turning it into a Qi charging pad, as spotted by 9to5Google.Google is pretty smart about how it handles the automated feature: according to a support doc, Battery Share will only turn on for “a short period.” If the phone detects another Qi-compatible device has been placed on top to charge, it’ll work as usual, otherwise it’ll automatically turn Battery Share off.This doesn’t mean that you can’t use reverse wireless charging... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images In the last year, the number of streaming platforms has really gotten out of hand. There’s Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Disney Plus, Apple TV Plus, CBS All Access (soon to be Paramount Plus), and Peacock — and each of them has different pricing tiers. If you scored free trials for Disney Plus and Apple TV Plus, like I did, you probably got to sample a healthy selection of them. Those trials, however, are starting to wind down. Which means it’s time to figure out what’s worth keeping and what’s worth ditching: with this many monthly bills, you should absolutely play favorites. I was surprised to learn mine was HBO Max.HBO Max isn’t particularly well-defined. (It’s HBO… and more?) It has baffling holes in its catalog thanks to... Continue reading…

PARIS, FRANCE - 2015/12/12: Foreign Affairs Minister and President-designate of COP21 Laurent Fabius (2-R), applause with Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki Moon (3-R) and France’s President Francois Hollande (R) after adoption of a historic global warming pact at the COP21 Climate Conference in Paris. | Photo by Jonathan Raa/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images The US will formally leave the landmark Paris climate agreement on November 4th, turning its back on the rest of the world as it comes together to stop climate change. How quickly the US takes on the planetary crisis will hinge on the results of today’s election.The Paris Agreement entered into force nearly four years ago today, on November 4th, 2016, after being adopted by every nation on Earth. (There are still a handful of countries that have yet to formally ratify the agreement). Donald Trump moved to remove the US from the accord soon after taking office, but the process took four years. That process comes to an end tomorrow, as voters wait to find out who the next US president will be.“The US will be an outlier.”If it’s Joe... Continue reading…

Today is Election Day and I am definitely anxious. But I have felt a physical sense of relaxation while watching this Twitch stream of people in the chat solving New York Times crossword puzzles together.The game is very cleverly done. The stream shows the crossword and the clues. Users type in responses to clues in the chat, and then the puzzle will select that clue and fill in the answer. For example, somebody typing “29d ark” essentially translates to “the answer to 29 down is ‘ark,’” and the game can select that clue and type out the answer in the crossword itself. And the whole thing is backed by an extremely chill instrumental soundtrack. Image: Twitch Sam Von Ehren’s collaborative crossword puzzle-solving... Continue reading…

Natural Cycles Natural Cycles, the first “digital birth control” to get sign-off from the Food and Drug Administration, is back. This time, it’s asking the agency to authorize integration with wearable devices like the Oura Ring. The feature could make it easier for users to use the app properly, but it doesn’t sidestep some of the existing issues with app-based birth control.The Natural Cycles app uses daily temperature measurements and period cycle tracking to predict the days someone is least likely to get pregnant. It falls under the broad category of fertility awareness birth control methods, where people track when they’d be ovulating and use that information to figure out when they’d have the best chance of conceiving. It tends to be conflated... Continue reading…

Illustrator by Alex Castro / The Verge A text message campaign is targeting people in Michigan with misinformation about “ballot sensor issues.” The messages claim a “typographical error” is causing people who voted for Joe Biden to have their votes switched to President Trump, and people who voted for Trump to have their votes switched to Biden, according to The Washington Post. The hoax message claims to be coming from the FBI.Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel warned voters the text messages are fake. “Dearborn voters, text messages are reportedly being sent to trick you into thinking there are ballot sensor issues,” she tweeted. “Do not fall for it, it’s a trick!”In Flint, robocalls have been trying to trick people into voting tomorrow (which is not allowed) due to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Election Day is here, and in the next few days or weeks, we’ll know who won — but for lots of people, tonight isn’t just about choosing the next president. It’s also a stress test for online platforms and a measure of how carefully they can handle information when the stakes are this high.By now, we know what failure could look like. In one nightmare scenario, a candidate (likely Trump) could preemptively declare victory before the votes are counted. In another, a fast-spreading rumor could cause serious offline unrest — like a viral hoax or misleading video that encourages vigilante violence. Since election night might not end with a clear winner, sites could be dealing with these threats for days.The biggest platforms have laid out a... Continue reading…

