The Verge

Image: iFixit I don’t think anyone expected an impressively thin gadget with two displays to be more repairable than single-screen smartphones, and iFixit’s teardown of Microsoft’s new Surface Duo confirms this is the case. The takeaway is that while the displays and rear glass can be swapped without too much stress, replacing anything else will be a tedious, risky process.As part of the teardown process, iFixit got this very cool X-ray shot of the Surface Duo. The innards of the left half look close enough to an iPad or any modern tablet, but iFixit says the right side “looks like nothing we remember seeing before — it’s almost a solid wall of circuit board, with a little window in the middle for the second battery.” There’s that engineering... Continue reading…

Apple issued new App Store rules earlier today, permitting game streaming services like xCloud or Stadia to exist on iOS or iPadOS with a big catch. Apple wants companies like Microsoft to individually submit their games as separate apps using its streaming tech. Microsoft and Google are free to create a “catalog”-style app that collects and links out to all of these individual apps as well.Microsoft isn’t impressed.“This remains a bad experience for customers,” says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. “Gamers want to jump directly into a game from their curated catalog within one app just like they do with movies or songs, and not be forced to download over 100 apps to play individual games from the cloud. We’re... Continue reading…

Groups of conservative provocateurs, QAnon supporters, and others on social media have jumped on the release of the French coming-of-age film Cuties and a trending “Cancel Netflix” hashtag to associate the company with pedophilia.This isn’t the first time that people have tried to cancel Netflix. Republicans tried it in 2018 following Netflix’s confirmation that it had signed a multiyear deal with Barack and Michelle Obama to produce a series of titles. Earlier this year, people threatened to cancel Netflix over 365 Days, a movie that petitioners argued glorified sexual violence against women. And, at the same time that people are calling for others to cancel Netflix over Cuties, there’s a petition from fans of shows like Jessica Jones,... Continue reading…

Photo by Jake Kastrenakes / The Verge Google appears to have a new Nest Thermostat in the works, according to new FCC documentation. It could be equipped with Google’s Project Soli radar motion controls, in what would be a first for the company’s home products, as spotted by Droid Life.There’s very little to go by in the current crop of documents, but the new Nest Thermostat (model G4CVZ) does have an interesting addition: not only will it offer 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0, it’ll be equipped with a 60GHz radar transmitter, similar to the one already used by the Pixel 4 for its Motion Sense gesture controls.That’s particularly interesting, given that those Motion Sense features would actually make a lot of sense on a wall-mounted home thermostat. The ability for the... Continue reading…

Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call A group of Democratic senators is calling on the telecom industry to lift their limits and fees associated with heightened broadband use for students in light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.In a letter addressed to the CEOs of telecom companies including AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and T-Mobile Friday, senators like Mark Warner (D-VA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR) requested that the telecoms temporarily suspend data caps, overage fees, and throttling as students across the country begin remote schooling.“We have heard from public schools who express appreciation for internet service options that enable remote learning, but are also concerned with ongoing data limitations and continued lack of service for many... Continue reading…

Grayson Blackmon / Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Faking it and making it Continue reading…

Grayson Blackmon / Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Faking it and making it Continue reading…

Image: Motorola Motorola has quietly released its new budget phone, the Moto G9 Plus, in Brazil. As leaks previously mentioned, the new smartphone includes a 6.81-inch display screen, a quad-camera setup on the phone’s back, plus a 5,000mAh battery.The Moto G9 Plus is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G — the same chip used by Google’s recently released Google Pixel 4A — plus 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. On the front of the screen, the Moto G9’s 6.81-inch screen includes a 1080p display with a 16-megapixel front hole-punch camera located on the screen’s upper-left side. The quad-camera setup on the back includes a 64-megapixel main sensor, an 8-megapixel wide-angle camera, a 2-megapixel macro sensor, and a 2-megapixel depth sensor.No word on... Continue reading…

