The Verge

NOAA’s GOES-East satellite provided a visible-light image of Tropical Storm Harvey on August 30th, 2017, at 7:30AM ET after it made landfall at 4AM CT just west of Cameron, Louisiana. | Photo by Universal History Archive / Universal Images Group via Getty Images Hurricanes are taking longer to weaken after making landfall because of climate change, according to a new study. As a result, stronger storms could wreak havoc on communities farther inland, the study finds. It’s the latest warning that hurricanes could cause even more devastation in a warming world.Hurricanes feed off heat energy from the sea. The more heat, the more energy — and the more intense hurricanes can become. There’s already evidence that the strongest hurricanes have become more common. But once a hurricane reaches land, it’s cut off from its source of energy and typically begins to rapidly lose strength. Now, thanks to the new study published today in the journal Nature, scientists are beginning to understand that global... Continue reading…

Image: HBO Early on in HBO’s Industry, there’s an extremely familiar scene: a boss addresses a room of young recruits and tells them that only half of them will make it and that they should do whatever they can to be one of the last ones standing. And so another group of promising young people sets their lives ablaze in the service of an exploitative industry, with the promise of money as the light at the end of the tunnel.Industry — created by Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, with a pilot directed by Lena Dunham — is set in London’s world of high-stakes investment banking, and it follows a diverse group of fresh graduates who are the latest hires for the fictional Pierpoint & Co. Cliché abounds, especially in the way the young new hires are hazed and... Continue reading…

The Segway Ninebot KickScooter Max, AKA the Segway Max | Segway Ninebot The Segway Max is probably a good fit for you if you’re looking for an electric scooter that can travel up to 40 miles per charge — far longer than most other models. The Max happens to be cheaper than ever at Wellbots, but just for readers of The Verge. The retailer is offering you a $100 discount, dropping the usual $799 price down to $699. Just enter the offer code THEVERGEMAX after the checkout screen to see the price drop further than we’ve seen before.We’ve highlighted more affordable Segway options in the past, but those are, frankly, small potatoes compared to this one. In addition to the Max’s longer 40-mile range (beating the likes of the Segway ES2’s 15.5-mile range and ES4’s 28-mile range), it tops out at 18.6mph, which is... Continue reading…

Apple has released the first of its new Macs with the company’s custom-designed M1 Arm processor. But you’d never know it by looking at the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or Mac mini, which all look virtually identical to their Intel-based predecessors.And that decision feels like a deliberate one. Apple made some big internal changes here, including a new logic board and a fully integrated system-on-a-chip (SoC) that replaces most of the discrete components within these new Macs. It would have been relatively easy to introduce more substantial external changes along with it.The new Macs are still, well, MacsThe fact that Apple didn’t make changes speaks to the way Apple wants you to perceive these computers. The hardware may be new,... Continue reading…

Bunny the dog lounges with her buttons. | Image: Alexis Devine TikTok’s most famous talking dog has inspired some serious research Continue reading…

Inside the final days of Quibi, the $2 billion streaming platform that didn’t even last six months Continue reading…

Image: Lilium One of Germany’s premier flying taxi startups just gained a foothold in the US. Lilium, the five-year-old venture-backed startup from Munich, announced that it will build a 56,000-square-foot transportation hub for its aerial taxi service in Orlando, Florida. The company aims to have passengers taking regional trips in its electric five-seater aircraft starting in 2025.Lilium says it will construct a $25 million “vertiport” in Lake Nona, a planned community of about 65,000 people within the Orlando city limits. It will work with the primary real estate developer in the area, Bahamas-based Tavistock Development Company, on the development and construction of the vertiport.Lilium says its project will be privately financed, though the... Continue reading…

Photo by Grzegorz Galazka / Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images Pope Francis has asked believers around the world to pray that robots and artificial intelligence “always serve mankind.”The message is one of the pope’s monthly prayer intentions — regular missives shared on YouTube that are intended to help Catholics “deepen their daily prayer” by focusing on particular topics or events. In August, the pope urged prayer for “the maritime world”; in April, the topic was “freedom for addiction.” Now, in November, it’s AI and robots.Although the message sounds similar to warnings issued by tech notables like Elon Musk (the Tesla CEO famously compared work on artificial intelligence to “summoning the demon”), the pope’s focus is more prosaic. He doesn’t seem to be worrying about the sort of exotic... Continue reading…

