The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Ubisoft is merging its loyalty program, Ubisoft Club, and desktop app Uplay into Ubisoft Connect, the developer announced. In addition to a rewards program, it will introduce crossplay and cross-progression in games such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Watch Dogs: Legion.The new hub will be available for free, but it requires a Ubisoft account. Ubisoft Connect “aims at giving the best environment for all players to enjoy their games and connect with each others whatever the device,” Ubisoft said. Players who use the service will be able to earn Ubisoft Connect XP for playing games and completing in-game challenges. Gaining XP will allow players to level up their Ubisoft Connect accounts, which will award a second currency, Units, that... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla made a profit of $331 million in the third quarter of 2020, its fifth straight profitable quarter and a sign that the electric automaker is hitting its stride. This quarter’s profit is more than doubles that of the third quarter last year.Tesla generated $8.771 billion in revenue, buoyed by $579 million in energy storage sales and $581 million in services revenue. Tesla once again wasn’t purely profitable based on its sales, though. It also sold $397 million worth of regulatory credits in the quarter, a decrease from the record $428 million in credits it sold during Q2 of this year.Tesla generated $8.7 billion in revenueTesla delivered 139,300 vehicles this quarter, beating the company’s previous record of 112,000 vehicle... Continue reading…

Netflix David Fincher’s new movie Mank comes out in just over a month, but if you want a sneak peek at the film, Netflix has a put out a (not so) ”secret” website showcasing its soundtrack and behind-the-scenes stills.The soundtrack comes from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who have created a score with an old-school Hollywood vibe — a big leap from the haunting digital style they’re best known for. From the teaser, you can already hear how Reznor and Ross find ways to impart themes and motifs we know them for into a genre of music that is anything but their usual fare.Alongside a nearly 11-minute sampling of the score, which plays in the background on the site, you can see over 200 photos, stills, and clips from the movie and on-set... Continue reading…

Image: Hulu Animation fans and nostalgia-seekers rejoice: the official trailer for the Animaniacs reboot was released by Hulu earlier today. It’s been 22 years since the original finale, and it looks like Yakko, Wakko, and Dot are embracing their jaunt across time. “We’ve missed so much,” Yakko exclaims as the trio and friends encounter such modern wonders as Instagram, catfishing, and Beyoncé.Originally announced in 2018, the reboot has been gathering hype this month after a clip was released at New York Comic Con. Animaniacs is now trending on Twitter, where fans are expressing excitement and recalling skits from the original series.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter is temporarily changing how you retweet ahead of the November 3rd US presidential election, to help prevent abuse and the spread of misinformation. Don’t worry, you’ll still be able to retweet. But until at least the end of election week, it won’t be quite as easy as usual to retweet something to all of your followers.Starting today, when you click or tap the retweet icon, Twitter will pull up the Quote Tweet composer to encourage you to write something about that tweet before you share it. You don’t have to write anything if you don’t want — just leave the composer blank and hit the retweet button to retweet like you normally would. But Twitter is hoping that by introducing some friction into the process, people might better... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge PayPal on Wednesday announced it would begin supporting cryptocurrencies for the first time, allowing any PayPal account holder to store, buy, and sell popular virtual currencies starting later this year. The announcement makes PayPal arguably the most significant company in the financial tech sector to adopt support for virtual currencies.PayPal competitor Square launched support for bitcoin back in 2018 through its Cash app (Square also purchased $50 million worth of bitcoin earlier this month), but PayPal is going further in supporting bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin. PayPal also plans to extend support to its money-sending subsidiary Venmo and international markets starting early next year. For now, PayPal plans to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Quibi — the shortform mobile-focused streaming service — is shutting down after just over six months of operation, making it one of the shortest-lived streaming services to date, according to The Wall Street Journal.There is any number of factors that can be pointed to in unpacking Quibi’s demise: the launch of a mobile-only streaming service at the height of a global pandemic when users were stuck at home; the lack of any real breakout content that was compelling enough to tempt subscribers; or the fact that shortform video content has a nearly infinite amount of free competition in the form of YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms.It’s not clear what will happen to the company’s lineup of expensive, star-studded original shows and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Update October 21st, 3:40PM ET: Quibi is, in fact, done for. Shortly after publication, The Wall Streets Journal reports Quibi is shutting down for good. Read more here.Struggling streaming service Quibi’s days appear to be numbered. The mobile-centric platform, which burned through a mind-boggling amount of investor cash trying to strong-arm its way into the streaming wars, may be imminently shut down, according to numerous reports about co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg’s failed attempts to salvage the company and its intellectual property.How exactly Quibi bites the dust is still a bit up in the air, though. The Information reported on Tuesday that company executives are considering shutting down the whole operation, after Katzenberg... Continue reading…