Image: 9to5Google Google definitely intended for its Pixel 4A to come in multiple colors — well, at least two — before the COVID-19 pandemic led to the phone’s very delayed August release. 9to5Google discovered that a 3D render of the Pixel 4A in blue has still very recently been sitting on the Google Store’s servers. It’s a sky blue color with an orange accent button, which is a nice contrast to the black 4A (with mint power button) that Google eventually shipped.The company originally aimed to launch the Pixel 4A in May, matching the release cycle of its predecessor, but the pandemic threw a wrench into those plans and hindered Google’s ability to finalize... whatever needed finalizing. The long holdup apparently also convinced Google to trim away... Continue reading…

Warner Bros. has delayed Wonder Woman 1984 once again, moving Patty Jenkins’ sequel to December 25th, according to Variety.“Patty is an exceptional filmmaker and with Wonder Woman 1984 she has delivered an incredibly dynamic film that moviegoers of all ages around the world will absolutely love,” Toby Emmerich, Warner Bros. chairman, told Variety. “We’re very proud of the film and look forward to bringing it to audiences for the holidays.”It’s unclear if Wonder Woman 1984’s delay also affects the studio’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, directed by Denis Villeneuve. The film is slated to be released in December, too, and Variety notes that it’s currently still on track to hit that date. That said, nothing is certain. Notably, the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has issued new rules for its App Store in an attempt to address many of the issues that have come up over Apple’s governance of its digital storefront for iPhone devices, with updates for game streaming services, new rules for online classes, and fewer restrictions for in-app purchases on free email apps, which was the focus of Apple’s previous controversy with Hey.Leading the changes is an explicit ruling on game streaming services like Google Stadia or Microsoft’s xCloud, which Apple tells CNBC are newly allowed — but the new rules show that each and every game must also be downloadable “directly from the App Store,” and every game update must be submitted to Apple individually before a company could stream it to users. That... Continue reading…

Thanks to this tweet, I learned today how to change what font you see in Slack. And to be honest, I am more than happy to have discovered this on a Friday because I have spent the last hour trying out ridiculous fonts only to realize I didn’t know how to reset it.If you want to try this yourself, you can by simply typing /slackfont followed by the name of a font you have locally. Yes, /slackfont Comic Sans MS works. So does /slackfont Wingdings. You need to make sure you’re typing how the font is named for you locally, so /slackfont Comic Sans won’t work; it has to be /slackfont Comic Sans MS. After some quick googling and frantic refreshing of the Twitter thread, I discovered that to reset the default font, you simply type in /... Continue reading…

SonicTheOWTHEGEE Disney is currently testing a new feature that will allow Disney Plus subscribers to create tiny private watch parties.Screenshots of the feature first started to appear on the Disney Plus subreddit yesterday. Seen below, the feature seemingly allows up to six people to join the party. Another screenshot shows a new icon that appears on a film or TV show’s title page, prompting the GroupWatch function. SonicTheOWTHEGEE The Verge confirmed that GroupWatch is currently being tested in Canada for some Disney Plus subscribers, but the company is expecting to roll the feature out to other markets this fall. The feature allows people to stream any movie or TV show on Disney Plus as long as all participants are Disney... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge When McKenna Rogers landed a job on Pinterest’s finance team in 2018, she felt like she’d arrived. She loved the platform — so much that she’d used it to help plan her wedding. “Working there felt like a dream come true,” she says. The year before, Forbes included Pinterest in a list of companies where women most like to work.Three years later, stories from former employees about inequality and insensitivity have poked holes in Pinterest’s friendly aesthetic. In June, Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks came forward with allegations of racial discrimination at the company. Two months later, former COO Françoise Brougher sued Pinterest for gender discrimination and retaliation. She specifically called out the chief financial officer... Continue reading…

