The Verge

Apple has announced its very first 5G iPhones: the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Mini, iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max. They range in price from $729 to well north of $1,100, but — as Apple proudly announced during the press conference — even the Mini offers access to speedy millimeter-wave (mmWave) 5G networks.As it turns out, that’s why each new iPhone features this conspicuous groove along the right edge. It’s a special window for mmWave signals, and it appears to be designed so users can visibly see it and perhaps avoid holding it there for maximum signal strength.

The Oculus Quest 2, Facebook’s new virtual reality headset, has started shipping today. The Quest 2 is a cheaper, revamped version of the original 2019 Quest. It’s got the same untethered standalone design but with a new chipset and a big bump in screen resolution and controller battery life. And it’s starting at $299 for the base 64GB model and $399 for a 256GB version, a $100 drop from the original Quest.Quest 2 preorders have been open since September, and it’s available through Oculus’ own site and stores like Best Buy and Walmart, with a full list of retailers in Oculus’ announcement post. It was difficult to buy an original Quest over much of the past year, thanks to persistent supply problems, but the Quest 2 still appears to be... Continue reading…

From pots and pans to air fryers and rice cookers. Continue reading…

Alexi Rosenfeld / Getty Images AMC Theaters is warning investors that without a steady flow of movies to bring people into the remaining theaters it has open, the company could run out of cash by the end of 2020.It’s no surprise that the theater industry is hurting. Nearly every major blockbuster (movies that could get people to possibly visit a theater mid-pandemic) has been pushed back to 2021, and the theaters still open are operating at reduced capacities. The results aren’t great; Warner Bros. and Christopher Nolan’s Tenet — the one notable blockbuster a studio tried to release — failed to perform in the United States, where theaters in major markets like New York City and Los Angeles remain closed. The next big film is Wonder Woman 1984, and there’s always a... Continue reading…

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins (L) with Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov (C) and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov (R). | Image: NASA A new crew of three astronauts are launching to the International Space Station late tonight, blasting off on a Russian Soyuz rocket out of Kazakhstan. The trio are heading to the station about a month ahead of SpaceX’s next crewed Dragon launch, which will bring another set of four astronauts aboard the ISS in mid-November.Heading up on this Soyuz flight are two Russian cosmonauts — Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov — and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, on her second trip to space. The trio will join three crew members who have been living on the ISS since April: Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy. However, their living arrangement won’t last long. Cassidy and his cosmonaut crew... Continue reading…

The Amazon Echo Buds are $80 during Prime Day 2020 | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Amazon Prime Day 2020 is here, happening now and lasting until 11:59PM PT on October 14th. We’ve listed the best deals below happening in all of the major tech categories, including phones, gaming, storage, PC, TVs, tablets, drones, headphones, and more. We’ve highlighted particularly good deals. Looking for non-Amazon retailers? Check out our anti-Prime Day deals.Most of what you’ll find below will be on sale throughout both days of Prime Day 2020. However, we’ll be putting limited time Lightning Deals up near the top so you can easily find (and, if you want, buy) those products. For all of our coverage, including what kinds of deals are happening outside of Amazon, you can see it all here.For more deals on fashion, home goods, and... Continue reading…

Photo by Manuel Romano/NurPhoto via Getty Images In some parts of the world, solar power is now the cheapest source of electricity in history, thanks to policies encouraging renewable energy growth. That’s according to a new report released today by the International Energy Agency (IEA).Sunshine is free, but the technology needed to turn it into usable electricity can be expensive. To encourage more people and companies to switch to solar power, countries can adjust their policies to make purchasing that equipment more affordable. Today, more than 130 countries have policies that lower the cost of building new solar installations. This is the first year that the IEA took such policies into consideration when calculating the cost of solar energy in its annual World Energy Outlook... Continue reading…

