The Verge

Illustration by Claudia Chinyere Akole In a minute’s time, you can see a beekeeper remove tens of thousands of bees from a compost bin with her bare hands. Watch a man cut open a tree with a chainsaw, water spewing out of it like a gaping wound. Or see a bare patch of desert transformed into a luxury oasis dotted with waterfalls and palm trees in the snap of a finger.These normally humdrum tasks have become fodder for viral videos on TikTok, where clips of seemingly dull jobs like landscaping, car detailing, and power washing regularly rack up millions of views. The app has turned sometimes-hidden jobs or dirty behind-the-scenes necessities into soothing, thrilling, or otherwise intriguing videos.It’s also presented an opportunity for enthusiastic business owners, letting... Continue reading…

Illustration by Claudia Chinyere Akole By the end of March, every single one of Kat Ferguson’s clients had canceled or postponed their wedding. Her company, Little Creek Events, had 20 receptions scheduled for the spring and early summer of 2020. After the pandemic hit, it had none.“I went into my own time of reflection,” she says. “I got very quiet on Instagram. I didn’t feel like there was anything that I could post that was relevant or kind. I couldn’t post about weddings when people were canceling their weddings.”Ferguson’s company is based in Ojai, California, an artsy enclave at the base of the Topatopa Mountains near Santa Barbara. Prior to the pandemic, couples from all over the world flew there to host their events. Weddings ranged from 120 to 180 people, and a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook estimates it has helped 2.5 million people register to vote this year across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, the company said. With more than a month until the 2020 election, that’s already higher than the two million people it helped register in both 2016 and 2018. The company has set a goal to help four million people register to vote this year, though, so it still has a ways to go.As part of its efforts to reach that goal, the company launched a “voting information center” that has resources about voting on Facebook and Instagram in August. And this weekend, the company started showing users information about how to register to vote at the top of Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. Facebook says it will continue showing... Continue reading…

Image: Disney Plus Last night’s Emmys saw the arrival of the debut trailer for WandaVision, which could be the first major Marvel TV series to arrive on Disney Plus. If the trailer is anything to go by, it’s Marvel’s most surreal show yet. It opens with a black-and-white recreation of a 1950s sitcom featuring Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany), before gradually becoming a lot more colorful and bombastic.WandaVision is a TV series taking place within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, set after the events of 2019’s Avenger’s: Endgame. Paul Bettany’s Vision technically died during the events of Avenger’s: Infinity War at the hands of Thanos (and his death is even referenced in the trailer), and it’s unclear what exactly has brought him... Continue reading…

I was on a bit of a Star Wars kick the past week, watching The Empire Strikes Back, Rogue One, and The Last Jedi, inspired partly by the great news of a new trailer for The Mandalorian’s second season. Tonight, though, I’m planning to stream RBG, the 2018 documentary about the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died Friday.Here’s the original trailer:RBGGinsburg had an absolutely astonishing career and life, and this documentary, along with the 2018 drama On the Basis of Sex, are both great reminders. RBG is streaming on Hulu.The Mandalorian, Season TwoThen of course, we have the first trailer for the second season of the wildly popular Disney Plus show The Mandalorian. The Child is back (aka “Baby Yoda”). Or, he will be... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter it was looking into why the neural network it uses to generate photo previews apparently chooses to show white people’s faces more frequently than Black faces.Several Twitter users demonstrated the issue over the weekend, posting examples of posts that had a Black person’s face and a white person’s face. Twitter’s preview showed the white faces more often.