Image: Glenn Tupper / YouTube Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 is a huge game. It draws from live data feeds to model air traffic, weather patterns, and more. It’s also incredibly realistic: nearly every location you can think of in the real world is represented in the game — and that’s enough for most people. But if you want to really enhance your experience, there are mods. Beautiful, gorgeous mods.I did a brief tour of some of ‘em. Here are a few of my favorites.The Millennium Falcon and moreThat’s right. Modder Eggman28 has put together a roster of cool-ass ships — including your favorites from Star Wars and Star Trek — that you can drop into your copy of Flight Simulator 2020. (Eggman28 does, however, point out that the ships are... challenging to fly: “They... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge These days, it’s no longer surprising when a friend or acquaintance suddenly breaks into a rant on your Facebook feed. It can be triggered by anything from a politician’s tweet to a movie spoiler to the type of mask someone’s wearing (or whether they’re wearing one at all).If somebody on your Facebook feed has crossed what you consider to be a line, then you can use a number of methods to remove their posts — or them — from sight. You can unfriend them, block them, snooze them (so you won’t see anything from them for 30 days), or simply hide one of their entries. Here’s a rundown of how to accomplish each.Note: All of these directions are for the “new” version of Facebook on your desktop.Hide a postLet’s say somebody whom you... Continue reading…

We are fully immersed in the tech review season, and this week’s episode of The Vergecast proves it.The Verge’s Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Tom Warren dive into reviews of Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 2, Microsoft’s Surface Duo, and Android 11. Two foldables reviewed running on Android — how do they compare? That’s why The Vergecast exists, I suppose.We’re also coming into the game console season. The prices have been revealed for the Xbox Series X and the newly revealed, cheaper Xbox Series S, while the PS5 release date and price are still unknown. The crew breaks down what you are getting for your money when investing in these consoles.And of course, an Apple event was announced this week. The gadget rumors are surfacing, and The... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook is appealing a preliminary order from the Irish Data Protection Commission (IDPC) that the social media company says would require it to stop data transfers between the US and the European Union, Bloomberg reported.“A lack of safe, secure and legal international data transfers would have damaging consequences for the European economy,” Facebook said in a statement to The Verge on Friday. “We urge regulators to adopt a pragmatic and proportionate approach until a sustainable long-term solution can be reached.”The IDPC sent a preliminary order to Facebook last month directing the company to suspend data transfers to the US about EU users, The Wall Street Journal reported this week. The order is the first attempt by an EU... Continue reading…

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge At Dell, several laptops (and really, many other devices, like desktops, monitors, and more) are 17 percent off if you add the offer code SAVE17 to your cart at checkout. (The offer seems to stack if you’re buying more than one product.) One of those laptops is the Dell G5 15 SE gaming laptop. Normally $1,300, it’s down to $1,081 with the offer code applied before tax. This is the top-end model offered by Dell, with AMD’s powerful Ryzen 4800H processor, a Radeon 5600M graphics chip, 16GB of RAM, 1TB of fast PCIe SSD storage, and a 1080p display that has a 144Hz refresh rate.If you’re looking for reasons why you might buy it, I listed several in my review. Though, if you’re looking for something thinner and lighter, Dell’s XPS 13 is... Continue reading…

Dual-screen gaming doesn’t come cheap Continue reading…

One reason I enjoy writing a column about the intersection between big technology platforms and democracy is that on most days, it feels like one of the most important things in the world. But on this strangest of days in San Francisco, where wildfires up and down the west coast blotted out the sun and gave the town the eerie feel of permanent midnight, it was hard to pay the usual attention to my beat. My colleague Vjeran Pavic flew a drone over Sutro Tower this morning and captured the surreal imagery. The word “apocalypse” gets thrown around with truly unfortunate frequency these days, but on Wednesday nothing else really fit.Distracting as the orange sky outside my window has been, I had one fascinating thing to occupy my attention:... Continue reading…

Walmart’s packages will be delivered by drones operated by Israeli firm Flytrex. | Image: Flytrex Walmart has started making its first deliveries by drone, launching a small pilot program this week in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The retailer will be delivering “select grocery and household essential items” using automated drones operated by Israeli startup Flytrex.Each of the drones can fly at speeds of 32 mph, travel distances of 6.2 miles in a round trip, and carry up to 6.6 pounds (that’s roughly “6-8 hamburgers,” according to converted units offered on Flytrex’s own website). A demo video of the drone shows how it lowers packages to the ground from 80 feet in the air rather than having to land itself. Flytrex received approval from the FAA to test food deliveries in North Carolina last year, with caveats that its drones only... Continue reading…