Last January, we showed you Razer’s awesome-looking Tomahawk Elite desktop PC case, with its gull-wing doors and auto-lifting lid for excessive heat.This January, I told you about the stunning Razer Tomahawk prebuilt desktop, with slide-out upgradable Intel NUC Element modules and space for the latest GPUs despite its tiny 10-liter frame.As far as we can tell, no product called the “Razer Tomahawk” has actually ever shipped. But that isn’t keeping Razer from trying again today with a pair of practical-looking PC cases for rolling your own system. Image: Razer The new $199 Razer Tomahawk A1 (ATX) and $179 Tomahawk M1 (Mini-ITX) are fairly standard if quite flexible cases with a few features that set them apart —... Continue reading…

Razer Razer’s Blade Stealth 13 is one of the best portable gaming laptops you can buy. Today, the company is giving it a refresh: it just announced a “late 2020” model of its 13-inch rig.The only really big change from the Blade Stealth 13 that came out earlier this year seems to be the processor. The upcoming Blade is powered by a chip from Intel’s newest generation, the Core i7-1165G7. That comes with a GeForce GTX 1650 Ti, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of (upgradeable) storage. Razer claims that it’s “up to 2.7 times” faster in content creation and “more than 20 percent faster” in office productivity than the previous generation. Image: Razer The other noteworthy change is that there’s now an FHD OLED touchscreen option,... Continue reading…

It’s not clear whether Razer commissioned Secretlab to build an exclusive new gaming chair, or simply decided to copy one of today’s oft-cited favorites, but the new $499 Razer Iskur is a dead ringer for the similarly-priced Secretlab Omega and Titan.You can compare the design, the recline mechanism, the stitching — heck, just look at those nigh-identical 4D armrests — and the inspiration is plainly clear. But Razer is also clearly pitching it as a step ahead of Secretlab in terms of spinal support, as you can see in this thinly veiled comparison image: Image: Razer Razer did not use the word “Secretlab” in its press briefing. Aside from being a distinct hybrid of the Secretlab Omega’s smaller... Continue reading…

Peloton has removed several hashtags related to the QAnon conspiracy theory from its virtual exercise platform, Business Insider reported. The move followed a tweet from a Washington Post editor earlier in the week that showed several hashtags— which allow people taking the same online fitness classes to connect with each other— using variants of QAnon’s “where we go 1 we go all” hashtag.A Peloton spokesperson told BI the company has “a zero-tolerance policy against hateful content” and removed the QAnon hashtags for violating that policy.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge President Donald Trump says he’s recovered from COVID-19. Outside doctors say it’s too soon for him to return to public events, he’s coughing on Fox News, and he’s taking a potent steroid that can mask symptoms — but Trump says he’s not sick anymore. And he’s crediting that recovery to an experimental drug made by the company Regeneron, which he said on Wednesday was a “cure.”“They gave me Regeneron, and it was, like, unbelievable. I felt good immediately,” he said in a video recorded at the White House.There’s no evidence that the Regeneron drug had anything to do with how good Trump did or did not feel. There’s hardly any data that the drug, which is a cocktail of artificial antibodies against the coronavirus, works at all. So far,... Continue reading…

You get what you pay for Continue reading…

Image: Amazon Game Studios Amazon has officially canceled Crucible, its free-to-play multiplayer shooter. It’s the end of a rocky journey for the game, which was first launched in May after years in development before being put back into closed beta in July.“We very much appreciate the way that our fans have rallied around our efforts, and we’ve loved seeing your responses to the changes we’ve made over the last few months, but ultimately we didn’t see a healthy, sustainable future ahead [for] Crucible,” the Crucible team said in a blog post.If you’re in the closed beta, you’ll still be able to play the game in some form for a short while. The developers will be hosting a “a final playtest and community celebration” in the next few weeks, according to the blog.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Fortnite won’t be coming back to the App Store any time soon. On Friday, Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers refused to grant Epic Games a preliminary injunction against Apple that would force the game developer to reinstate Fortnite on the App Store, while simultaneously granting an injunction that keeps Apple from retaliating against the Unreal Engine, which Epic also owns (PDF). In other words, we now have a permanent version of the temporary restraining order ruling from last month.That means the state of affairs, in which Epic is banned from publishing new games on iOS and cannot distribute Fortnite on the App Store in its current form, will remain in place for the length of the trial — unless Epic decides to remove its own in-app payment... Continue reading…