Supreme Court 1 (Verge Stock) ActBlue, the FEC-certified Democratic fundraising site, says its fundraising following the Friday death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has topped $100 million. The tally broke ActBlue’s previous records for single-day donations, dollars raised in one hour, and dollars raised in one day, the organization said.Ginsburg died of cancer Friday at age 87.“Amid the devastating loss of Justice Ginsburg, it is inspiring to see people taking action to honor her legacy,” ActBlue executive director Erin Hill said in a statement. The surge of small-dollar donations began shortly after Ginsburg’s death was announced Friday evening. Donors gave 1.5 million contributions for a total of $91.4 million between 8PM ET Friday and end-of-day... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Friday, it looked like the US was ready to ban new downloads of TikTok and WeChat, two popular China-based apps that the Trump administration warned posed security threats to American users. The Commerce Department issued an order that would have prohibited new downloads as of Sunday. And on Saturday WeChat in particular saw a sharp uptick in new installs in the US, according to analytics platform Sensor Tower, with an 800 percent week-over-week increase.But as of Sunday afternoon, each has received a reprieve from a US ban, at least temporarily. President Trump said Saturday he had given a deal between TikTok, Oracle, and Walmart his “blessing,” prompting a one-week delay from the Commerce Department on TikTok’s ban. And a judge in... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A judge in California has blocked the Commerce Department’s ban on new downloads of China-based messaging app WeChat, Reuters reported Sunday. US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler said in her order that WeChat users showed “serious questions going to the merits of the First Amendment claim, the balance of hardships tips in the plaintiffs’ favor.”On Friday, the Commerce Department outlined how the bans on WeChat and TikTok that President Trump had been threatening for months would work: Beginning today at midnight, US users would not be able to download the apps from Apple and Google’s app stores. A tentative agreement appeared to be reached Saturday for a new TikTok entity, TikTok Global, part of a partnership with Oracle and Walmart, so... Continue reading…

I’m not sure about you, but one of the things that has been keeping many of us sane during these weird, not-so-wonderful times, is coffee and tea. Besides the caffeine energy lift (for those of us who take it with caffeine), the imbibing of hot liquids can be relaxing, while iced coffee or tea can be very refreshing.With that in mind, we’ve asked the staff of The Verge to tell us about their favorite coffee and tea brewers, grinders, and other paraphernalia. If you’re also an enthusiast, we hope you’ll enjoy looking over some of the gadgets that we enjoying using for our daily infusions. If you’re not, maybe this will give you some ideas of things to try. Photo: Bialetti Bialetti Express Moka Pot Bialetti... Continue reading…

Photo by Ethan Miller / Getty Images President Trump says he has approved “in concept” Oracle’s bid for TikTok, less than a day before a de facto ban he threatened in August was set to go into effect.“I have given the deal my blessing,” Trump said to reporters outside the White House Saturday as he departed for a rally in North Carolina. “I approved the deal in concept.”On Friday, the Commerce Department issued an order to block transactions with both TikTok parent company ByteDance and WeChat, effective September 20th. The order is set to go into effect on November 12th for TikTok, effectively halting the app’s operations.The details of the deal are still in flux, but the new company, called TikTok Global, would be based in the US and take over processing and storage... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok and parent company ByteDance filed a lawsuit late Friday against the Trump administration to try to fend off a ban on new downloads of the app set to take effect Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported.TikTok says in the lawsuit that the Trump administration’s decision to ban new downloads of the app, announced Friday, violates free speech protections. The administration, which includes the Commerce Department, “took this extraordinary action of prohibiting a popular communication and information-sharing platform without affording its owners … due process of law, and for political reasons rather than because of any ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’ to the United States,” according to the suit.It’s not the first time TikTok... Continue reading…