Nintendo is releasing a new Fortnite-themed special edition Switch next month, via NintendoLife. The bundle includes yellow and blue Joy-Cons — the latter with the Battle Bus etched around the home button — and a dock that features various well-known Fortnite skins. The Switch tablet itself also has characters on the back.Fortnite is preinstalled on the Switch, and the package includes 2,000 V-bucks plus some exclusive cosmetic items. It appears only to have been announced for launch in PAL regions, however — NintendoLife reports an October 30th release date for Europe and 6th November for Australia and New Zealand. There’s no word yet on a release for the US or other regions. This could be a popular holiday item, though... Continue reading…

Huawei’s AppGallery store for Android. | Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge Huawei has announced the second version of its HarmonyOS operating system and detailed plans to bring it to a wider range of devices, including smartphones. Consumer business CEO Richard Yu made the announcement today at Huawei’s developer conference in Shenzhen, China.Huawei will make a beta version of the HarmonyOS 2.0 SDK available to developers today, though it’ll initially only support smartwatches, car head units, and TVs. A smartphone version of the SDK will follow in December 2020, and Yu hinted that phones running HarmonyOS might appear next year.Huawei is also kicking off its OpenHarmony project, which allows developers to build upon an open-source version of the OS — similar to what AOSP is to Android. As of today the... Continue reading…

Image: IFTTT IFTTT, a perennial favorite of smart home tinkerers everywhere, is going Pro. That means paid subscriptions for faster and more sophisticated IFTTT applets that can query more data sources to trigger multiple actions in the home. The free version will stick around but is now limited to just three applets — only Pro subscribers will be able to create unlimited personal applets.Historically, you could create as many IFTTT applets as you wanted, although these were limited to one trigger controlling one action. For example, If the Ring doorbell is pushed, an applet can then pause the music playing out of a Sonos speaker. Now IFTTT can be configured to pause the music and light up the doorway light and send an SMS message whenever that... Continue reading…

It was a long game of price-war chicken, but it’s finally come to a close.Microsoft flinched first, and now we know how much the next generation of console gaming will cost. The Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X will officially launch November 10th starting at $299, the company announced this week, after spending 15 months revealing details about its next-generation Xbox in dribs and drabs.Many questions remain, like whether the $299 Xbox Series S will truly feel next-gen, since it’ll only have a third the raw GPU performance of the $499 Xbox Series X and less than half that of the PlayStation 5. (They’re all based on the same AMD RDNA 2 graphics architecture.)But the biggest question is a little more immediate: What will PlayStation... Continue reading…

Photo by: Visions of America/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images The Portland City Council has passed the toughest facial recognition ban in the US, blocking both public and private use of the technology. Other cities such as Boston, San Francisco, and Oakland have passed laws barring public institutions from using facial recognition, but Portland is the first to prohibit private use. The ban passed unanimously, according to CNET, CNN, and OneZero.The new law is actually established as two ordinances. The one prohibiting public use of facial recognition (PDF here) is now in effect, and city bureaus must complete an assessment of their facial recognition usage within 90 days. The ordinance prohibiting private use (PDF here) takes effect on January 1st, 2021.“Portlanders should never be in fear of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Alongside an influx of next-gen console news, Microsoft also confirmed today that it will raise its pricing for Xbox Game Pass for PC from $4.99 per month to $9.99 a month starting on September 17th.Existing members on the introductory price will still pay the same rate through the next billing cycle, so if you subscribe before September 17th, Microsoft will not change the price on you abruptly.