Snapchat is now allowing creators to publicize how many subscribers they have. This is the first time Snapchat has given its users any sort of public-facing metric about their followings or audiences, and it represents a substantial change to the platform, as first reported by Tubefilter. In a statement to The Verge, a Snap spokesperson said: “We’ve listened to feedback from our creator community and many of them expressed interest in having the option to show that their community on Snapchat is growing,” which is why it’s making subscriber counts visible. Creators can decide to turn this feature on or off from their settings.The company introduced creator profiles in September, which gives users on the platform more insights on their... Continue reading…

Ads are important on Twitch in the same way they’re important on any website that relies on advertisers for revenue. (Hello from Vox Media.) But it is a war. Ad-blockers keep websites ad-free, and then the sites themselves innovate around the blockers. Escalation is the norm.It’s also the background for the current ad-based controversy on the streaming site. Twitch pushed an update that broke uBlock, a popular ad-blocker. UBlock users were suddenly greeted with a pop-up noting that they may be using a third-party tool or browser extension that “is impacting site performance” every 10 or 20 minutes — a little like a site-triggered midroll ad.A spokesperson from Twitch told me that users were getting that specific pop-up because the... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple’s upcoming iPhone 12 mini will charge slower over the company’s new MagSafe wireless charger than the other iPhone 12 models, according to a newly updated Apple support document (via MacRumors).The iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, and the forthcoming iPhone 12 Pro Max all get charging speeds of up to 15W over MagSafe, but the iPhone 12 mini is limited to charging speeds of up to 12W. While that maximum 12W power delivery might come as a disappointment, it’s still faster than the 7.5W of charging you’d get if you dropped the iPhone 12 mini on a standard Qi wireless charger.The iPhone 12 mini otherwise has the same specs as the iPhone 12, including Apple’s A14 Bionic chip, a dual-camera system, and support for 5G networks, but all packed... Continue reading…

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images With one off-the-cuff tweet last month, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) proved how much politics had changed throughout the 2020 election.“Anyone want to play Among Us with me on Twitch to get out the vote? (I’ve never played but it looks like a lot of fun),” she tweeted on October 19th.Later that week, AOC played the game with some of the most popular streamers on Twitch. The Twitch stream ran for around three hours late at night, drawing more than 400,000 concurrent viewers at its peak. Twelve popular Twitch faces, from Hasan Piker and Pokimane to Corpse Husband and DrLupo, rotated in and out of the game and looped in their average of 5 million followers each as they did. Not only did the stream draw huge viewership numbers, but... Continue reading…

iFixit In the recent teardown of the iPhone 12 by iFixit, it was found that the new phone runs into some issues if a user replaces the camera module, basically rendering the cameras on the device unusable if not replaced by an Apple-authorized repair provider.iFixit has frequently spoken out against the control consumer electronics companies have for repairing their products, advocating for policy changes for the right to repair. In a recent post on its site, it questions whether the iPhone 12 is the “end of the repairable iPhone.”In this week’s final episode of our limited-run podcast series on tech review season, The Vergecast’s Dieter Bohn talks with iFixit’s Kyle Wiens and Kay-Kay Clapp about their thoughts on the repairability of... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrej Sokolow / picture alliance via Getty Images Waymo is pulling its autonomous vehicles out of San Francisco in anticipation of Election Day unrest, The Verge has learned.The Google spinoff is “temporarily pausing” its AV test operations in San Francisco on Tuesday and Wednesday and moving its fleet to Mountain View, where it will be parked in a “secured location,” according to an email from Transdev, Waymo’s fleet operations vendor.The decision was made “out of an abundance of caution ahead of some of the planned protests around the general election,” Chris Cheung, general manager at Transdev North America, wrote in the email obtained by The Verge.Two Waymo safety drivers told The Verge they got the word midday on Monday to manually drive their autonomous vehicles from San... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Have you voted? That’s really important. Go do that, if you haven’t already. These deals will be here when you get back.Now then, Samsung’s Galaxy Buds Live wireless earbuds — lovingly referred to as “beans” for their design — are $30 off at Amazon and Best Buy. If you’ve been waiting to take the plunge on these, you should know that this is within $5 of their best price yet. Both retailers have every color available at this cost, including black, bronze, red, and white. My colleague Chris Welch reviewed them (while Becca Farsace provided the video above), and the main takeaways here are that they might be Samsung’s best wireless earbuds yet. They have a bold design, lengthy battery life, and good sound quality. The Galaxy Buds Live... Continue reading…