Twenty-four winners of the Turing Award are endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden in the upcoming presidential election, The New York Times reported, explaining they’re concerned the Trump administration’s immigration policies could be detrimental to both computer research and the technology industry over the long term.“The most brilliant people in the world want to come here and be grad students, but now they are being discouraged from coming here, and many are going elsewhere,” David Patterson, a Google distinguished engineer and former professor at the University of California, Berkeley told the Times.Among the names on the endorsement are Vint Cerf, who co-designed TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the internet; Martin... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Messaging app WeChat had its biggest one-day download numbers in nearly two years on Friday, ahead of a ban on new downloads from the US Commerce Department expected to take effect tomorrow. Preliminary data from analytics platform Sensor Tower showed Chinese-based WeChat had 10,000 installs in the US Friday, a 150 percent increase from Thursday and a 233 percent week-over-week increase. That’s the largest number of WeChat installs in the US in one day since October 7th, 2019.Video platform TikTok, also facing a US ban, saw its downloads increase Friday as well, adding 247,000 new installs for a 12 percent increase from Thursday, according to Sensor Tower.TikTok’s parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, has been in talks with US... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sony has apologized for PS5 preorders being a bit of a mess. “Let’s be honest: PS5 preorders could have been a lot smoother,” says Sony from the official PlayStation Twitter account. “We truly apologize for that.” Preorders for the new PS5 console began on Wednesday, a day earlier than Sony had said retailers would take orders. It led to a scramble as Walmart and others started randomly opening up their PS5 preorder slots. Some preorders even disappeared after around a minute.Sony now says it will release more PS5 consoles for preorder “over the next few days,” promising that retailers will share more details. It’s not clear if these preorders will be delivered on launch day, and Sony is also promising “more PS5s will be available... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In the ongoing Epic Games vs. Apple saga, Epic says in a new legal filing that Apple made incorrect statements in its own legal filing earlier this week, asserting that Apple “cherry picked” Google search results about the popularity of Epic’s Fortnite game.Apple had suggested that Epic started the legal fight over Fortnite in the App Store as a publicity stunt, and that Fortnite had already started to decline in popularity:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A judge in Nevada has dismissed a defamation case by a former Tesla employee, who claimed the company spread a false rumor about him after he admitted leaking internal company information to a reporter in 2018.Tesla argues in court documents that former employee Martin Tripp violated trade secrets and computer crimes laws when he told a Business Insider reporter that Tesla was wasting a significant amount of raw materials during production of its Model 3.Tesla identified Tripp as the source of the leaked information, which Tripp later confirmed. He was fired, and Tesla filed a lawsuit claiming he had “unlawfully hacked the company’s confidential and trade secret information.” Tesla CEO Elon Musk emailed Tesla staff telling them an... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro This week, I got to talk about vaccines and vaccine information with Natalie Dean, and The Verge’s Nicole Wetsman and Nilay Patel on The Vergecast. It was a great conversation with Dean, who is an assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida and an expert in infectious disease epidemiology who has worked on designing vaccine trials.After the podcast, I got to ask something that had been on my mind: how did she — a person who works with scientific data every day — feel about the flood of early versions of scientific studies being posted online? And how much attention should the general public be paying to them?Before we get to her answer, let’s take a quick step back to talk about what these early studies are.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Six people have been indicted by a grand jury in Washington state on charges they bribed Amazon employees to manipulate third-party seller listings on the e-commerce site, including listings for defective or dangerous products, authorities said.Starting in 2017, the people, including two former Amazon employees, paid more than $100,000 to have listings of products and accounts that Amazon had blocked or suspended from its Marketplace, which allows third-party sellers to promote and sell their products, the Department of Justice said. The former employees also provided internal Amazon information that allowed attacks on other third-party sellers and their accounts, including flooding the sellers’ product listings with fake negative... Continue reading…

Sony’s upcoming PS5 hardware has appeared at Taiwan’s National Communications Commission (NCC), providing us with the first close up photos of the next-gen console. The NCC has published a variety of images (PDF), showing the standard PS5 laying horizontally, the included cables, and the removable base that holds the console in both vertical and horizontal positions.The photos also show just how big the PS5 truly is. We learned earlier this week that the PS5 is the biggest game console in modern history, even topping the Xbox One VCR-like shape and Sony’s own PS3. Sony released official dimensions during its PS5 event this week, but they don’t include the “largest projection” or the optional base measurements. T... Continue reading…

Image: Apple Apple will launch its online store in India on September 23rd, giving customers in India a way to buy Apple products directly from the company for the first time.“We’re proud to be expanding in India and want to do all we can to support our customers and their communities,” said Apple’s senior vice president of retail and people Deirdre O’Brien said in a statement. “We know our users are relying on technology to stay connected, engage in learning, and tap into their creativity, and by bringing the Apple Store online to India, we are offering our customers the very best of Apple at this important time.”