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Last September, Amazon announced a voice assistant alliance ahead of its yearly fall event with the goal to ensure smart devices are compatible with multiple digital assistants concurrently. Nearly a year later, the coalition has over 70 companies pledging support, including Facebook, Garmin, and Xiaomi, which recently joined. Yet, Amazon’s biggest rivals in the voice assistant space — Apple, Google, and Samsung — have yet to join.Amazon’s Voice Interoperability Initiative’s goal is to have companies create smart devices that support multiple voice assistants like Alexa or Cortana concurrently. But without Apple, Google, and Samsung’s voice assistants (Siri, Google Assistant, and Bixby), the biggest competitors to Alexa, the idea feels... Continue reading…

517 miles of range, 0-60 mph in 2.5 seconds, and a price tag that starts at $80,000 Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Waze, the Google-owned navigation and mapping service, will lay off 5 percent of its global workforce, or about 30 people out of 555 total employees, the company’s CEO said in an email to employees. Waze will also close several of its offices in the Asia-Pacific and Latin America regions as it seeks to refocus its business on certain markets.Waze said the layoffs were partly due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has emptied roadways around the world and sent many cities into lockdown. As shelter-in-place and working from home become the new norm, fewer people are using Waze for their daily navigation needs. Fewer eyeballs on the app means less advertising revenue for the company.Waze, which was acquired by Google in 2013 for a... Continue reading…

Google’s Fundo — a service that allows creators to host paid, ticketed virtual meet-and-greet events — is expanding from a limited test into a full-fledged product that anyone can use starting today.Developed by Google’s Area 120 incubator, Fundo (which is not the name of an adorable floppy-eared dog) was launched in a limited beta last summer for several hundred “trusted testers,” according to Variety. It’s now available for anyone to use.Fundo (also not a wacky new artificial cheese product) was originally meant as a virtual photo booth-style service. Fans could wait in a digital line, chat briefly with the celebrity or creator, and get “photos” with them, just like a real-life meet-and-greet. The service provides creators with an... Continue reading…

Photo by Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images International travelers arriving in the United States will reportedly no longer go through enhanced health screenings at the airport. The planned change in policy, first reported by Yahoo News, is expected to go into effect on September 14th.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been screening travelers coming into the US from certain countries since January when it started flagging anyone coming from or through Wuhan, China. The screening involves a temperature check and symptom check. Travelers are also expected to provide information that could be used for contact tracing in the event they were exposed to someone with COVID-19.The White House ordered the change in practice, according to Yahoo News. US Customs... Continue reading…

Photo by Douglas P. DeFelice/Getty Images The 2020 NFL season kicks off tomorrow, despite the ominous threat of COVID-19 lurking around just about every corner. (It remains to be seen whether the precautions the league has been taking will be effective.) For fans who have been practicing social distancing, the season’s beginning might feel bittersweet: it’s great that football is back, but it does suck to not be able to safely watch games with your pals in person.But that doesn’t mean you have to watch ‘em alone. Verizon is launching a new feature on its Yahoo Sports app, called Watch Together, which will let you live-stream NFL games with up to three of your friends over video chat. You won’t need to be a Verizon customer to watch games for free, but you will need to watch on... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Last week, Nvidia unveiled the $699 RTX 3080, which promises double the performance of the RTX 2080 for the same price when it releases next Thursday. Perhaps you’re already sold on that upgrade, but there is one reason you might want to wait: AMD will likely answer with its own competitor to the RTX 3000 series on October 28th.AMD has confirmed that its new line of GPUs is part of the Radeon RX 6000 series, which uses AMD’s new RDNA 2 architecture that includes real-time, hardware-accelerated ray tracing and variable rate shading. The Radeon RX 6000 series also shares the same graphics architecture with the PS5 as well as the next-gen Xbox consoles, Series S and Series X, which are set to release on November 10th.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitch and esports go together like a dusting of salt on top of a chocolate chip cookie: the sweetness of victory etc., tempered by the saltiness of defeat. Today, Twitch launches Versus — a suite of competitive tools that will let creators on the site organize and manage their own tournaments — which promises to bring those agonies and ecstasies to any streamer who feels like pubstomping their community.While the feature is in closed beta for now, collegiate esports leagues, game devs, and Twitch Rivals competitors (along with some other Twitch streamers) will have access starting today. There is a waitlist you can join if you’re interested in trying out Versus for yourself.Obviously, this isn’t Twitch’s first foray into esports.... Continue reading…