It has been 234 days since President Donald Trump announced that 1,700 Google engineers were working on a website that would enable anyone to get a coronavirus test in the parking lots of major retailers around the US.It was always a lie, of course. Google didn’t know Trump would be announcing such a thing, and while another subsidiary of the search giant’s parent company was working on a testing website, it was nothing worth announcing to the American public during a nationwide briefing at a time of crisis. In the end, the small website that did launch was ultimately phased out by some of the larger cities that tried using it, and it remains too hard to get a test with results on a useful timeline for many Americans. (I know because I... Continue reading…

T-Mobile has officially launched TVision, a new live TV streaming service that the company promises will shock the cable TV industry in the same way that T-Mobile’s aggressive plans and “Uncarrier” moves helped to push the cellular industry forward.As it did with mobile, T-Mobile is trumpeting the service’s relatively cheap pricing (although it remains to be seen whether T-Mobile will actually be able to maintain those $10 and $40 price points long term). But when it comes to actually using the TVision apps, the experience is about as basic as it gets.I spent a few days trying out TVision on both an iPad and T-Mobile’s branded Android TV dongle, the TVision Hub. Both apps are virtually identical, splitting up the main navigation into... Continue reading…

AI researchers sometimes refer to machine learning technology as “brittle.” By this, they mean that artificial intelligence lacks a human’s understanding of real world complexities, with the end result being that AI systems sometimes break in quick and unexpected ways.For a more practical illustration of what “brittleness” means, though, simply consider the case of the AI camera operator deployed by Scottish soccer team Inverness Caledonian Thistle FC. When the pandemic stopped fans attending matches, the club announced it would live stream its games, using an automatic camera system with “in-built, AI, ball-tracking technology” to make sure people always get the best view of the action.But, during a recent live stream of matches, the... Continue reading…

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge If you’re now working at home, if your kids are now learning at home, if you’re just stuck at home and looking for a good computing experience, you may be in the market for a new laptop. Unfortunately — especially for those who need to watch their pennies — tech isn’t cheap. But take heart: there is actually a lot of tech out there that will provide a great experience but won’t cost you as much as you’d imagine.What follows are reviews of a variety of laptops that you might want to consider for the use of yourself and your family. It includes relatively low-cost Windows 10 systems and lower-cost Chromebooks. (It does not, as you might imagine, include any Apple computers — however, if you’re looking for a macOS system, you might want to... Continue reading…

In these days of furloughs, layoffs, and shortened hours, when many people are struggling to pay their rent, figure out how to manage their bills, and looking askance at their college loans, it can help to have a solid financial app to assess your situation, create a budget, figure out exactly what you can (or can’t) afford, work with those pesky and confusing figures, find a better way to save, or just keep from panicking.We asked four staff members from The Verge to talk about what they used to keep financially sane, and here’s what they recommended.BuxferAll-around accounting Buxfer First of all, I need to admit that I monitor my finances in an absurdly old-fashioned way. I don’t use an app that downloads all... Continue reading…

Photo by Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images Retail robots that can scan shelves and update inventory have been one of the most visible faces of automation in recent years, but the success of such machines is far from guaranteed. According to The Wall Street Journal, Walmart — one of the biggest adopters of this technology — is ending a contract that saw shelf-scanning robots appear in some 500 of its stores. Apparently, the retailer found that humans could do the job just as well.Walmart began using robots supplied by Bossa Nova Robotics in 2017, with initial deployments in 50 locations. The mobile robots would simplify routine work in stores, said the company, using machine vision to scan shelves and identify what products needed restocking. Earlier this year, Bossa Nova said... Continue reading…

When I first picked up the PlayStation 5’s new DualSense controller I was totally blown away by the haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. The PS5 ships with Astro’s Playroom, which is the perfect showcase for this controller and everything it’s capable of. Sony has added haptic feedback to its new PS5 controller that makes you feel the environment in Astro’s Playroom, with adaptive triggers that provide tension when you’re drawing a bow or pulling on a cord.While it’s easy to dismiss it as just another fancy vibration feature, the new DualSense controller goes beyond what I’ve ever experienced on a Nintendo Switch, Xbox controller, or even the great haptic feedback you’ll find on modern smartphones. The key addition are these new... Continue reading…