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Comcast and Roku have come to an agreement months after NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service launched. Peacock will be available to stream on Roku in the coming weeks.“We are pleased to have reached an agreement with Comcast that will bring Peacock to Roku customers and maintains access to NBCU’s TV Everywhere apps,” a Roku spokesperson said. “We look forward to offering these new options to consumers under an expanded, mutually beneficial relationship between our companies that includes adding NBC content to The Roku Channel and a meaningful partnership around advertising.”The decision comes after Comcast and Roku got into a public argument over the status of dozens of NBCUniversal apps. Comcast threatened to pull the apps as... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge One of iOS 14’s big new features is picture-in-picture mode, which lets you watch a video in a small window while you’re doing other things on your iPhone. That could be handy if you, say, wanted to watch a YouTube video in Safari while chatting with your friends or checking email. But unfortunately, it seems YouTube has done something to stop videos from continuing to play when PIP mode is activated — unless you pay for YouTube Premium, that is.See for yourself. Pull up a video on YouTube’s website in Safari on your iPhone and take it full screen. If you tap to pull up playback controls, you should see a picture-in-picture icon in the top-left corner of your screen. Tap that, and the video briefly goes into its own window before... Continue reading…

Procreate’s next big update, Procreate 5X, adds new filters and adjustments that’ll be really helpful for those who are trying to do more in Procreate and less in Photoshop. The update will be available starting September 21st.The new filters include halftone, gradient map, chromatic aberration, glitch effects, and more. The iPad illustration app has also added a reference companion window, allowing you to view your whole canvas or another image on the side while you work. While overall this feels less flashy than the Procreate 5 update (which added Animation Assist, a tool that adds a timeline to the app for looping GIFs and animated videos), it includes some great features that help to close the gap with Adobe’s more powerful desktop... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok’s interim CEO, Vanessa Pappas, is asking Facebook and Instagram to “publicly join our challenge and support our litigation,” as TikTok faces a new executive order from the Trump administration that will block people from downloading the app beginning September 20th.The new order was issued by the Department of Commerce on Friday morning, and it essentially states that people aren’t allowed to download TikTok or WeChat beginning on the 20th. TikTok will continue to work in the United States for people who already have the app installed, but future downloads are prohibited.Pappas’ call to action came in the form of a reply to a tweet by Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, who said that a “US TikTok ban would be quite bad for... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The Trump administration is apparently investigating the data collection policies of American companies linked to Tencent, following sanctions on Tencent app WeChat earlier this year. Bloomberg reports that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has sent letters to League of Legends studio Riot and Fortnite maker Epic Games, asking about “their security protocols in handling Americans’ personal data.”Tencent owns Riot and has a minority stake in Epic, as well as many other companies, some of whom Bloomberg says also received letters. The report doesn’t elaborate on the specific questions being asked, but it tallies with an overall concern that Chinese government agencies could get access to private data... Continue reading…

Satellite imagery of the Atlantic Oceean | Image: NOAA The record-shattering 2020 Atlantic hurricane season just ran out of storm names. A storm that developed in the eastern Atlantic on September 18th was just named Wilfred, the last name on the World Meteorological Organization’s list. With plenty of hurricane season left, any other storms that form this year will be given letters of the Greek alphabet.The Greek alphabet has only been used once beforeThe Greek alphabet has only been used once before, during the catastrophic 2005 hurricane season when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. That year, Wilma was named on October 17th, a full month later than we’re reaching “W” this year.

Photo by Adriel Reboh / Patrick McMullan via Getty Images Before April 2020, Tanya Zuckerbrot seemed to have it all. A wealthy Instagram influencer, she had a $22 million duplex on Park Avenue, a handsome-ish husband who worked in real estate, and three seemingly healthy kids. She was also a registered dietitian and the owner of a weight-loss empire called “The F-Factor Diet” (the “F” stands for fiber).That empire came under fire when another Instagram influencer, Emily Gellis Lande, started posting screenshots from anonymous users who said they’d had bad experiences on the diet. The high-fiber, lean protein program boasts the tagline “eat carbs, dine out, drink alcohol, work out less.” It seems to involve a lot of protein powders and bars. Former clients claim the products gave them hives... Continue reading…