Apple is shifting how it ships devices to consumers: instead of sending out all of its hardware products directly from China or from local warehouses, the company is now going to use its network of Apple Stores as de-facto fulfillment centers, shipping products directly from the stores to get to customers faster.The change, Bloomberg reports, will use Apple’s nearly 300 stores in the US and Canada to speed up local delivery for customers within 100 miles of a store. The company has already apparently started using the new system with several stores earlier this year, but the broader rollout is coming just ahead of Apple’s upcoming iPhone launch next week (which is already taking place later than usual).The shift is largely an internal... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google’s Meet videoconferencing service is getting breakout rooms, but they’ll only be available to G Suite Enterprise for Education customers at first, according to a Google blog post (via 9to5Google). With the feature, teachers and educators will be able to break their classes into smaller groups for things like projects or focused discussions.Google will let you make up to 100 breakout rooms in a single call. Once you’ve decided how many breakout rooms you want, Google will randomly group up the people on the call into rooms, but moderators can manually add people to other rooms if they want. Meeting moderators can also hop between rooms to check in on groups.If breakout rooms are something you might want to try out, but you aren’t... Continue reading…

My biggest complaint about Disney Plus for the longest time was that it didn’t seem to understand how people (read: me) want to watch movies. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a perfect example.When Disney Plus launched, the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies weren’t exactly organized. There were rows for featured titles, movies, and TV shows, but everything was kind of strewn together. Almost every Marvel Cinematic Universe movie you wanted was here — you just had to spend a minute finding it. Now, however, it looks like Disney has changed around the Marvel section a tad to make it, well, make sense.In the screenshot below (taken from a Disney Plus US account), the Marvel films are separated into their specific phases, and then there’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Pakistan’s telecom regulator has banned TikTok, claiming the app failed to remove “immoral” and “indecent” content. The ban comes just over a month after the regulator, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, banned dating apps, including Tinder and Grindr, for the same reason.TikTok had been installed 43 million times in Pakistan, according to the analytics firm Sensor Tower. That made it the app’s 12th largest market in terms of installs. The firm estimates TikTok has been installed 2.2 billion times total across Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store.TikTok restricted two out of 40 accounts Pakistan flagged during the first half of 2020The ban comes just a few months after TikTok was removed in India over concerns around the... Continue reading…

Local volunteers help board up a business ahead of Hurricane Delta on October 8th, 2020, in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Residents along the Gulf Coast are bracing for the arrival of Delta, which is expected to make landfall in Louisiana on October 9th. | Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images Hurricane Delta is the latest storm to threaten the US during a hurricane season that’s smashed records and mangled Gulf Coast communities time and again. The Atlantic hurricane season has lived up to early forecasts of an unusually busy year, and there’s still enough of 2020 left to set new records.There have never been more than nine named storms to make landfallSince modern record-keeping, there have never been more than nine named storms to make landfall in the continental US. That’s forecast to change when Delta hits later today. If it does, it will be the first time since 2005 that five hurricanes have battered the mainland US within a single season.This is the 25th named storm in a season that’s been so prodigious that the... Continue reading…

The iPhone 11 Pro. Not an iPhone 12. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple is likely taking the wraps off its 2020 iPhones at an event on October 13th, and with just days to go until the big reveal, we might now know nearly everything about them — including when you might be able to buy them for yourself.Many rumors suggest the iPhone 12 lineup will have a brand-new design with squared edges instead of rounded ones, perhaps similar to the beloved design of the iPhone 4 and 5. And all signs are pointing toward this being the year the iPhone gets 5G, which should set you up for faster data speeds — once the networks can reliably deliver them in your area. But if you’ve been waiting for iPhones to get 120Hz refresh rate screens, you might have to wait another year.The likeliest rumor of them all? We’re... Continue reading…

Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge “A big frustration with the Apple TV 4K is about to be history,” my colleague Chris Welch wrote, when we learned that Apple’s premiere set-top box would finally be able play 4K YouTube videos at their native resolution instead of being stuck at 1080p. These days, even a $40 dongle can do better than that.But though Apple’s latest software updates did bring YouTube 4K to the Apple TV 4K, the frustrations aren’t necessarily over. It turns out you’re limited to watching 4K at 30fps, instead of a smooth 60 frames per second, and without the depth of color and contrast that High Dynamic Range (HDR) provides. That’s what 9to5Mac noticed yesterday, and we’ve confirmed with Google that — for now — Apple TV only supports 4K at 30fps with SDR... Continue reading…

James Bond may not avert his next death until 2021, but apparently Paul W.S. Anderson’s Monster Hunter movie will still hit the big screen this year: the just-posted official teaser trailer for the movie confirms that it’ll arrive this December, “only in theaters.”At just 13 seconds of footage, it’s not much of a teaser — and where are the swords? Milla Jovovich mans a minigun, and her squad has a couple rifles at their disposal. But as our sister site Polygon points out, it does give us a glimpse at a Black Diablos, which is just the sort of gigantic sand-loving Triceratops-esque mega-beasts that the teaser seems to show.Don’t worry about those swords, by the way. As the movie’s synopsis makes clear, Jovovich and co will trade their... Continue reading…

GIF: Emojipedia In a move that, I’m sure, has absolutely no relation to anything going on in the world today, Apple has quietly updated its “Face with Medical Mask” emoji with friendlier eyes, eyebrows, and rosy cheeks. Before, it looked a little lethargic. Now, it’s almost happy? You can practically imagine a smile underneath.Except you don’t have to imagine. Wait for it: GIF: Emojipedia As Emojipedia points out, the new emoji is literally Apple’s existing “Smiling Face” with a mask on top. Do you think the artist was imagining a frown under there? Probably not. Juxtaposition: Emojipedia It’s just the latest way that emoji have evolved to express the anguish of 2020 — even as other emoji are getting delayed... Continue reading…

Nintendo revealed on Thursday that Steve and Alex from Minecraft will be added to the character roster in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for the Nintendo Switch, and now we’re getting the full reveal: they’ll arrive on October 13th, and there’s a whole video you can watch where longtime Smash series director Masahiro Sakurai shows off their new moves, including the ability to build your own platforms out of blocks! See it above.The video reveals that you’ll effectively have six different Minecraft characters to choose from, because Steve and Alex have three different skins each: Plus, there’s a Zombie and an Enderman at around 4 min into the video. You’ll be able to harvest materials from the walls and ground with your... Continue reading…

Deluxe display, but dismal battery Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon and Alex Castro / The Verge Well, the coronavirus made it all the way to the White House. In a country that still maintains the highest numbers of cases in the world, that’s not a huge surprise. The White House might be an exclusive, highly-guarded venue, but viruses generally can squeeze their way onto any guest list — all they have to do is slide past the velvet rope as someone’s plus one.That’s the thing about this virus. It doesn’t matter if you’re a college football player, a nurse, a grocery store clerk, or the President. If the virus gets the chance to introduce itself to your body, it will probably take it.Unfortunately, a lot of our normal lives are spent in situations where the virus could turn into a social butterfly. Normally, we work in offices or... Continue reading…

Welcome to the weekend. Amazon Prime Day 2020 kicks off in less than two weeks, starting on Tuesday, October 13th and lasting through the 14th. That’s two days to get some of the best deals that we’ll see all year. We’re prepping behind the scenes for the event to make sure you’re able to get exactly what you’re looking for. But for now, I’m going to highlight a few of this week’s best deals that are still going on. Lastly, two quick reminders. First, you can get a $10 voucher to spend on games that cost $14.99 and up at the Epic Games Store just by adding Rocket League to your library. It’s available as a free-to-play game on the Epic Games Store now, and you have until October 23rd to do this. Photo... Continue reading…