This evening, three astronauts who have been living on board the International Space Station for the last six months will return back to Earth in a Russian Soyuz capsule, landing in the middle of the Kazakhstan desert. The trio have lived in space for nearly the entirety of the COVID-19 pandemic and are now returning as cases are rising again across the world.NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Ivan Vagner and Anatoly Ivanishin launched to the ISS on the Soyuz back in early April, nearly a month after the World Health Organization had declared that the COVID-19 outbreak had become a pandemic. Thanks to the outbreak, the crew underwent a stricter quarantine than usual before they took off. Cassidy said he remained mostly... Continue reading…

Cruise, the self-driving car company owned by General Motors, is doubling down on the Origin, its steering wheel-and-pedal-less autonomous people mover introduced late last year. With the COVID-19 pandemic discouraging many people from using shared ride services, the company unveiled new safety protocols intended to keep people socially distant during trips and the vehicle sanitized between fares.Cruise is also applying for permission from the federal government to mass-produce the Origin. The vehicle’s lack of traditional human controls means that the company will need an exemption from the federal government’s motor vehicle safety standards, which require vehicles to have a steering wheel and pedals. The National Highway Traffic... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Yesterday, the Department of Justice and 11 states sued Google for violating antitrust law. The complaint argued that Google had become “the unchallenged gateway to the internet for billions of users worldwide,” but that its success depends on unfair and monopolistic behavior. In some ways, the case is an obvious and long-awaited move. But it’s also an early test of how American antitrust law will handle the coming decade’s tech giants.Since the late 1970s, antitrust cases have typically focused on demonstrating consumer harm, like a company cornering the market on oil and jacking up gas prices with its power. This can be less straightforward with free services like Google search, but it’s hardly impossible. The landmark Microsoft... Continue reading…

Netflix Netflix executives love boasting about how many people are tuning into the streamer’s original movies and TV series, but co-CEO Ted Sarandos made a comment on the company’s earnings call last night that’s left a few people puzzled.Sarandos was talking about some of Netflix’s most popular movies, citing The Old Guard, Extraction, and basically any Adam Sandler movie Netflix releases. At one point, Sarandos said Netflix is getting “70, 80, 100 million folks turning out to watch [our] movies in their first 28 days,” and spending less on marketing than traditional studios, adding that it’s the equivalent to “a billion dollars of box office in terms of cultural impact.”There’s a lot to unpack here, but let’s start with the idea that The... Continue reading…

Image: Epic Games Fortnite on PC has shrunk considerably, down from over 90GB to just under 30GB, thanks to recent optimizations from developer Epic.The news, detailed yesterday in a Fortnite update note posted to the game’s service Twitter account, means the battle royale hit will now take up far less space on your computer’s drive. That gives you more room for other games — or some extra breathing room in the event you have the monstrous Call of Duty: Modern Warfare / Warzone installed.