After a lot of waiting, the first trailer for Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Dune is finally here. It has an almost impossibly star-studded cast — there’s everyone from Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet to Jason Momoa and Oscar Isaac — along with impressive set design and, yes, gigantic sandworms. But it’s also based on a classic sci-fi novel that’s been infamously hard to adapt for the big screen. Which raises an important question: how does The Verge staff feel about our first look at the movie?So, what do we think of the trailer?Russell Brandom (policy editor): I am tentatively pretty into it! The sandworm is awesome! The pain box / gom jabbar sequence looks extremely good, and the fact that it’s given such prominent placement in the... Continue reading…

Photo by WIktor Szymanowicz/NurPhoto via Getty Images China’s embassy in the United Kingdom is calling on Twitter to open an investigation after its ambassador’s official account liked a pornographic clip on the platform earlier this week.The Twitter account for Ambassador Liu Xiaoming liked several tweets that were later unliked, including a 10-second clip tweeted out by an adult-themed account and several posts criticizing the Chinese Communist Party, according to BBC News. China’s UK embassy maintains that the tweets were liked by a possible hacker who had gained access to the ambassador’s account. However, celebrities and politicians have often blamed hackers when they’re caught up in embarrassing situations.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Google is making good on its promise from August to bring Google Maps back to the Apple Watch after yanking it back in 2017. It’s available now, and as we wrote last month, its noteworthy features include providing route estimates and step-by-step directions to and from pre-saved locations on your wrist. Google Maps first became available for the Apple Watch in 2015, but it hasn’t been available to download since 2017 when Google removed the app without explaining why.As 9to5Google notes, this new version doesn’t let you seek out a new location directly from the Watch. For spontaneous trips to places not saved on your Watch, you’ll need to use your phone to start the process, then you can continue with navigation on the Apple Watch. So... Continue reading…

Millions of acres are burning across the West Coast Continue reading…

Image: Motorola Earlier this year, Motorola relaunched the Razr, modernizing the iconic flip phone brand with a flashy foldable display, Android, and a $1,500 price tag. But it fell short in a number of ways, with a creaky hinge, poor cameras, and lackluster battery life. Now, Motorola is trying to redeem its first foldable with a second-generation Razr, which adds 5G support, better cameras, and more useful software.The overall design of the new Razr looks fairly similar to the original foldable. There’s a 6.2-inch, 21.9:9 foldable display on the inside of the phone, while a 2.7-inch OLED “Quick View” display on the outside allows for access to notifications and other basic functionality. Also the same: the high price tag, which, at $1,399, is just... Continue reading…

I still don’t know what I think about Ronald Reagan sending players to do war crimes, but I’m certainly on board with the epic shipboarding combat I just saw in the first multiplayer reveal trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.While we don’t see the ship’s actual armaments in play (it’s not clear if you can control them), the rest of the map seems incredibly dynamic: zip line from ship to ship, commandeer gunboats, jump around in jet skis, take down a helicopter with an RPG. You can even engage underwater, or so the trailer suggests.And that’s just one of several maps Activision revealed in the trailer today. Here’s how it describes each of the first five maps:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The number of high school and middle school students using e-cigarettes dropped off this year, declining from last year’s record high. Just under 20 percent of high schoolers and about 5 percent of middle schoolers said that they currently used the products, according to the 2020 National Youth Tobacco Survey, which was conducted between January and March.Last year, 27.5 percent of high school students and 10.5 percent of middle school students said they used e-cigarettes.“Although the decline in e-cigarette use among our Nation’s youth is a notable public health achievement, our work is far from over,” said Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a press release.Teen use of a drug... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple’s “Sign In with Apple” login system will no longer work with Epic Games accounts as soon as September 11th, Epic said today. The new restriction is another casualty of Apple and Epic’s ongoing spat.If you currently use “Sign In with Apple” for your Epic account, Epic says you’ll need to update your account with new login credentials before September 11th to retain access. Epic has put together a guide on how to make that update if you need to do so. Epic also says that it may be able to recover your account manually after the “Sign in with Apple” option goes away, but you’ll have to contact the studio directly.Apple requires developers to use its single sign-on system if they offer any other third-party options and want their... Continue reading…