Photo by MANDEL NGAN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey have agreed to testify virtually before the Senate Commerce Committee on October 28th, Politico reported Friday evening. Assuming that the hearing is live-streamed in some way, that means you’ll be able to watch some of the world’s most powerful people get grilled by policymakers who’ve recently discussed changing the laws that let their companies grow to an unfathomable scale.The hearing, which will take place just six days before the US Presidential election, will be the second major Congressional hearing featuring big tech CEOs this year; the House antitrust committee heard from Pichai, Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in... Continue reading…

The new Microsoft Flight Simulator is an immersive beast of a PC game, and we can only imagine how immersive it might get in VR — but you might not have to imagine much longer, because Microsoft has just opened signups (via Eurogamer) for a closed beta of the virtual reality experience.There are quite a few requirements if you want to be considered, though. Not only do you have to own the game, have a Windows Mixed Reality headset, be a registered Microsoft Flight Simulator “Insider” and sign an NDA, you’ll need a slightly beefier PC than the base game — with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 or better sporting 8GB of VRAM, as well as 16GB of system memory.And, you’ll need to prove your PC qualifies by submitting your DxDiag (press your... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge President Trump reportedly has COVID-19, and while some are wishing for his speedy recovery, others have publicly tweeted a hope that he’ll die of the disease. As you might imagine, that’s expressly against Twitter’s rules — and the company tells Motherboard that it will enforce them.In other words: You can’t tweet that you hope Trump dies of COVID.Specifically, Twitter tells the publication that it will suspend people who hope for Trump’s death, though it’s not clear how often Twitter will be able to do so.

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Two members of a console hacking and piracy organization known as Team Xecuter have been arrested and charged with fraud, one of whom is named Gary Bowser. French national Max Louarn and Bowser, originally from Canada but arrested in the Dominican Republic, allegedly led the group, which makes a line of tools for cracking locked-down gaming hardware.Team Xecuter is a sophisticated operation known best for its Nintendo hacks, including a USB device called the SX Pro that allows the Nintendo Switch to run pirated games. The group’s for-profit motive has made it controversial in the modding and emulation communities, reports Ars Technica, because those communities tend to focus on open-source efforts and shy away from selling products... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has published the results of an employee survey undertaken by the company over the summer following allegations of endemic harassment and toxicity, and the results are eye-opening.In the anonymous survey of nearly 14,000 employees, one in four respondents said that they had either witnessed or experienced workplace misconduct themselves in the past two years, and one in five said that they didn’t feel “fully respected or safe in the work environment.” The results also noted that women and non-binary employees witnessed or were more likely to experience or witness harassment than men.Women and non-binary employees were more likely to experience harassmentUbisoft says that the survey — which was conducted by... Continue reading…

Photo: DANJAQ and MGM / Nicola Dove No Time to Die, the 25th James Bond film, has been pushed back an entire year. It will now arrive on April 2nd, 2021, the film’s producers confirmed today.Originally, the film was supposed to arrive in April 2020, before getting delayed to this November due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The new delay gives the world five more months to potentially recover and for people to decide when they’re willing to brave theaters again.