Photo: Nintendo In order to enjoy playing Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit with friends, you need to embrace chaos. And I don’t mean the typical chaos associated with Mario Kart, like frustratingly timed blue shells or the nightmare of speeding through Rainbow Road. Here, the chaos is more physical — and it can be a lot of fun if you don’t mind the mess. Or the cost.In my review of Home Circuit, my biggest issue was how inaccessible multiplayer can be. It’s not something you can enjoy out of the box. The game — which has players controlling RC karts with their Switch, while driving through a real-life obstacle course — is expensive to play with friends. Each player requires not only a physical kart, which cost $99.99 each, but also their own Switch to... Continue reading…

The Porsche Design Acer Book RS laptop. | Image: Acer Acer is teaming up with Porsche Design on a new high-end “luxury” laptop, the Porsche Design Acer Book RS, which looks to combine Porsche Design’s product designs with Acer’s laptop know-how.The partnership here is an important one, given that the last Porsche Design-branded laptop, the Porsche Design Book One (which the design studio developed on its own), had some key flaws caused by prioritizing style over functionality. Image: Acer The Porsche Design Acer Book RS. The Porsche Design Acer Book RS, on the other hand, looks like a more conventional laptop (albeit, one that’s still covered in carbon fiber). The specs are also encouraging, with a choice of Intel’s 11th Gen Core i5 and i7 processors, 8GB or... Continue reading…

Acer Acer has announced its Chromebook Spin 513 and Chromebook Enterprise Spin 513. They’re the first Chrome OS devices powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7c chips. The 513 will be available in North America in February 2021 starting at $399.99; the Enterprise Spin 513 is coming in March 2021 starting at $699.99.The Snapdragon 7c is an entry-level mobile processor built on an 8nm process. It’s a lower-powered processor than many that you see in popular Windows devices — it’s currently Qualcomm’s weakest processor for laptops — but Qualcomm claims one of its chief benefits is longer battery life. Acer says you’ll see 14 hours (citing synthetic benchmarks).In other exciting news, you’ll be able to configure both models with 4G LTE, a nice... Continue reading…

They painted boarded-up businesses, then scrambled to save the art Continue reading…

Using a paired Alexa device you can do more hands-free with the Fire TV. | Image: Amazon If you’ve got an Amazon Fire TV box, hate picking up a voice remote, and have a separate Alexa-enabled device like an Echo smart speaker, then I have some great news. A new update rolling out this week is adding a host of new hands-free features to the Fire TV like being able to use it to view calendars or the weather, control menus, and play music.Although many of these smart display-like features have been available on the Fire TV before thanks to Amazon’s voice remote, what’s new is being able to access them hands-free. You’ll need to pair an external Alexa-enabled device like an Amazon Echo to get the functionality to work, however. The Fire TV Cube is the only one of Amazon’s streaming boxes to have the far-field mics to handle... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook’s next big play could be all about getting to know your neighbors. The company confirmed this week that it’s testing a new feature that encourages users to post and share news in miniature social networks focused on small geographical areas. Users can create special profiles that share limited information with their neighbors, while Facebook itself will use the detailed location data it collects from those enrolled to serve “more relevant” ads.The feature, named Neighborhoods, is currently being tested in just a single market, Calgary in Canada, but it’s likely Facebook will roll out access more widely if the test is a success. Another hyperlocal social network, Nextdoor, has shown the viability of this model and is reportedly... Continue reading…

Amazon’s Echo Studio Smart Speaker | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Prime Day 2020 may have ended, but Best Buy is bringing back some of the better deals to come out of the two-day e-commerce event. Several products have been discounted at Best Buy to reflect Amazon’s Prime Day pricing.A three-pack of Eero mesh Wi-Fi routers is just $175 at Best Buy today. Usually, the three-pack will set you back $250. If you are looking to strengthen your internet connection at home, whether it’s for streaming or for your work-from-home office, buying a mesh Wi-Fi system is a great way to achieve this.You can grab a third-gen Echo Dot for just $19 at Best Buy today. The product is ideal for anyone looking to add Alexa into their household. You can ask the voice assistant for various things, such as what time it is,... Continue reading…

If the first trailer for Raya and the Last Dragon, the next film out of Walt Disney Animation Studios (the same studio behind Frozen and Moana), gives you serious Legend of Korra vibes, you’re not alone.Disney debuted the first trailer for its new animated feature today, introducing people to Raya, a young girl on the hunt for the last dragon in order to restore peace to her divided world. The trailer follows Raya as she makes her way through a cave of sorts alongside her armadillo pal, TukTuk. Using martial arts skills she’s spent years practicing, Raya encounters a mysterious villain she’s forced to fight in her quest.Raya and the Last Dragon is currently slated to hit theaters in March, but like nearly every movie this year, that... Continue reading…