Photo by Jackson Lee Davis / AMC The Walking Dead television series on AMC that debuted nearly 10 years ago will end after 11 seasons. That might be bleak news for fans, but there will be plenty of episodes to watch before it all comes to an end. Variety and Entertainment Weekly both report that the final season will consist of 24 episodes debuting in late 2021. Between now and then, fans will be treated to seven episodes for the 10th season, one of which is the finale airing on October 4th, followed by six bonus episodes airing in early 2021.In true zombie-like fashion, the end for Walking Dead on AMC isn’t as final as it seems. We already knew that the plotline for Rick Grimes, the show’s former lead played by Andrew Lincoln, will see its conclusion in theaters at... Continue reading…

A group of Chengdu Hunters fans following an August 8th watch party. | Photo: Panda Base Marie Blanquart had big plans for 2020. As president of The Rooster Club, a supporters group for the Overwatch League’s Paris Eternal, she spent a lot of time thinking about what the fan group could do for the new season, where each of the league’s 20 teams would host home matches in local arenas for the first time. The group worked with the Eternal to have their own seating section during games in Paris so that they could lead chants and cheers. They also planned trips to watch the Eternal play in London and Toronto, and they hoped to organize watch parties for fans all across France.But then the pandemic happened, and all of those plans went away. “We took a hit,” Blanquart tells The Verge. “For a few days we were a bit shell-shocked.... Continue reading…

Dune is one of the greatest science fiction books ever written, and the first trailer for the latest adaptation has finally arrived, giving fans a glimpse at director Denis Villeneuve’s take on Frank Herbert’s iconic novel.The almost absurdly star-studded cast includes Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Stellan Skarsgård, Zendaya, Jason Momoa, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista, and Javier Bardem. Villeneuve is no stranger to epic science fiction, either, having previously directed Arrival and Blade Runner 2049.The trailer was unveiled alongside a Q&A session hosted by Steven Colbert, featuring Villeneuve and members of the cast discussing their take on the upcoming film.

Image: Disney Sometimes movies, like people, have baggage. These unavoidable aspects don’t necessarily unfold on-screen, but they color the viewer’s perception regardless: production issues, expectations, historical context. Disney’s remake of Mulan, unfortunately, has more than most.As the latest live-action remake of a beloved animated film, it has to live up to what fans love about the 1998 original while also battling the less-than-remarkable reception preceding remakes have garnered. That alone would be plenty. But Mulan is also a milestone for Asian representation in American blockbuster cinema: a big-budget film without a single white actor (although plenty of white creatives are behind the camera) and a cast stacked with Asian American and... Continue reading…

An ice floe in the Arctic Ocean. | Photo by: Arterra/Universal Images Group via Getty Images A few weeks into an Arctic research mission, women on board a Russian icebreaker were directed to think about “hot pants.” The ship’s mission had a new dress code, one that prohibited tight or revealing clothing.The ship, the Akademik Fedorov, set sail last fall as part of a larger — and still on-going — international project called MOSAiC that is researching the Arctic’s climate. People aboard the ship helped deploy buoys that could take critical measurements of sea ice, among other research.One of the women who received the new rules was reporter Chelsea Harvey, who wrote about the surreal and infuriating experience in a story for E&E News. The new rules, the group was told, were partly to make sure that people were dressing... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A coalition of civil rights groups are calling for Ankhi Das, Facebook’s public policy chief in India, to step down in the face of growing sectarian conflict in India. The 41 groups sent an open letter expressing their objections to Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday, citing an escalating potential for Facebook-fueled violence in the country.“Facebook should not be complicit in more offline violence, much less another genocide, but the pattern of inaction displayed by the company is reckless to the point of complicity,” the groups write. “[We] write to urge you to take decisive action to address Facebook India’s bias and failure to address dangerous content in India.”“Facebook should not be complicit in more offline violence”Signatories... Continue reading…