The new storage management tool on WhatsApp. | Image: WhatsApp WhatsApp has redesigned its storage management tool, making it easier for users to find and delete files that are taking up too much space on their phone. The new tool will be “rolling out to users worldwide this week,” says the Facebook-owned company, and will be available in the app by heading to Settings > Storage and data > Manage storage.The current WhatsApp “Storage Usage” tool simply sorts all available chats by the amount of space they take up, listing the number of messages, photos, GIFs, and videos in each chat, and letting the user delete each category with a few taps. This is handy, but doesn’t give users a way to browse the content they’re removing. That’s important if you need to clear out, say, a family group chat, and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge ‘Not well.’ Continue reading…

Image: Valve Gabe Newell, president of Valve, the video game company behind the Half-Life series and game marketplace Steam, is thanking the country of New Zealand for its hospitality by launching a gnome into space with aerospace company Rocket Lab in mid-November. Newell decided to stay in New Zealand at the start of the pandemic and is donating a dollar to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at Starship Children’s Hospital for every viewer who watches the satellite launch livestream or the online recording within 24 hours of launch.This soon-to-be astronaut gnome is actually a 150mm tall model of “Garden Gnome” or “Gnome Chompski,” an item that first appeared in Half-Life 2: Episode Two but achieved meme status following the speedruns and... Continue reading…

Photo by PAUL ELLIS/AFP via Getty Images The COVID-19 exposure notification app used in England and Wales failed to warn users if they were in close contact with potentially infectious COVID-19 patients. Because of the error, thousands of people were not told to quarantine even when they should have been, according to the Sunday Times, which first reported the flaw.The app was launched on September 24th, and there have been 19 million downloads since. It’s built using Google and Apple’s Bluetooth Low Energy-based system, which monitors nearby phones. If someone tests positive for COVID-19, their app can alert the phones that they were in contact with. The UK originally planned to use its own app, sidestepping the Google and Apple system, but reversed course in June.Since its... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The pandemic has taken many things from the world — but mostly it’s stolen events. Every hang is a potential death sentence. Thankfully, Twitch, at least, has gone virtual: it announced today that its flagship conference, TwitchCon, will be happening online this year. Oh, and it’s not called TwitchCon. It’s now GlitchCon, and it’s happening on November 14th.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple’s upcoming “One More Thing” event, announced this morning and scheduled for November 10th, will be a major break with tradition in more ways than one: it will be the first time the company unveils an Apple laptop featuring its own custom Arm-based CPUs. Apple plans to debut three new laptops next week, one 13-inch MacBook Air and two different-sized MacBook Pro models (13-inches and 16-inches) that ditch Intel processors, according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.We had a strong inkling that this event — coming on the heels of an iPhone-specific one last month and one dedicated to the latest Apple Watch and iPads back in September — would be when Apple debuts its Arm-based Macs, which the company confirmed after... Continue reading…

Roy Rochlin/Getty Images AMC Entertainment didn’t try to hide the immense financial duress the company has faced the last several months and the increasingly uncertain future that lies ahead if AMC can’t find new ways to make cash.The company posted a revenue of $119.5 million in its third quarter, down 91 percent year over year. The same quarter last year brought in more than $1 billion. AMC noted in its earnings that it’s “operating approximately 539 of its 600 domestic locations,” as of October 2020, but cities like New York City and Los Angeles remain big obstacles. The issue is getting people into those theaters on a consistent basis without any big movies to encourage attendance. On Monday, the company also filed new documents stating it was trying to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon may be looking to handle its own deliveries to rural areas rather than relying on the US Postal Service, according to several job postings, The Information reported on Monday.The e-commerce behemoth would rely on shipping hubs in rural areas under a plan called “wagon wheel,” a reference to Amazon’s hub-and-spoke supply chain. In Amazon’s terminology, a wagon wheel station provides support for smaller shipping facilities, according to The Information. Several since-deleted job postings The Information discovered described “a new delivery business ... that will support Amazon’s rural communities.”Amazon spent $15 billion on fulfillment costs in the third quarterWhen or where the program would be launched is not clear. But... Continue reading…