Two desks: one for work, one for gaming Continue reading…

Acer has announced the $109 Halo smart speaker at its October hardware event. It’s a 360-degree speaker that has the Google Assistant built in to handle queries and tasks, and Acer says it’s one of the first smart speakers to have DTS sound. With that, it should be especially suited to offer a cinematic sound.It’s relatively easy to see what stands out about this device; it has an RGB base that changes color and lighting patterns, and its LEDs can show the weather and other images. Honestly, I think the Halo looks like an oil diffuser, but I’ll take Acer’s word that it’s actually a speaker.This device will release in Q1 2021. Acer hasn’t divulged other specs or product details about the Halo, but we’ll likely hear more soon. At $109,... Continue reading…

Acer’s new Predator X34 GS ultrawide, curved gaming monitor | Acer Acer has announced a fleet of new gaming monitors in its Predator and Nitro lineups. As with the company’s laptops, the Predator line offers more high-end, feature-packed options whereas the Nitro line is value-focused and thus less expensive. Each of the monitors has minimal bezels, so they should work well with a multi-monitor setup if you want to put two or more of them side by side.Starting with the most interesting, the Predator X34 GS (shown on the left in the image above) is a 34-inch ultrawide curved QHD (3440 x 1440) IPS panel. This isn’t Acer’s first ultrawide gaming monitor, but it’s a little bit more affordable than some of the company’s previous models: it is expected to cost $1,100 when it launches in the US in December.... Continue reading…

Acer’s Swift 3X steps up the graphics game. I like Acer’s Swift 3 line because it really has its finger on the features that students need. The Swift 3 doesn’t look fancy and doesn’t come with any cutting-edge bells and whistles. But it’s sturdy and portable with good performance and solid battery life — and best of all, it’s affordable.I’ve spent a bit of time checking out Acer’s Swift 3X, a slightly scaled-up version of the Acer Swift 3. It looks, feels, and is built like a Swift 3, with a notable exception: it has a discrete GPU. Latest Intel processor, latest Intel graphics. The Swift 3X contains Intel’s Iris Xe Max, Intel’s new discrete GPU (the laptop variant of the DG1). With its slim and portable build (three pounds and 0.7 inches thick) this Swift... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple continues to have trouble with its new default app settings in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14. After it was discovered that power cycling devices would flip the defaults for email and web browser back to Apple’s own apps, the company quickly patched that issue.But now it’s been reported — and The Verge has confirmed directly — that whenever you update your chosen default app (like Gmail or Microsoft Edge) in the App Store, it gets booted out of the default app slot. Credit to David Clarke for making us aware of bug, which remains present as of the iOS 14.1 update that was just released yesterday.

Image: Nintendo / Game Freak Pokémon Sword and Shield for the Nintendo Switch have somehow resisted much in the way of a major price drop since they released in late 2019, but both games are $20 off their usual price at Amazon and Best Buy, down to $40 each for the physical cartridge versions. This is the lowest price yet, and if you were holding off until a deal arrived, or are planning to gift the game to someone over the holidays, now is the time to buy.These two games are the latest in the main Pokémon adventure, and each game offers the same story but with a different selection of pokémon to catch. If you want to catch them all, you’ll need to get both games. Of course, that’s for die-hard pokémon collectors, and buying just one copy will get you a... Continue reading…

