The Verge

It’s been almost two years since Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8cx, its flagship ARM processor for Windows laptops, but at IFA 2020, the company is unveiling its successor: the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 5G, which promises some incremental improvements over the original.Qualcomm wasn’t too forthcoming about what specific performance improvements the 8cx Gen 2 will offer over its predecessor beyond saying that it would provide “generational performance and efficiency gains.”However, Qualcomm is very interested in showing that the new 8cx Gen 2 chipset is more than capable of going toe-to-toe with Intel’s traditional systems. It claims that the 8cx Gen 2 offers significant performance gains over both a comparable 10th Gen Core i5 chip... Continue reading…

Qualcomm is expanding its 5G portfolio to its budget Snapdragon 4-series chipsets in 2021, which will bring the faster networking standard to the cheapest range of smartphones yet.Qualcomm has steadily been expanding the list of chipsets that it’s offered with 5G compatibility. In 2019, only the company’s flagship Snapdragon 8-series phones offered 5G support. (Even there, it was an optional addition only offered on a handful of phones.) This year has seen that lineup expand significantly, with the current Snapdragon 865 lineup requiring a separate 5G modem, along with cheaper options in the company’s 7-series and 6-series lineups like the Snapdragon 765 and Snapdragon 690.But adding 5G to the next wave of 4-series chipsets could be... Continue reading…

Image: Acer Acer has announced the newest iteration of its Spin 7 lineup at IFA 2020, and there’s a twist: instead of the usual Intel processor, the new model will be the first laptop with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 5G chip. It’s also Acer’s first 5G laptop.From the outside, the new Spin 7 appears to be a modestly updated version of the current model, with slightly squared-off corners and gold accents. But the changes are more significant. The ARM-based Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 processor means that, in addition to supporting 5G (both mmWave and sub-6 GHz), Acer is also promising that it’ll offer “multi-day” battery life. Image: Acer Additionally, Acer is adding an active Wacom pen that offers 4,096 levels of pressure... Continue reading…

Image: Qualcomm Qualcomm is today announcing Adaptive Noise Cancellation for true wireless earbuds, which it calls “a new technology designed to deliver an improved user experience for earbuds with integrated ANC.” Adaptive Noise Cancellation will adjust sound performance in real time, according to the company, based on how the earbuds fit in a user’s ear. If the fit changes slightly, the Adaptive ANC will adapt to ensure consistent performance.Sound familiar? This is almost exactly what Apple does with the AirPods Pro, which continuously adjust the level of noise cancellation 200 times per second. And the “adaptive EQ” feature of AirPods Pro automatically tunes sound output based on the shape of your ear. Qualcomm is trying to reach par with Apple in... Continue reading…

Image: Signify A new Philips Hue lightstrip is on the way, and this one is meant to be mounted to the back of your TV where it can flash and glow along with whatever’s on-screen. The Hue line has a number of lightstrips already, but this new one — called the Philips Hue Play gradient lightstrip — can display different colors across different segments of the strip, whereas the old ones were limited to a single color. That’s supposed to allow for a much more immersive effect when mounted to your TV.You’ll need to buy some extra gear in order to make this lightstrip work, though. It requires a $60 Hue Bridge and the $230 Philips Hue Play HDMI sync box if you want to use it on your TV, or the Hue Bridge and the Philips Hue Sync app if you want to use it... Continue reading…

Fujifilm has announced a new 50mm X-series lens with an unprecedented f/1.0 aperture. The XF 50mmF1.0 R WR is the world’s first f/1 autofocus lens for mirrorless cameras, according to Fujifilm, and marks the 35th X-series lens the company has produced. Its field of view is about 75mm-equivalent on Fujifilm’s APS-C sensors.Fujifilm’s previous fastest lens was the 56mm f/1.2, which is the aperture that companies like Canon and Nikon also tend to top out at when designing autofocus lenses. While Canon did make an autofocus 50mm f/1.0 for its DSLRs at one point, it was discontinued decades ago. Nikon and Leica have made f/0.95 lenses before, but they only worked with manual focus. Large apertures allow the user to achieve shallower depth of... Continue reading…