“Baby Shark” has now crossed 7.043 billion views — which officially makes the kid-friendly, adult-terrorizing earworm the most-watched YouTube video ever. It’s been over three years since Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” took that crown, but parents won’t be surprised to see the music industry’s greatest hit laid low by the Pinkfong empire: we’ve been taking 2020 one day and one video at a time.“This is news?” says my wife. “Please don’t play it. Please don’t play it.”Of course, it’s too late. “Baby Shark” is practically a core memory at this point; even with my speakers muted, it’s already playing in our brains.What might surprise you is just how dramatically “Baby Shark” flew up the charts. When I checked in on YouTube’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok and Sony Music Entertainment have reached a licensing deal that will keep bringing songs from the record group’s roster of hit artists to the shortform video app.Neither company would tell The Verge any real details about what this means for TikTok users. For the most part, it seems like things will largely stay the same. But that’s still an important development: TikTok has been working toward cutting new details with the major record groups since it exploded in popularity to ensure that it doesn’t lose some of the world’s top songs, and this appears to be the first deal locked in.Sony has had some big wins come from TikTokTikTok is paying “a significant increase” over its previous licensing deal, according to Bloomberg. The... Continue reading…

The GOES-East satellite watched Tropical Storm Eta strengthen into a hurricane over the Caribbean Sea on November 2nd, 2020. | Image: NOAA The 28th named storm of an epic Atlantic hurricane season formed yesterday and is barreling toward Central America as Hurricane Eta today. That ties the record with 2005 for the most storms strong enough to earn a name in a single season.This is also the 12th hurricane to form this season, which has only happened three times before, according to Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University.2020 has been exceptionally activeThe World Meteorological Organization ran out of names on its alphabetical list in mid-September, with more than two months left in the 2020 season. That forced the agency to turn to Greek letters for storm names for just the second time in its history.... Continue reading…

Dr. Anthony Fauci says a lot with his facial expressions. | Photo by Al Drago / Pool / Getty Images Anthony Fauci is probably one of the most recognizable faces of the coronavirus pandemic in the US. So when a public health expert needed a way to measure how her students were coping with all of the stresses of 2020, she created a chart to gauge their “level of Fauci.”“We all kind of need something that’s positive, that makes sense to us,” Karen Sautter Errichetti, an assistant professor in public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, said. She’d noticed that her community of public health and medical professionals was feeling pretty depressed. So to lighten the mood and get the students interested, she and her co-instructor Reece Lyerly start every class with a meme of some sort.Nothing caught on... Continue reading…

The Cyberpunk 2077-themed OnePlus 8T. | Image: OnePlus (via Weibo) OnePlus has revealed a wild-looking Cyberpunk 2077-themed 8T, and it looks radically different from the standard OnePlus 8T. Disappointingly, though, the Cyberpunk 2077-themed phone is only available to preorder in China at the moment, where it costs CNY 3,999 (a little less than $600).The phone has a lot of cosmetic touches to match the visual tone of the upcoming game, such as striking yellow accents and a Cyberpunk 2077 logo on the bottom of the phone. But the thing I can’t stop looking at is its giant camera module, which encompasses much of the width of the back of the phone. Image: OnePlus Just look at that camera module. The software gets some Cyberpunk 2077-themed touches as well, including a custom... Continue reading…

Spotify Spotify’s going to test letting artists and labels influence more of what its algorithm promotes. The company announced today a new test for all artists and labels on the platform where they can decide to promote any music that’s important to them. So, for example, if Fleetwood Mac wanted to promote “Dreams” after it went viral on TikTok, they could decide to do so, and Spotify’s algorithm would consider that request when building a radio session or when a listener enters autoplay. Of course, this could apply to any song, including tracks that might be new or that artists want to put extra promotional push behind.“We want to be able to provide tools that help our artists leverage those moments, so they can be more in control of their... Continue reading…

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the first long-term mission to the International Space Station, known as Expedition 1. Ever since then, there have always been a handful of humans living and working in orbit on the ISS — a continuous presence of people in space.Prior to that mission, most of NASA’s human spaceflight program revolved around launching relatively quick, weeks-long trips to orbit on the agency’s Space Shuttle. But in the mid-1990s, NASA began sending its astronauts to space for much longer trips to live on Russia’s old Mir space station. Once the US, Russia, and their international partners started piecing together the International Space Station, NASA started sending some of its astronauts to stay for months at a time... Continue reading…