Despite the higher cost, this iPad is the one to get Continue reading…

Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images Dropbox’s new family plan, Dropbox Family, is now available globally. With Dropbox Family, up to six people can have their own accounts with all of the features in a Dropbox Plus plan, a combined 2 TB of storage, and a dedicated space to share files across accounts (called, fittingly, the Family Room). Up until today, Dropbox Family was only available in beta to select users, Dropbox tells The Verge.Because everyone on your Dropbox Family plan gets Dropbox Plus features, that means each person will have access to things like Dropbox’s password manager and a PIN-protected “vault” to store sensitive documents like a birth certificate. (If you want to know what’s different between Dropbox’s free and Plus subscriptions, the company has a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you ask Chrome to delete all cookies and site data whenever you quit the browser, it’s reasonable to expect that this policy applies to all websites. Recently, though, a bug in the browser meant data wasn’t being removed for two sites in particular: Google and YouTube.This problem was first documented by iOS developer Jeff Johnson on his blog. Johnson found that in Chrome version 86.0.4240.75, “local storage” data for Google.com and YouTube.com stuck around even after restarting the browser. We’ve been able to replicate similar behavior.According to The Register, site data allows websites to store personal information about visitors, letting them remember information about users when they visit again in the future. In comparison,... Continue reading…

Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images Amazon Prime subscribers now get free one-hour grocery pickup at all of Whole Foods’ 487 US stores, Amazon announced today. The news marks an expansion of Whole Foods’ existing pickup service, which was previously only available at select stores, according to CNBC. Orders costing $35 or more are eligible, and thousands of items including fresh produce, meat and seafood, and other staples are available for pickup.Pickups have become increasingly popular during the pandemic as people attempt to social distance. Businesses ranging from electronics retailers like Best Buy to local restaurants have relied on them to allow people to shop safely. But Amazon says it expects the trend to continue even after the worst of the pandemic has passed,... Continue reading…

Photo by ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP via Getty Images Fortnite’s annual Halloween event is back, and this year’s edition sounds like the most ambitious yet. Today, Epic Games revealed the return of “Fortnitemares,” and like past events, it will add some spooky elements to the battle royale island. But there’s a twist: Halloween night will also feature a virtual concert from reggaeton star J Balvin.First, the in-game element. In the past, Fortnitemares has included special game modes and zombies infesting the main island, but this year’s version sounds very different. Here’s how Epic describes it:

Vivo, one of the largest smartphone brands in the world, is expanding its operations in Europe. The company will now sell phones and accessories in six new markets: the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain.Vivo is kicking things off with the X51 5G flagship phone, essentially a rebranded version of the X50 that launched earlier in the year. Its headline feature is a “gimbal-style” camera system that is claimed to offer much-improved image stabilization.The X51’s other features include ultrawide, 2x, and 5x telephoto cameras, a Snapdragon 765 processor, a 90Hz 6.56-inch 1080p OLED screen, 256GB of storage, a 4,315mAh battery, and 33W fast charging. It’ll cost £749 ($972) in the UK and go on sale on October 29th. T... Continue reading…

Image: Lucasfilm After years of silence, Disney has confirmed that Lucasfilm’s Willow will receive a sequel, in the form of a TV series coming to its Disney Plus streaming subscription service. The pilot will be directed by Crazy Rich Asians’ John M. Chu.Willow has largely remained untouched since its original release in 1988, but this long rumored sequel will join existing novels and a comic book that previously built out the world of the film. The original can already be streamed on Disney Plus, and this new series will join The Mandalorian as Lucasfilm’s second television spin-off on the platform.The 1988 film, directed by Ron Howard, was a cult hit when it first premiered, a fantasy adventure about an aspiring sorcerer named Willow (Warwick Davis)... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Quibi, the troubled streaming service focused on “quick bites” of mobile-first content, has just launched apps for Apple TV, Android TV and Fire TV. The company quietly announced the change in an updated support article.These apps follow Quibi’s ongoing attempts to get more eyes on its content after launching as a mobile-only app. The company first made content more shareable in May, and followed that soon after with AirPlay and Chromecast support.It may be too late for QuibiUnfortunately for Quibi, these changes to the initial mobile-first strategy may have come too late. A new report in The Information claims that co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg has attempted to sell Quibi’s programming to Facebook and NBCUniversal while telling... Continue reading…