Photo by Jean-Christophe Guillaume/Getty Images Pfizer announced this week that their COVID-19 vaccine candidate has performed extremely well in their clinical trials, a reassuring sign that the months of investment and breakneck work on vaccines to protect people against the virus was going to pay off. That was never a sure thing — immunologists and virologists were pretty sure it’d be possible to make a vaccine that would block the coronavirus, but in pharmaceutical development, there’s no such thing as a guarantee.This success makes it as important as ever to double down on efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19, which is currently raging out of control in most of the US. Back in March, when the pandemic was first picking up speed, public health officials stressed the importance... Continue reading…

Data, data, data Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge It’s been a long wait, but today Roku is starting to roll out support for Apple’s AirPlay 2 and HomeKit features. Both will be available for the majority of the company’s 4K players, “including the Roku Ultra, Roku Streambar, Roku Smart Soundbar, Roku Streaming Stick Plus, and Roku Premiere.” 4K-ready Roku TVs will also be updated to support AirPlay 2 and HomeKit “in phases over the coming weeks” via the RokuOS 9.4 update.AirPlay 2 allows you to send content from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac for playback on the Roku device. HomeKit lets you control the Roku through Apple’s Home app or with Siri voice commands. With the addition of Apple AirPlay and HomeKit support, our streaming players are now the first to offer compatibility with all... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sonos has launched a new Upgrade Program which offers discounts of up to 30 percent on new speakers if you own select older models, Android Central reports. It replaces the company’s previous Trade Up deal, which offered similar discounts, but the new program expands these to owners of slightly newer speakers like the Play:1 and and Play:3. Alongside it, Sonos has also announced that its Sonos Arc soundbar now supports multi-channel LPCM audio.If you own one of the speakers listed below, Sonos will give you a discount of either 15 or 30 percent on the purchase of a new speaker. Importantly, old speakers do not have to be traded in, and can continue to be used, Sonos says. Eligible owners can sign into their Sonos account and select an... Continue reading…

Image recognition algorithms in Google Photos help you search for images. Google has updated its Google Photos app on Android with a new option that lets users tell the search giant about the contents of their pictures. By labeling these images, Google can improve its object recognition algorithms, which in turn make Photos more useful. It’s a virtuous cycle of AI development best deployed by tech giants like Google which have lots of data and lots of users.This isn’t an unusual practice at all. Machine learning systems don’t just learn by themselves, and the vast majority of these applications need to be taught using data labeled by humans. It’s the same reason that CAPTCHAs ask you to identify cars and motorbikes in images. By identifying these objects you’re training AI to do the same.The feature... Continue reading…

In comparison to the PlayStation 5 itself — a big hulking mass of a game console — the PS5-branded media remote is very conservative. It does pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a media remote and not much more, but at least it’ll match your new games machine.Setting up the remote is incredibly straightforward. It’s powered by a pair of AA batteries, and there’s an option in the PS5’s system menu to pair a remote; once you select it, you just have to hold down two buttons for a few seconds to complete the pairing. From there, you’re ready to go. One nice thing about the remote is its design, which plays off of the PS5 itself. The remote is mostly white, with a band of shiny black around the middle, sort of like an Uh-Oh! Oreo.... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Amazon’s smart home brand Ring has issued a recall for around 350,000 of its 2nd generation video doorbells sold in the US over fire and burn concerns. According to a notice published by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, Ring has received 23 reports of doorbells igniting and causing minor property damage, and eight reports of minor burns. Ring’s site says affected doorbells do not need to be returned, but that users should follow their updated instructions.Although Ring says there is no risk if the doorbell is installed correctly, the CPSC notes that the device can overheat if the wrong screws are used. Ring says that it received 85 incident reports of people using the incorrect screws which could damage the doorbell’s battery.... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge As is often the case with newly launched game consoles, the PlayStation 5 doesn’t support every feature you might have hoped for out of the box. In an interview with Japanese outlet AV Watch, Sony EVP Masayasu Ito and SVP Hideaki Nishino have addressed some of the functionality that won’t be there at launch.Unlike the Xbox Series X, Series S, and the One X before them, the PS5 won’t output natively to 1440p monitors, instead scaling up from 1080p. Nishino says this is because Sony wanted to focus on TV support at first, but notes that there’s no technical reason why it couldn’t be done and may be added if the company decides there’s enough demand.The PS5 won’t have a web browser, breaking from the tradition set by the PS3 and PS4.... Continue reading…