Photo by Phil Esposito On Monday, Dana Simmons came downstairs to find her 12-year-old son, Lazare, in tears. He’d completed the first assignment for his seventh-grade history class on Edgenuity, an online platform for virtual learning. He’d received a 50 out of 100. That wasn’t on a practice test — it was his real grade.“He was like, I’m gonna have to get a 100 on all the rest of this to make up for this,” said Simmons in a phone interview with The Verge. “He was totally dejected.”At first, Simmons tried to console her son. “I was like well, you know, some teachers grade really harshly at the beginning,” said Simmons, who is a history professor herself. Then, Lazare clarified that he’d received his grade less than a second after submitting his answers. A... Continue reading…

Microsoft is planning to release some significant changes to its built-in touch keyboard for Windows 10. The updated touch keyboard design builds on the company’s work with Windows 10X, bringing new key press animations, sounds, and all the all-important ability to search for and insert animated GIFs.Microsoft called this the WonderBar for Windows 10X, and the new design in Windows 10 also includes better layouts that are optimized for typing, and the ability to move the cursor in through the space bar on the touch keyboard. This is very similar to how iOS lets you operate the cursor, by placing a finger on the space bar and sliding left, right, up, and down to navigate around. The new cursor support with the... Continue reading…

Twitch’s Watch Parties function is rolling out to everyone today, giving streamers and their subscribers around the world the ability to watch Amazon’s library of movies and TV shows together. It’s not just for families; as long as everyone has an Amazon Prime account, a streamer can now host a “public” movie viewing with all of their fans.Watch parties have taken off in general over the last few months as people stuck at home figure out ways to make watching TV shows and movies more social and interactive. Unlike apps like Scener, which allows people to stream Netflix, Disney Plus, and HBO titles with friends in the United States, Twitch’s Watch Parties is specifically built for Amazon Prime Video. Ah, the smell of corporate synergy in... Continue reading…

Image: Samsung Samsung has a new fitness tracker on the way called the Galaxy Fit 2. It’s an updated version of the original Galaxy Fit band that offers a larger display and more battery life — much more battery life, in fact.Samsung is promising that the new model can last for at least 15 days on a single charge and up to three weeks depending on your settings. That’s a big jump over the original model, which Samsung promised would get barely a week of usage off a single charge. That battery life is also a dramatic increase over competing trackers, like the upcoming Fitbit Inspire 2, which only lasts for up to 10 days on a charge. Most trackers generally offer a week or so of battery life, making Samsung’s a big improvement — assuming it holds up.I... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok’s high-profile search for a US buyer is hitting a roadblock after weeks of public negotiations and months of national security debates. A string of reports from Reuters, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal describes a growing stalemate over the algorithm behind TikTok’s For You page, arguably the most important piece of software the company has. That algorithm has become a sticking point between the US and China, and what happens to that algorithm now seems like the central issue for any possible deal.First publicly confirmed on August 2nd, the proposed TikTok acquisition comes in response to months of escalating concerns about Chinese ownership of an app used by millions of Americans. Microsoft, Oracle, and Triller have all... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In August 2019, after the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his jail cell, conspiracy theories about what had happened ran rampant on social networks. The theories did not necessarily originate there, but the networks did their part to amplify them, and the confusion that followed was dubbed “the disinformation World Cup.”At the center of the maelstrom was Twitter, where various baseless theories about Epstein’s death dominated the discussion. One reason why is that enough people tweet the same hashtag on Twitter, it almost always shows up on the app’s tab of “trending topics,” no matter how deranged. During the Epstein mania, for example, #ClintonBodyCount trended, and President Trump — who is known to trawl... Continue reading…

Image: Amazon Blink, that other smart home camera company that Amazon scooped up, today announced a pair of new cameras that move its business deeper into a subscription model. And they can also last for a long time — up to four years of “normal use” — on a single set of batteries if that’s what you need.The new Blink Outdoor ($99.99) and Indoor ($79.99) cameras include a free trial to Blink’s cloud storage plan that’s good through the end of this year. But after that, you’ll have to pay $3 monthly to keep the cloud storage going; an unlimited-cameras plan is slightly more expensive at $10 per month. Blink is still giving customers the option of saving their recordings locally with the included Sync Module 2 and any USB flash drive they might have... Continue reading…