An Apple patent application published yesterday reveals an idea for a foldable smartphone that would include a “self-healing” display cover, allowing the device to repair dents or scratches covering the screen. The application, spotted by Patently Apple, was originally filed by Apple in January.As Apple wrote in the patent application, the proposed concept’s display would allow the device to repair itself without the user having to manually intervene. In theory, the foldable’s self-healing could activate automatically, such as when the device is being charged or on a predetermined schedule, and it would use heat, light, or electric current to repair a protective layer above the screen.The patent application also says the hypothetical... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Operating system updates can often suffer from unwanted glitches, and it seems that the latest iOS 14 and watchOS 7 releases from Apple are not immune. There have been complaints over the last few days that some people who have updated their devices have found — instead of increased efficiency — a wide range of issues, including missing fitness data, health apps that refuse to open, inaccurate reports of stored data, and increased battery drain on iPhones and Apple Watches. But while Apple has posted a way to resolve some of these issues, it’s not an easy fix.When we checked Twitter, there were quite a few irritable messages from users whose batteries were losing power way too quickly. For example, one user tweeted, “The battery drain... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Since releasing them last year, Apple has quietly continued to improve upon the AirPods Pro with firmware updates that have tweaked their noise cancellation and sound quality. The company rarely details or comments on the changes that come in each release of AirPods firmware; there are no update notes that spell out what’s new. Nor is there any way to manually force install the latest AirPods / AirPods Pro software. It just... happens in the background at some point as you use them. But last month, the AirPods Pro picked up a pair of new features that Apple did announce: spatial audio and automatic switching.Automatic switching is the simpler one, and it’ll probably make a bigger difference to your day-to-day use of the AirPods Pro.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Would-be TikTok competitor Triller has allegedly inflated its monthly active user numbers, according to a report published in Business Insider.In the last month Triller — a short-form video app that has attracted a number of TikTok stars, including the most popular person on the platform, Charli D’Amelio — announced that it had more than 100 million monthly active users. Speaking to Business Insider, six former employees dispute those numbers, and they told reporter Dan Whateley that Triller’s numbers were shady, based on their experience with the company.Back in October of last year, Triller said it had reached 13 million monthly active users and 60 million app downloads. A screenshot provided to Business Insider of one of the... Continue reading…

Google officially dropped Daydream virtual reality support from Android 11 — a final step in its retirement of the system. As Android Police notes, Google posted an announcement saying its latest version of Android doesn’t support the VR platform’s app. “Daydream VR app is no longer supported by Google and may not work properly on some devices running Android 11 or later,” it reads.In fact, the Daydream software is no longer supported at all, according to Google. It won’t receive updates, although users can potentially still access third-party VR apps through the Play Store. Google had already sidelined Daydream VR. It discontinued the Daydream View headset and dropped support on new Pixel phones in 2019. But it continued to support the... Continue reading…

Some Apple Card users have reported seeing mysterious charges on their credit card statements from “Waters Hardy & Co.,” a 10-person Dallas-based tax preparation and consulting firm. It’s a real company. But strangely, it seems those charges were actually mislabeled transactions from AT&T.The issue seems to have begun two days ago. “If you see a charge on your Apple credit card from ‘Waters, Hardy & Company CPA’ please know this was not us and we did not receive the funds,” reads a September 30th Facebook post from Waters Hardy & Co. “Please check your AT&T account as we were told by some it was in fact their bill with our name listed as the merchant.”

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The halloween cat collar (three pack, adjustable strap, ghost pendant and bell) has conspicuously rave reviews on Amazon. “Three for $10 is a steal!” reads one. “They seem to be made of quality material and the clasps don’t break away as easily as some other ones.”The review, like many on the e-commerce platform, is fake. It was written by Jason Wawiernia, a search engine optimization specialist in Michigan. After he left his glowing assessment of the product, Wawiernia received a refund through PayPal, in direct violation of Amazon’s policies governing ratings and reviews.Amazon banned incentivized reviews in 2016, but it’s still a rampant problem on the platform. On September 4th, a Financial Times investigation revealed nine of... Continue reading…

Your local bike shop won’t carry them. Amazon has too many of them. And the ones from the sharing services keep breaking down. Where are you supposed to go to find a decent electric bike or scooter?How about Ridepanda, the new online marketplace for battery-powered two-wheelers? The site, which just came out of stealth last week, aims to become a “one-stop shop” for electric micromobility. Each e-bike, e-scooter, and e-moped is hand-picked, tested, and rated based on its components. There are add-ons, like financing, warranties, and assembly assistance. And with bike and scooter sales booming amid the pandemic, Ridepanda’s timing may be extremely fortuitous.Ridepanda is the brainchild of two veterans of the scooter wars: Chinmay... Continue reading…

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images A 74-year-old man said he was one of 46,459 people to test positive for the coronavirus in the United States yesterday. This diagnosis was stunning and destabilizing — unlike the diagnoses of the other 46,458 people — because that man is the president of the United States. Just like every other person in the US, President Donald Trump was still at risk of catching the virus — and he repeatedly disregarded advice that could have reduced his risk.Trump had access to more resources than most other people in the country: he’s tested regularly for COVID-19, as are the people he regularly comes into contact with. Testing wasn’t enough to keep the virus out of that inner circle — not when he was disregarding other public health advice. The... Continue reading…