If you purchased a Peloton bike or treadmill to exercise with during the pandemic, you’ll soon have a new collection of classes to take from a familiar artist. This week, Peloton announced a multi-year partnership with cultural phenomenon Beyoncé — the artist will help curate classes for the fitness company’s subscription service, starting with a series of Homecoming-themed classes in honor of historically Black colleges and universities. Peloton says that Beyoncé is one of the most requested artists for its playlists.Based off the announcement, its unclear what Beyoncé’s “curation” entails, but if you’d like to see for yourself, Beyoncé-themed classes have already begun. There are meditations, outdoor runs, and bike rides scheduled for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok has filed a petition in a US Court of Appeals calling for a review of actions by the Trump administration’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). The reason, according to the company, is that it hasn’t heard from the committee in weeks about an imminent deadline for parent company ByteDance to sell off US assets over national security concerns.The CFIUS set the deadline of November 12th for TikTok to divest itself of “any tangible or intangible assets or property, wherever located, used to enable or support ByteDance’s operation of the TikTok application in the United States.” TikTok says it applied for a 30-day extension that was allowed for in the CFIUS’ order, but hasn’t received any communication on... Continue reading…

Two Apple developers have been given the green light to promote mask-wearing with their stickerpack apps for iOS, after previously receiving rejections from Apple that suggested they were making “inappropriate references to the COVID-19 pandemic.”Here’s how this story began:

Render: Apple It’s been a little bit weird that Apple would sell both a 13-inch MacBook Air and a 13-inch MacBook Pro simultaneously, but perhaps never more than today — because Apple’s new $999 and $1,299 laptops seem nearly identical if you look beyond the differently curved frames. They’ve got the same M1 processor, the same memory and storage options, the same ports, and very similar screens.I’m not joking when I say: the biggest difference is a fan.This fan, which is exclusive to the MacBook Pro: Render: Apple The 13-inch MacBook Pro’s fan. I mean, yes, it is a little bit hilarious the MacBook Air is now a laptop that doesn’t blow air, just like it’s amusing that the Air technically continues to be a thicker laptop... Continue reading…

Image: Mark Gurman Apple’s MacBook Air is one of a collection of the company’s computers to receive the newly announced M1 chip today. The beloved laptop appears almost identical from the outside, but if you open it up you’ll notice the familiar keyboard has changed. Apple’s traded out some of the function keys on its new MacBook Air, adding in new ones for Spotlight, Do Not Disturb, and Dictation.The last time the functionality of the MacBook Air keyboard changed was to add Touch ID for securing passwords and payment details. This change goes further, removing the brightness keys for the keyboard along with the Launchpad key that pulled up macOS’s SpringBoard-inspired app launcher.Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman first noticed the change and shared the new... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Xbox Live users are struggling to log into the service today, amid the launch of both the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S. Xbox Support tweeted at 2:33PM that its teams were “closing in on a fix for this issue.” However, some users were still struggling to sign in across multiple platforms as of 4:40PM. A resolution is still pending.Microsoft’s next-gen consoles arrive today (though it might be tricky to find a console, thanks to the challenges of high demand in a pandemic). In addition to launch titles like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the console also allows for backwards compatibility for Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One games playable on existing Xbox One hardware.Online services are already important for players to download new games,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Lyft continues to struggle to bring in money amid rising case numbers of COVID-19 in the US. The ride-hailing company lost $459.5 million over the last three months, with its adjusted net revenues down 48 percent year over year.Its ride-hailing is significantly smaller than it was last year. This quarter, Lyft reported having 12.5 million active riders, compared to 22.3 million in the third quarter of 2019 — a drop of 44 percent. It’s a deep hole, but Lyft is starting to claw its way out. The company’s ridership has been steadily growing over the course of the year: this quarter’s number is 44 percent improvement over Q2.Lyft is starting to claw its way outLyft brought in nearly $500 million in revenue this quarter, versus $956... Continue reading…

Photo by Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize A former Chan Zuckerberg Initiative employee is filing a racial discrimination complaint, claiming the philanthropic organization underpaid and under-promoted Black staff members.Raymond Holgado, who worked for CZI between 2018 and mid-2020, filed his claim yesterday with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. Holgado says that he was paid less than white colleagues with similar experience, denied promotions, and asked to juggle multiple jobs without recognition. He calls the issue part of a larger problem with race at CZI. “Black employees who want to advance within the organization are shut down and labeled as too assertive or aggressive, while non-Black employees are favored and encouraged,” Holgado writes. “When... Continue reading…