Parcast Union Parcast, the podcast production company Spotify acquired last year, is unionizing. The Writers Guild of America, East announced the news today, along with a letter about why Parcast, which specializes in true crime and mystery shows, decided to organize.The production company says it wants to see Spotify commit to diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as maintain a reasonable workload and overtime compensation. Parcast is also seeking clear job descriptions, equitable pay, transparent salary bands, and movement around creative and IP. From here, Spotify now can either recognize the union voluntarily, which would set it up to begin contract negotiations, or request a vote from union members to prove they have support. (Disclosure:... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge The investigation of the unprecedented Twitter hack earlier this summer has produced a new suspect: a 16-year-old from Massachusetts, according to a new report from The New York Times. This new suspect would be the youngest of the group of conspirators spanning the US and the UK, a group now totaling four individuals who together planned and then pulled off account takeovers of dozens of high-profile Twitter users to promote a bitcoin scam.It’s still unclear which members had direct control of internal Twitter systems and how exactly they gained access beyond somehow tricking company employees, but the supposed mastermind of the hack is believed to be 17-year-old Floridian Graham Ivan Clark, who has been charged as an adult with 30... Continue reading…

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Samsung announced a release date for its new Galaxy Tab S7 and Tab S7 Plus tablets. They’ll launch on Friday, September 18th, and preorders are now open.Prices start at $649.99 for the 11-inch Tab S7 that supports Wi-Fi and features an LCD screen with a fast 120Hz refresh rate. It’s quite nice, but if you want arguably the best screen to ever grace a tablet (up to this point, at least), you’ll need to pay $849.99 for the Tab S7 Plus with Wi-Fi support. That one has a gorgeous 12.4-inch 120Hz OLED screen. My colleague Dan Seifert had a first look with the tablet and said that “colors practically jump off the screen, and the blacks are as inky and deep as they are on the LG OLED TV hanging in my living room.”Both tablets include a... Continue reading…

Samsung It’s a big day for Intel. The company launched its 11th Gen Tiger Lake mobile processors. It also announced its newest badge of honor for laptops: the Intel Evo brand, building on last year’s Project Athena program. And in tandem with Samsung, it unveiled the first 5G-enabled system to meet the Evo requirements: the Galaxy Book Flex 5G.The Flex 5G is Samsung’s first 5G laptop, and it certainly looks nice. It weighs 2.7 pounds (1.26kg) and comes in a light “royal silver” finish. You can configure it with a 13.3-inch 1920 x 1080 display, up to 16GB RAM, a 69.7Wh battery, and up to a 512GB SSD. There’s a 13-megapixel “world-facing” camera to snap or shoot video on the go, a built-in S Pen, and a backlit keyboard.But the most exciting... Continue reading…

The ZenBook 14 with the optional ScreenPad built into the trackpad. | Asus Asus announced its next wave of Zenbook laptops for release later this fall that will run on Intel’s 11th Gen processors — only days after it announced similar versions that run on Intel’s 10th Gen processors. In addition, most of the upcoming laptops will feature Thunderbolt 4 ports rather than Thunderbolt 3 ports. It didn’t share pricing for any of the models.ZenBook SThe flagship ZenBook S is 15mm thick and weighs 2.9 pounds. It has a 13.9-inch IPS touchscreen (3300 x 2200) with a 3:2 aspect ratio, 500 nits at peak brightness, and 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut.The ZenBook S (and as a matter of fact, almost all of Asus’ new laptops announced today) is, as mentioned, powered with Intel’s 11th Gen processors,... Continue reading…

Dynabook’s new Portégé X30W-J convertible laptop. | Image: Dynabook Dynabook, the company that took control of Toshiba’s laptop operation before it axed that business earlier this month, is releasing two new laptops built with Intel’s new 11th Gen Tiger Lake processors. Both laptops, the Portégé X30W-J convertible and the Portégé X30L-J standard clamshell, are less than 1kg (about 2.2 pounds) and have 13.3-inch screens. The company will release these machines in Q4 2020, and pricing will be shared closer to launch date.These new models have 53Wh batteries and are built with magnesium alloy (not plastic) to achieve that low weight — under 900 grams (1.98lbs) for the clamshell variant. Each can be outfitted with either Intel’s Core i5-1135G7 or the Core i7-1165G7. (Both processors support Iris Xe... Continue reading…