Image: JerryRigEverything Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 2 has survived having dirt dropped on it in a new durability test from YouTuber Zack Nelson (aka JerryRigEverything), backing up Samsung’s claims that its hinge is more durable on this year’s device. Nelson’s test involved dropping a handful of dust and dirt on Samsung’s new foldable, and he reported the phone continued to feel just as smooth to open and close. That indicated the worst of the dirt hadn’t made its way inside the mechanism.Durability was one of the key promises Samsung made when it announced the Z Fold 2 back in August. To illustrate its point, the company even used a clip from Nelson’s original Galaxy Fold durability test. He found that a handful of dirt dropped on the foldable would immediately... Continue reading…

One of the magical things about television is how, through the power of drama and/or comedy, it can take someone who would, in almost any other context, be the worst person you know, and make them fun to watch. That’s not to say that Emily Cooper (Lily Collins), the eponymous star of Emily In Paris, is a terrible person. She’s just someone you’d diplomatically describe in text messages as “a lot,” and in the new Netflix series, you get to see her inflicted on an entire nation.Emily In Paris is one of the most watchable new shows on Netflix this fall, ridiculous in the way the best romantic comedies are, even if it’s a bit short on the charm. It starts with a dream job: when Emily’s boss at Chicago marketing firm Savoir discovers she’s... Continue reading…

Another week, another fall hardware event. On Wednesday, through a 30-minute infomercial, Google officially announced its new product lineup: the Pixel 5, the Pixel 4a 5G, Chromecast with Google TV, and Nest Audio.On this week’s episode of The Vergecast, The Verge’s Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Dan Seifert, and Chris Welch go into detail on these products (which were leaked pretty heavily this year) and discuss how they stand among the competitors in affordability and quality.Also, in a not-so-coincidental state of events, Sonos has filed another patent lawsuit against Google, alleging the Nest and Chromecast line of products have infringed on five Sonos wireless audio patents. The Vergecast crew discusses the ongoing lawsuits and... Continue reading…

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge Apple’s iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 launched this week, introducing a ton of new features to the company’s smartphones and tablets — including the option to change your default browser and default email apps to services like Chrome or Outlook to handle links by default instead of Apple’s native Safari and Mail apps. Here’s a running list of available third-party browsers on iOS 14.As for email, the available options are slowly building up. Third-party developers need to update their apps before they can be selected as a default option on iOS 14.Due to the sensitive information in email communication, Apple has told developers that email apps “must meet specific functional criteria aimed at ensuring private and accurate access for users”... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter this week announced it would be changing how image cropping works on its website after concerns that the machine learning-based algorithm the company was using was racially biased in how it cropped images, in particular by favoring white faces over Black ones.In a post diving into the issue, Parag Agrawal, the company’s chief technology officer, and design chief Dantley Davis explained how the company tested the model for racial or gender bias before it implemented the system. But Twitter didn’t publish how it had done those tests at the time so that external analysis could be performed, in what the company calls “an oversight.”“What you see is what you get”To fix that, Twitter is “currently conducting additional analysis to... Continue reading…

The new default Apple Watch is here Continue reading…

Image: Tesla Tesla said Friday it was able to deliver 139,300 vehicles during the last quarter, smashing its previous record for deliveries, of 112,000 cars. It was also slightly better than Wall Street expectations of 137,000 vehicles for the quarter. The company said it produced a total of 145,036 vehicles over the same period.This was the third consecutive quarter of better-than-expected delivery numbers from Tesla. The company delivered 88,400 vehicles in Q1 of 2020, down from the fourth quarter of 2019, when Tesla shipped around 112,000 vehicles. And it sent out 90,650 vehicles in Q2, despite its Fremont, California, factory being partially shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. Tesla said it delivered 124,100 of its Models 3 and Y... Continue reading…