Image: Apple Apple announced three new Mac computers on Tuesday powered by its all-new M1 chip, a custom Arm-based system-on-a-chip. But despite the performance and efficiency gains the M1 chip allows, there is one notable constraint: memory. According to Apple, customers interested in buying a new Mac with more than 16GB of RAM will need to purchase an older, Intel-based model. Right now, the M1 cannot support more memory.That may be disappointing to some professional users interested in switching over to the Arm-based laptops or the new Mac mini, considering older Intel-based models can carry as much as 32GB of RAM. It echoes complaints against the MacBook Pro refresh of four years ago, too, when Apple said limitations on memory options were to... Continue reading…

Following the “One More Thing” hardware event, Apple has announced its new line of Arm-based Macs powered by Apple’s own processors, replacing Intel, which has been used in Mac laptops and desktops since 2005. Currently, the first three Apple computers to have Apple’s custom M1 chip are the MacBook Air, the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and the Mac mini.The new Arm-based Macs are available to order now, and Apple says the computers will ship starting November 17th. But if you are ready to preorder one of the new models now, we have compiled a list of retailers currently offering the new computers. Image: Apple MacBook Air with an M1 processor Where to buy the new MacBook AirCurrently, you can buy the new MacBook Air d... Continue reading…

Image: Apple Apple announced three brand-new Macs today powered by its new M1 Arm-based CPUs: a 13-inch MacBook Air, a 13-inch MacBook Pro, and a Mac mini. But now that the new Macs are here, Apple has started to remove some of its Intel-based Macs from its product lineup. Here’s what’s changed:

Apple just wrapped up its “One More Thing” hardware live stream, where it announced new versions of the MacBook Air, the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and the Mac mini, each with its newly announced, promising M1 silicon. Apple first detailed its transition from Intel to its own processors earlier this year — but this event was all about diving deep into what that reality now looks like and when you’ll be able to get your hands on a computer featuring the just-announced M1 chip.If you missed out on the stream, I highly recommend taking the purist route of rewatching it alongside our live blog coverage to get the moment-to-moment commentary on each announcement. Otherwise, if you just want the headlines and major details, that’s what I’m here... Continue reading…

Apple’s big Arm-based M1 Mac announcements brought the company’s first Apple silicon-powered laptops in the form of the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini. But the event also had a surprising guest star: actor John Hodgman reprising his role as the PC guy from Apple’s “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” commercials that it ran in the mid-2000s.In the short video, Hodgman’s put-upon PC reacts to the announcement of Apple’s new M1-powered Macs, complaining about the improved performance and battery life that the new chip purportedly offers on the updated Macs, compared to what PCs can do. (Absent is Justin Long’s Mac character, who made up the other half of the ad spots.)The original ads — launched in 2006, just after Apple began its last... Continue reading…

Google has added another promotion to help push its cloud gaming service Stadia into more households: now YouTube Premium subscribers can get its $100 Stadia Premiere Edition bundle for free.Google’s Stadia Premiere Edition features one Stadia controller in addition to a Chromecast Ultra. However, it is important to note that the Chromecast Ultra included is an older model and not the newer one that was recently released. Google has said that the new Chromecast Ultra will not support the cloud gaming service until the first half of 2021.With Stadia’s one-year anniversary coming up next week, the service has come a long way over the last yearUnfortunately, if you plan to subscribe to YouTube Premium now, you will not have the option to... Continue reading…

Image: Apple Apple says it’ll release macOS 11.0, dubbed Big Sur, on November 12th. The company first announced the new OS at its developer’s conference in June and released it as a public beta in August. This will be the first macOS to support Apple’s new M1 laptop chip. Once you download the new, free update, you’ll most likely immediately note the design and aesthetic changes, many taken from iOS.For one, Big Sur comes with a customizable Control Center where you can toggle brightness, Do Not Disturb, and other settings of your choice. It also includes a new notification center that’ll keep all of your notifications and widgets (also redesigned and available in the App Store) in one column, sort alerts by which are most recent, and group related... Continue reading…

Apple has announced its first MacBook Pro laptop that will run on an Apple-designed processor at its “One More Thing” event, ushering in a new era of Mac computers.It’s not just that Apple is making an Arm-based Mac; it’s that Apple is specifically making an Arm-based MacBook Pro, products it has emphasized as core parts of its lineup for both creative and technical professionals.The new MacBook Pro comes in a 13-inch size and starts at $1,299. It replaces the previous entry-level MacBook Pro model. (The high-end model, with four Thunderbolt ports, will still be sold as usual.) The new MacBook Pro will feature Apple’s new M1 processor, which the company says features the “world’s fastest CPU core,” the fastest integrated graphics,... Continue reading…