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reacts to being chosen to be an impostor during her first live-streamed round of Among Us, moments after saying she hoped not to be picked as an impostor. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) made her Twitch debut tonight to play Among Us and encourage viewers to vote. She also, very quickly, became one of the platform’s biggest broadcasters: her stream peaked at 435,000 viewers around the time of her first match, according to Twitch. (The stream had dipped to around 350,000 viewers as of this writing, after about two hours of playing.)That peak viewership puts her broadcast among the 20 biggest streams ever, according to the third-party metrics site TwitchTracker, and much higher if you’re only looking at broadcasts from individual streamers. Ninja holds the record for an individual streamer, with more than 600,000 viewers during a Fortnite match with Drake in 2018. TwitchTracker’s... Continue reading…

The Fast & Furious saga will finally end after its 11th installment, Deadline and Variety report — which, if you’re counting, is one more movie than we were expecting until now. Justin Lin, who directed five of the past eight F&F films (counting the upcoming F9), is reportedly set to direct the last two as well.Of course they were going to make another movie. Unlike Chaim and Julia, I may know next to nothing about Fast’s plot or characters, but I do know spectacle — and there was no way in hell a $5+ billion box office blockbuster franchise, a series whose every installment attempts to jump the shark in the most spectacular ways possible, and a series that’s literally about tuning cars to the max, wasn’t going to turn it all the way up... Continue reading…

A $112,000 version will be available in late 2022 Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Netflix is planning a two-day “event” that will allow non-subscribers in India to stream the company’s library without a subscription plan.The move follows news that Netflix has ended free trial periods, choosing instead to focus on other marketing promotions to try and amass new subscribers. Netflix’s chief operating officer Greg Peters confirmed the promo on the company’s third quarter earnings call, calling it “StreamFest,” and that it’s just for India for now. Peters believes that something like StreamFest “could really create an event.” The free trial will kick off on December 4th, Variety confirmed. Peters did not offer any information on whether or not it’ll come to the United States. Protocol first reported the story.“We’re... Continue reading…

Image: Lockheed Martin This afternoon, a NASA spacecraft more than 200 million miles from Earth successfully touched the surface of an asteroid, in an attempt to grab a handful of pebbles and dust from the space rock. Data from the spacecraft confirmed that the vehicle did indeed touch the asteroid today, but NASA won’t know until tomorrow if it actually snagged a sample of material.“Touchdown declared,” a mission controller announced when the team received data confirming the maneuver. “Sampling in process.” The news of the success was met with cheers and applause from engineers following along with the procedure.The spacecraft that just tapped the asteroid is OSIRIS-REx, and this sampling maneuver has been years in the making. The main purpose of the... Continue reading…

Photo by Gotham/GC Images A day after lighting up the internet by announcing she’d joined Twitch and was looking for streamers to play the breakout hit Among Us with, New York congressional Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is playing Among Us with Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker and Imane “Pokimane” Anys, two of the biggest personalities on Twitch.The stream already had 240,000 concurrent viewers before they started playing.Piker is a popular progressive streamer, formerly of The Young Turks. (If you’ve tried to watch a political debate on Twitch this year, you’ve probably seen his stream.) Anys, on the other hand, is less explicitly political but is one of the most famous people on Twitch, with 6 million followers on the site.

Intel is selling its SSD business to SK Hynix in a deal worth $9 billion, which will see the chipmaker almost completely exit the flash memory and storage business — except for Intel’s high-end Optane memory technology, which it’ll still be hanging onto. The deal includes Intel’s former NAND SSD, component, and wafer businesses, along with the company’s NAND factory in Dalian, China.“For Intel, this transaction will allow us to further prioritize our investments in differentiated technology where we can play a bigger role in the success of our customers and deliver attractive returns to our stockholders,” said Intel CEO Bob Swan.It’ll be some time until the deal actually takes place: the two companies are starting to get governmental... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Snapchat’s anime filter was used more than 3 billion times in the first week after it was released, Snap said today, confirming what we already knew: it was a huge hit.The filter, which morphs its subject into an anime character, is just the latest in a line of fun AR lenses from Snapchat that have gone viral and helped drive usage on the platform. During its third quarter, Snapchat had 249 million daily users, up from 238 million last quarter. The company’s revenue was also up to $679 million, a 52 percent increase even as the pandemic chilled ad spending elsewhere.“The adoption of augmented reality is happening faster than we had previously anticipated.”There are signs that Snap’s growth is more robust than drive-by filter users.... Continue reading…