Apple Apple has launched three new products today, following their announcement just a few days ago at the company’s “Time Flies” event. You can now order the $329 eighth-generation iPad, the $399 Apple Watch Series 6, and the $279 Apple Watch SE from its online store. The redesigned iPad Air with USB-C charging won’t arrive until October.Speaking of October, Apple’s site says if you place an order today, you can expect them to be delivered during the first or second week of next month. That’s kind of a long wait, especially if you’re excited to upgrade. So I’d recommend buying them in person if you feel safe doing so (and if your local Apple Store is actually open). Apple has a site where you can check if your local store is open, and if so,... Continue reading…

A Tesla Model S owner in Alberta, Canada, was charged with dangerous driving after being pulled over for sleeping while traveling at speeds of 150 km/h (93 mph). The case raises questions about Tesla’s partially automated driving system, Autopilot, and driver complacency.On July 9th, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said they received a complaint of reckless driving on Highway 2 near Ponoka in Alberta. The 2019 Tesla Model S “appeared to be self-driving,” police said, “traveling over 140 km/h, with both front seats completely reclined and both occupants appearing to be asleep.”Officers began to pursue the vehicle with their emergency lights flashing, at which point the vehicle “automatically began to accelerate,” eventually reaching... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge If you’re in the market for a great set of wireless, over-ear headphones that have sublime noise cancellation and sound quality, Sony’s WH-1000XM3 are $95 off at Woot, down to $255. Woot is selling the black model, which has bronze detailing in a few spots. It’s brand-new and has a one-year warranty. This isn’t the lowest price we’ve seen for this model; they dropped to $200 after its successor, the WH-1000X4, released earlier this year. And with Prime Day 2020 and Black Friday inching closer, it’s likely that we’ll see them go for even less. Still, this model is so good that we’ll tell you whenever it’s cheaper than usual. Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge The Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 and S7 Plus tablets are available... Continue reading…

Photo by Alex Wong / Getty Images Update: This piece was originally published on August 11th and has been updated to reflect the official commerce order banning transactions with ByteDance.On September 18th, the Department of Commerce issued its first implementation of President Trump’s TikTok ban, set to take effect on September 20th. The order calls for a complete halt of all US transactions with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, blocking new downloads but leaving existing versions of the app in place. It’s a severe response to national security concerns that are still abstract, and a more involved ban is still scheduled for November. Many observers have sidestepped the alarming implications of the order, treating it as a tactical threat to speed along ongoing... Continue reading…

Epic Games says Fortnite: Save the World will no longer be playable on macOS beginning on September 23rd because Apple is preventing the game from receiving new updates. The co-op action shooter was initially released as a paid early access title in 2017. Epic’s far more popular free-to-play battle royale will still be playable on Mac, the company says.Epic says Apple is blocking new updates and patches for the macOS version of Save the World, and an upcoming update going out to other platforms will cause bugs and “a very poor experience” for players stuck on the current version. In late August, Apple terminated Epic’s developer account, meaning users cannot download or reinstall games developed by Epic, including Fortnite, and Epic can... Continue reading…

Chris Welch/The Verge Roku is slamming Comcast’s decision to pull NBC’s TV Everywhere channels from the streaming service as negotiations over distribution for NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service continue.Those channels allow Comcast customers to use Roku as a platform for streaming NBC’s various shows and other programming under its NBCUniversal umbrella. That includes content from channels like Bravo, E!, Syfy, USA, and NBC itself. It’s unclear what channels are going to be pulled from the service at this time, as Comcast has control over what gets pulled and what doesn’t. The Verge has learned that 11 network apps, 12 NBC-owned stationed apps, and 23 Telemundo apps will be removed from Roku, but no other specifics were given.Roku executives... Continue reading…

Samsung’s latest tablets are saddled by familiar problems Continue reading…

Photo by Alix Diaconis / The Verge LG’s Wing might be the most wild-looking smartphone in 2020 — which is saying something, given the wide array of phones released this year. But despite that unique design, after spending some time with the actual hardware and software, I suspect that LG might actually be onto something with its approach to the Wing.The device seen here isn’t finalized hardware or software — expect a full review from The Verge later on — and LG hasn’t given a price or release date, which are big question marks for any device. But for what is definitely a first-generation device, I’m really impressed by the level of polish that LG has achieved with the Wing. It’s surprisingly thin for a device that has a second screen — several family... Continue reading…