Satellite image of the Atlantic on November 10th, 2020. | Image: NOAA 2020 shattered another record when subtropical storm Theta, the 29th named storm this season, developed overnight in the Northeast Atlantic. There has never been an Atlantic hurricane season on record with more storms strong enough to earn a name.The World Meteorological Organization burned through its regular list of storm names nearly two months ago and had to resort to using Greek letters to label storms this year for only the second time in its history. This is the first time Theta has ever been used as a storm name.The last time the WMO resorted to Greek letters was in 2005, which held the previous record for the most named storms in a single season. That year will still be known for one of the most devastating storms in American... Continue reading…

Image: Apple Apple on Tuesday announced a new Mac mini, the first since 2018, featuring its new custom-designed Arm-based M1 chip, joining the new MacBook Air as the second Apple Silicon device announced at the company’s “One More Thing” event. The new desktop machine will start at $699, $100 cheaper than the previously released Mac mini from two years ago.Apple claims the new Mac mini is up to 60 percent more energy-efficient, thanks to the M1 chip. The company also claims the device has a “3x faster CPU” and “6x faster graphics,” with options for up to 16GB of RAM and up to 2TB of solid-state storage. Apple says the machine can support up to two external displays as well as a 6K display, with DisplayPort options including Thunderbolt and USB 4.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has announced some of the first apps and games coming to Arm-based Macs, and it includes more than a few familiar names: Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve, Cinema 4D, and more.Other titles teased during Apple’s event today, where it’s detailing the first computers to use its Apple Silicon chips, include Panic’s Nova, the code teaching app Hopscotch, the video app Mmhmm, the design app Shapr3D, the point-and-click game Beyond a Steel Sky, productivity apps from the Omni Group, the publishing tool Affinity Publisher, the genealogy app MacFamilyTree, a title from the Baldur’s Gate series, and more. Apple previously announced that Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are being updated for these new Macs, too.Apple... Continue reading…

Senate appropriators are proposing to allocate $1 billion to NASA next year for the construction of new lunar landers to take humans to the surface of the Moon — roughly $2.4 billion short of what the agency requested. The shortfall threatens to delay NASA’s ambitious plan of landing the first woman on the Moon by 2024.Today, the Senate Appropriations Committee released 12 funding bills for next year, laying out proposed budgets for the federal government. The newly released legislation would allocate a total of $23.5 billion to NASA, an increase over last year’s NASA budget but roughy $1.75 billion less than the $25.2 billion the administration had asked for.The Trump administration has been calling for increased funding to NASA over... Continue reading…

Apple has introduced the new M1 chip that will power its new generation of Arm-based Macs. It’s a 5nm processor, just like the A14 powering its latest iPhones.Apple says the new processor will focus on power efficiency, and . It has an eight-core CPU, which Apple says offers the world’s best performance per watt of an CPU. Apple says it delivers the same peak performance as a typical laptop CPU at a quarter of the power draw. It says this has four of the world’s fastest CPUs cores, paired with four high-efficiency cores.It pairs this with up to an eight-core GPU, which Apple claims offers the world’s fastest integrated graphics, and a 16-core Neural Engine. It has a USB 4 controller, media encode and decode engines, and secure... Continue reading…

Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Assassin’s Creed, Spider-Man, and snackable bugs Continue reading…

Apple silicon for Macs is finally here Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge One assumption that many of us had about the 2020 US presidential election is that, at some point, it would end. This may have been overly optimistic; after all, in many ways — and certainly in this column — the 2016 US presidential election never really ended. We spent four (productive!) years discussing the degree to which foreign interference, particularly on social platforms, had affected the outcome. I imagine we’ll continue discussing it for some time to come.But if the past election was litigated ad infinitum in columns, this one will be litigated first in courts. President Trump’s legal team has rolled out various challenges in the battleground states in which he is behind, and Republicans are backing those challenges with... Continue reading…

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge We expect Apple to announce its new Arm-based MacBooks today at its 1PM ET event, but the company’s latest Intel-based MacBook Pro with the improved keyboard is $150 off at B&H Photo. The 13.3-inch model with an 8th Gen quad-core Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage is $1,349, down from $1,499. Other retailers, including Amazon and Best Buy, currently sell it for full price, so if you’re looking for a MacBook Pro deal, head over to B&H Photo. If you’re like me and have recently tripled your time spent on a phone, getting a compact battery pack might save you from running all the way over to your wall outlet. Aukey’s 10,000mAh power bank with an 18W PD USB-C charging port is just $15 after you clip the... Continue reading…