VidCon, an annual convention focused on digital creators, is tentatively planning to return to Anaheim, California next summer if conditions allow, but organizers are preparing to let people attend digitally for the first time.The new digital option will allow people to purchase tickets for a number of live-streaming and “key fan-focused sessions” for those who don’t or can’t travel to the actual convention. The move comes after VidCon saw success in many of the digital sessions the convention held this year (referred to as VidCon Now) after the COVID-19 pandemic led to organizers deciding to cancel the actual in-person event.Nearly 1 million people tuned into digital events held by VidCon over the last few months, according to... Continue reading…

Illustration by William Joel / T Facebook moderators located in India were pressured by their employer, third-party contracting firm Genpact, to return to the office despite safety concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report from nonprofit publication Rest of World.Genpact, one of many firms Facebook outsources moderation to around the world, employs roughly 1,600 moderators in India, where employees analyze offensive and disturbing content posted in large volumes to Facebook’s platforms for potential rule violations. The company was pressuring employees to return to its offices in Hyderabad as early as July, Rest of World reports, with Genpact claiming key parts of its moderation services had to be performed in the office due to privacy issues and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix’s business soared during the pandemic, but as it heads into 2021 and faces a potential shortage of films and movies, the company will have to prove it can continue performing.Netflix reported its third quarter earnings today, and although Netflix is acknowledging slower growth, the company is still adding subscribers. The company added 2.2 million net subscribers in Q3, compared with the company’s 2.5m guidance. The company saw $6.44 billion in revenue, beating expectations. Still, the looming question for co-CEOs Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos is how they plan to ensure Netflix won’t run out of things to watch.“The state of the pandemic and its impact continues to make projections very uncertain, but as the world hopefully... Continue reading…

Amazon’s Luna streaming service has arrived, with the company rolling out early access to a limited set of customers today. It’s starting with a library of 50 games and support for Mac, PC, Fire TV, and, in a first for a major streaming service, iOS devices — because Amazon has a web app that circumvents Apple’s controversial App Store rules. Luna starts at $5.99 a month.We’ve spent a couple of hours streaming games with Luna. Here’s what it’s like so far and how it compares to other streaming services out there like Microsoft xCloud and Google Stadia. Luna’s iOS web app. PerformanceThe biggest question for Luna — like any cloud gaming service — is performance. For cloud gaming to work well, companies like Amazon... Continue reading…

In the spring, while the pandemic was surging and people were moving into home offices, it was nearly impossible to find a webcam to help secure your home or provide a better Zoom experience. As a result, camera manufacturers began issuing software that would enable camera owners to convert their tech into a working webcam. And while the webcam famine has abated somewhat, it could still be a good idea to convert your older phone or camera into a webcam — not only will you be saving a bit of cash by repurposing your tech, but you’ll be saving your devices (at least temporarily) from having to be recycled.The following are some resources that might help you create a new webcam from your old tech. We start with a couple of general how-tos,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitch’s music problem has flared up again, with the company sending DMCA warning notices en masse to its massive population of streamers. The news was spotted by the indefatigable esports consultant Rod “Slasher” Breslau, who posted news of the impeding takedowns on Twitter.

Canon has announced the PowerShot Zoom, an unusual camera that’s more like a digital monocular than a point-and-shoot. The company has been showing off the idea for a while and recently crowdfunded it in Japan; now it’s coming to the US.The PowerShot Zoom is a tiny device with an electronic viewfinder, a 1/3-inch 12-megapixel sensor, and two switchable equivalent focal lengths of 100mm and 400mm with a digital zoom up to 800mm. The lens is f/5.6-6.3, so this probably isn’t well-suited to low-light use. Image quality in general is not really the focus. Canon says the product has been designed for people who enjoy outdoor activities like birdwatching and hiking, however, and it could be a useful accessory for spectators at... Continue reading…