Asus partnered with Acronym to create this colorful and delightfully weird laptop. You all just need to look at this.This here is the weirdest and coolest 14-inch gaming laptop I’ve ever used. It’s called the ROG Zephyrus G14 ACRNM. If you’re wondering why it looks like that, Asus partnered with a clothing designer called Acronym, which primarily makes stuff like this $2,000 trench coat. So, yeah.The weirdest and coolest 14-inch gaming laptopIf you’ve been paying any attention to the laptop market in the past year, you probably know what the Zephyrus G14 is. It’s a monster of a gaming rig, and it can run just about any game on any settings you want. The battery life is excellent, the touchpad and keyboard are exceptional, it only weighs 3.5 pounds — almost everything about it rules. If you haven’t read my review of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US Commerce Department has issued a new order to block people in the US from downloading the popular video-sharing app TikTok as of September 20th, Reuters first reported Friday.The full order was published by the Department of Commerce on Friday morning. “Any transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, with ByteDance Ltd,” the order reads, “shall be prohibited to the extent permitted under applicable law.” It is set to take effect on September 20th.Over the last few weeks, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, has been engaged in talks with US companies like Microsoft and Oracle to create a new company, TikTok Global, that would meet the Trump... Continue reading…

There are a couple of questions I ask myself before I spend money on a game. How long is it? Can my PC run it? And if there’s a dog in it, can I pet it? In the case of Humble Bundle’s latest collection of games the answer to the last question is a resounding “Yes!” The store has partnered with the Twitter account “Can You Pet the Dog?” for its latest bundle, which includes a total of eight games which are guaranteed to include a least one virtual dog, ripe for the petting.By now you almost certainly know what the deal is with Humble Bundles, but the standard pay-what-you-want rules apply. You can pay a minimum price of $1 to unlock four of the bundle’s games (Scribblenauts Unlimited, Beyond Eyes, Dog Sled Saga, and Bulb Boy), pay more... Continue reading…

The only 10x periscope telephoto lens around Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple has changed the rules.One month after suggesting its iOS App Store guidelines would bar cloud gaming services like Google Stadia and Microsoft xCloud from appearing on an iPhone or iPad, the company has now overhauled those rules, telling journalists last Friday that Google and Microsoft’s streaming games are actually welcome after all.But if you know how cloud game services operate, and then look at Apple’s actual written rules, you’ll see that’s only technically true. If I understand correctly, the reality is one of two things:Either 1) Apple is asking Microsoft, Google and others to turn their streaming game services into an entirely new category of standalone app which guarantees Apple a profit — a kind of app that’s rarely... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge This week was the deadline for ByteDance to divorce itself of TikTok over security concerns, but at press time no deal has been struck. Instead, we have the strangest of corporate entities now taking shape. And, thanks to journalists at the New York Times, we have perhaps the most delicious morsel of reporting to ever emerge from TikTok deal talks.Let’s take a look at the latest.The first thing to say is that we may see action from President Trump within days — and that, if he approves the deal, we could soon see a TikTok IPO. Here are Alex Sherman and Lauren Feiner at CNBC:

iOS 14 lets you change your default browser in Settings. | Photo by Jon Porter / The Verge With iOS 14, Apple finally lets you choose which browser you want to use as your default, letting you switch away from Safari if you’d rather use a third-party alternative like Chrome or Edge. Apple is also letting iPhone users change their default email app in the updated OS.To be a candidate for the default browser, developers have had to update their apps. All browsers are still required to use WebKit as their underlying browsing engine, meaning that the main differences between them will come down to their user interfaces and how they sync with other platforms, rather than how they fundamentally render web pages. At the moment there’s only a limited selection of browsers that can be set as the default on iPhone.Here’s a list of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is correcting a “typo” in its Play Store “stalkerware” policy that currently suggests that apps can be used to track spouses. Stalkerware and other tracking software is dangerous, campaigners say, because it can facilitate domestic abuse and harassment of partners. As it’s written, the policy also mistakenly says parents cannot track their children.The updated developer policy, which comes into effect on October 1st, now explicitly says that Play Store apps which allow parents to track their children are acceptable, but that they cannot be used to track adults (like a spouse) without their knowledge or permission.Here’s the relevant section from the current developer policy which is due to be corrected (emphasis added):