Over a billion gallons of sewage pass through New York City’s wastewater treatment plants every day. Since the spring, the city has been one of the many places around the country to use that stream of excrement to track the spread of COVID-19.When people are infected with the coronavirus, some of the virus exits their bodies via their feces. It starts to show up reliably in their waste even before they start to display symptoms. Those virus-laden feces end up in wastewater, along with everything else we flush down the drain. Research shows that upticks in the levels of virus in sewage for a particular area come about a week before the number of people testing positive spikes.There are 14 wastewater treatment plants in New York City,... Continue reading…

Cruise is partnering with Walmart to test out a delivery service using a fleet of autonomous and electric vehicles. The pilot project will kick off in early 2021 and take place in Scottsdale, Arizona.Cruise has yet to settle on a final number of cars it will use as part of the delivery service. The company has maintained a small fleet of five vehicles in Phoenix since 2016.It’s the latest in a series of announcements centered on the use of autonomous vehicles in last-mile delivery scenarios, underscoring a core truth about the technology: it’s risky to put human passengers in robot vehicles, but it’s much less risky to put groceries and Walmart purchases in them.It’s the latest sign that Cruise, which is a majority owned subsidiary... Continue reading…

New combat, new city, and new characters... on new hardware Continue reading…

Leica Q2 Monochrom | Photo: Leica Leica is no stranger to releasing cameras that buck the norm, such as its M10-D which lacks an LCD screen entirely or the various generations of M Monochrom cameras that only capture black-and-white images. The company is now expanding that Monochrom line with the new Q2 Monochrom, available starting on November 10th for $5,995.The Q2 Monochrom is the company’s first autofocus Monochrom camera, with all of the previous models having been based on M-series rangefinders. As you can expect, it’s based on the standard Q2 and shares the same design, handling, viewfinder, autofocus system, processor, battery, software, and more. The fixed 28mm f/1.7 lens is unchanged, as is the IP52 weather resistance rating.The difference, of course, is... Continue reading…

Spotify Spotify’s making another big podcasting acquisition. This time, it’s buying podcast hosting company Megaphone for $235 million, according to a source close to the companies. The deal doesn’t affect Spotify’s own podcasts — it already hosted its shows on Megaphone — but it does mean more shows will have access to Spotify’s proprietary ad insertion technology, called Streaming Ad Insertion.SAI functions similarly to typical dynamic podcast ads, which are targeted based on a listener. But in Spotify’s case, the ads are inserted in real time as opposed to being swapped out ahead of a listen. This means Spotify’s system is making real-time decisions about which ads a specific listener should hear based on their data and also based on the... Continue reading…

Photo by Nathan Congleton / NBC / NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images As Lil Nas X moves through the setlist of his next concert, the world will change around him. It’ll transform from an Old West set, complete with wooden saloons and spinning dust devils as he sings “Old Town Road,” into a darker, almost vampiric stage for “Rodeo.” Later, it will morph again into a futuristic city as he plays “Panini.” This sort of larger-than-life, impossibly elaborate staging is one of the advantages of performing inside of Roblox — the hit kids game — where Lil Nas X will become the first major artist to use the platform for a fully virtual concert this week.“I didn’t want to do a normal live stream because that’s what everyone else is doing right now, and I really wanted to create something special that people... Continue reading…

Image: Funko Funko has announced its latest figurine based on The Mandalorian, commemorating our protagonist’s latest seemingly simple job. If you haven’t watched the second episode of the show’s second season, then it looks like an innocent-enough model. Everyone’s favorite Baby Yoda* is excited at the prospect of helping a frog-like alien transport her eggs across the galaxy for fertilization. Cute, right?

A VanMoof bike that used to be faster. | Image: VanMoof VanMoof is the latest e-bike maker that will remove software that allows its e-bikes to offer pedal-assisted power beyond the EU limit of 25 km/h. The option that cheats European speed limits will be removed on November 17th with an update to the VanMoof app that will be applied globally.All of VanMoof’s new S3 and X3 e-bikes, regardless of country, are fitted with the same custom-built motor capable of 250W or 350W of continuous power and a 500W peak. A default region setting in the VanMoof app allows owners outside the US to select the faster and more powerful US limits even when located in Europe. In the US, e-bikes are generally capped at 32 km/h (20 mph).“Over the past months we’ve had a number of cases in Germany of our riders... Continue reading…

Photo illustration by William Joel / The Verge Decoder with Nilay Patel, Episode One Continue reading…