Apple has announced a “One More Thing” event for November 10th, which will presumably see the company announce its first Arm-based Macs that run on Apple Silicon chips instead of the Intel processors the company has used since 2005.The language here is particularly notable: the “One More Thing” phrase has long been used by Apple — particularly by former CEO Steve Jobs — in keynotes for significant product announcements. The last time Apple used the phrase was for the announcement of the iPhone X in 2017.Even the augmented reality teaser that Apple has been recently including in its event invitations seems to point to a Mac, showing an animated Apple logo rising up towards the viewer just like it would when opening the lid of one of... Continue reading…

Moment has announced its first range of products to work with MagSafe, the new magnetic accessory system built into Apple’s 2020 iPhones. The line includes cases and a broad selection of mounts that’ll let you attach a variety of things to your iPhone 12, or your iPhone 12 to a variety of things.Moment’s products don’t carry Apple’s Made for iPhone branding, but the company says it’s developed a magnet array of its own called “(M)Force” that provides extra strength. Magnets aren’t proprietary, of course, so anyone can make products that physically attach to the iPhone 12. Here’s the full list of products.

Apple TV will debut on Xbox consoles next month, just in time for the Xbox Series X and Series S launch. The new Apple TV app will be available across Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S consoles on November 10th, providing access to Apple’s TV shows and movie libraries. Apple TV has been missing on Xbox since its launch last year, and it’s also arriving on PS5 ready for its November 12th launch.Microsoft is also confirming today that Netflix, Disney Plus, HBO Max, Spotify, YouTube, YouTube TV, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, NBC Peacock, Vudu, FandangoNow, Twitch, Sky Go, NOW TV, Sky Ticket, and more will be available on both next-gen Xbox consoles next month. Both the Xbox Series X and Series S will support Dolby Vision and Dolby... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Epic on Monday revealed new information about what performance benefits Fortnite players should expect day one if playing the game on the new PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X / S consoles, all of which launch next week. We already knew some of these — specifically the 4K and 60 frames per second targets — but Epic is also detailing some behind-the-scenes upgrades the new hardware should allow for.For the new Xbox, you’ll get that bump in resolution if you’re playing on the more powerful Series X, while the Series S is capped at 1080p. Both versions will run at 60 fps, as has been standard on Fortnite on consoles since 2018. But Epic is now promising “dynamic visuals and physics” on the Series X, including an “interactive world with grass... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge It’s always a good idea to watch your pennies — and your dimes and your dollars — when you’re buying tech. These days, with many of us dealing with additional difficulties stemming from the pandemic, it may be more important than ever. We’ve created this guide to budget buying so that you can research how to buy the tech you need without breaking the bank. Find out how to get the best deals when buying tech, what are some of the cool but inexpensive gadgets you can find, and what apps can help you keep your budget in check.It’s sometimes hard to stick to a budget, but in The Verge’s guide to buying on a budget, we try to make it as painless as possible. Check it out. Continue reading…

MANHATTAN, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES - 2020/01/28: Activists and advocates seeking to abolish nuclear weapons gathered at the steps of City Hall for a press conference followed by a hearing at New York City Council on two pieces of disarmament legislation that instruct the Comptroller of New York to divest the citys pensions and finances from nuclear weapons producers, to affirm New York City as a nuclear weapons-free zone and for the City Council to officially urge the federal government to sign and ratify the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. | Photo by Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images The new push for a fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty Continue reading…

Image: Samsung Samsung’s pocket-sized T7 USB-C SSD is steeply discounted at a few retailers. The price cut applies to the 1TB and 2TB models, both of which could make for speedy external add-ons for the PS5 or Xbox Series X / S consoles, in addition to the more obvious use case of connecting it your PC. The 1TB SSD is down to $160 (usually $200). As far as the color options of the T7, Amazon, Best Buy, and B&H Photo have them in red, blue, or black. If you want to double the storage to 2TB, that version of the T7 is $250 (usually $370) at Amazon. That’s a particularly good value.I reviewed Samsung’s T7 Touch, a variant that includes a fingerprint sensor for added security. Some real-world benchmarking tasks proved it to be significantly faster at... Continue reading…