Earlier this year, Nvidia released RTX Voice, a beta software to process audio and suppress almost all background noise, and it worked amazingly well. My colleague Jon Porter made the sound of his clacking mechanical keyboard completely disappear. Today, Nvidia has released a successor app called Broadcast, and it’s available to download now.Nvidia Broadcast is a follow-up to the RTX Voice beta and introduces two new AI-powered features: Virtual Background and Auto Frame. Nvidia says that the noise removal feature also now has a reduced performance cost and supports triple the number of noise profiles.Nvidia Broadcast is a follow-up to the RTX Voice betaThe new Virtual Background allows you to remove the background of your webcam... Continue reading…

Image: Walmart The PS5 pre-order situation has so far been a bit of a mess, and Walmart’s fresh batch of consoles at 6PM PT / 9PM ET on Thursday night did nothing to change that. They were gone in about a minute.I was able to get a Digital Edition in my cart, but I didn’t pull the trigger because I already secured a preorder yesterday. My editor said the Digital Editions were showing as out of stock for him about 10 seconds later, though, so who knows if I would have actually been able to make the purchase. And shortly after, a few of us at The Verge were seeing that preorders were no longer available.And we weren’t the only ones:

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple bought music recognition app Shazam in 2018, and now it’s integrating it into iOS in another big way — a new Music Recognition feature can identify songs playing around you as well as in apps on your phone. And it even works when you’re listening to music on your headphones.The new feature is available as a toggle in Control Center, but it does require a developer beta of iOS 14.2 if you want to try it right now. That toggle will look like a little Shazam icon, and you just need to tap it for your iPhone to start listening. Image: Apple You could already use Siri to summon Shazam and identify songs playing around you, but being able to identify music in your apps could be handy too — if, say, you’re wondering... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon has removed dozens of listings for peptides, drugs that can be used for doping, after an investigation from The Markup found 66 examples of such products on the site. Peptides are made naturally in the body, but synthetic versions, which can be sold in vials and then reconstituted and injected, are often used as performance-enhancing drugs since they can speed recovery from injuries.According to The Markup, in recent weeks Amazon had been carrying listings for peptides not on the US Food and Drug Administration’s list of approved drugs, months after telling the publication in May that it would start cracking down, and several of those drugs have been classified by the World Anti-Doping Agency as doping drugs. The drugs were... Continue reading…

Image: Lego If you ever purchased a Lego set, you’ll know the box comes with an uncomfortable amount of plastic bags to separate each set of pieces included. Personally, I felt it was way too much plastic for just one product, and it’s nice to now see Lego has finally come to its senses: the company plans to ditch the single-use packaging starting next year, Lego announced on its website earlier this week.Going forward, Lego plans to package its tiny bricks in recycled paper bags. The company says they are looking to make “all packaging sustainable by 2025.” Lego CEO Niels Christiansen said the company received “many letters” from kids asking the toymaker to stop using plastic bags in their packaging.Alongside its plans to use sustainable... Continue reading…

Image: Sony As part of its PlayStation 5 launch event yesterday, Sony said Final Fantasy XVI and Demon’s Souls weren’t just strictly PS5 exclusives — trailers for both games revealed they would also be coming to PC. At the time, that meant the biggest game announced during Sony’s showcase as well as one of the PS5’s most notable launch titles wouldn’t require a PS5 to play them. If you added the fact that both Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Horizon Forbidden West will also be coming to PS4, you might well have decided to wait on picking up a PS5 at launch.But shortly after the event, Sony and Square Enix went into damage control, saying that Final Fantasy XVI and Demon’s Souls actually aren’t coming to PC after all.An intriguing coincidenceIt’s... Continue reading…