This is the Swift 3 SF313-53 (the one with the 13.5-inch screen). | Acer Acer has announced new Swift 3 and Swift 5 laptops, which include Intel’s 11th Gen “Tiger Lake” processors. Both models will launch in November. The Swift 5 starts at $999.99 and the Swift 3 starts at $699.99.The Swift 5 is one of the first batch of laptops to be verified through Intel’s new Evo platform. Systems that earn this badge are supposed to deliver nine or more hours of “real-world” battery life, have less than a second of wake time, fast charging, Wi-Fi 6, and Thunderbolt 4, among other requirements. Acer says it’s still working on getting the Swift 3 verified as well.The Swift 5 starts at $999.99 and the Swift 3 starts at $699.99The Swift 5 can come with either a Core i5 or Core i7 processor, and Acer claims it provides 17... Continue reading…

Intel has just announced its new 11th Gen processors, and alongside the launch, the company is also rolling out a new minimalist logo — the third logo that the company has ever used. The fresh design replaces the previous branding with the Intel wordmark enclosed in a circle that has been used by the company in various forms since 2006.The new logo will also accompany a brand-wide refresh for Intel, with a more minimalist design for everything from Intel’s Xeon servers to its Optane memory chips. While the new logo is a fresh look for the brand, with a boxier font than the clipped curved of the 2006 iteration, it does maintain plenty of elements from both of the previous designs, including the square-capped “i”. Intel... Continue reading…

Intel has officially announced its first 11th Gen Tiger Lake processors for laptops, which will feature the company’s new integrated Xe graphics, Thunderbolt 4 support, Wi-Fi 6, and a big leap in performance and battery life over the previous Ice Lake chips. The company claims that the new 11th Gen lineup offers the “best processor for thin-&-light” laptops.The company had already previewed the new chips at its Architecture Day 2020 event earlier this year. The new 11th Gen lineup is still built on the 10nm node, similar to the current 10th Gen Ice Lake models, but it upgrades to the Willow Core architecture with a new “10nm SuperFin design” that Intel says will offer better speeds at lower power consumption.Intel is betting big on... Continue reading…

Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images Earlier this week, a coalition of veteran and progressive groups demanded that the Joe Biden campaign commit that no Facebook executives or registered lobbyists would be appointed to the Biden transition team or future administration if elected.Groups like Defend American Democracy, the Open Markets Institute, and Demand Progress penned their letter, addressed to transition team leaders former Sen. Ted Kaufman and Yohannes Abraham, citing Facebook’s involvement in spreading “dangerous COVID-19 health conspiracies and supercharging election misinformation” as reasons not to hire any high-level company executives into key transition or administrative roles. In the letter, the groups requested that the campaign steer clear of onboarding... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile on Wednesday announced a much wider rollout of its 2.5GHz midband 5G coverage, adding 81 new cities and towns to a total list of 90 markets throughout the US.Midband 5G is much faster and more appropriately fitting of the 5G moniker than the type of low-band 5G we’ve seen from AT&T and T-Mobile and more reliable than high-band mmWave 5G, which is used primarily by Verizon, although AT&T and T-Mobile also have limited support. (mmWave 5G is ultra-fast but has poor range.) T-Mobile also has low-band and mmWave coverage, but the company is touting its three-layer approach of low-, mid-, and high-band 5G as its edge over the competition.“This is our 5G strategy in action. Mid-band is the 5G spectrum, and T-Mobile has more of it... Continue reading…

Image: Samsung You’ll be able to get your hands on the new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 very soon. Samsung recently shared a lot more about its new foldable phone, which you can read right here. Preorders are now available, whether you’re looking for an unlocked model or hoping to upgrade with your carrier. And the phone will be available in less than two weeks’ time on Friday, September 18th.Like the original Galaxy Fold, its successor is by no means affordable. It costs $1,999.99 unlocked, though you can break it down to comparatively smaller monthly payments if you buy it on a payment plan or pay each month through your carrier.Samsung is making the decisions somewhat easy with the Z Fold 2. There’s only one configuration available with 256GB of... Continue reading…

This is Asus’ PG259QN 360Hz refresh rate gaming monitor, one of the four monitors confirmed for later this year | Asus Later this fall, Alienware, MSI, Asus, and Acer will each release a 25-inch 1080p monitor made for competitive gaming with an incredibly fast 360Hz refresh rate. Additionally, they’ll be the first monitors to include Nvidia’s Reflex Latency Analyzer feature that aims to help gamers accurately measure and reduce latency from their mouse, display, and PC. Nvidia discussed this feature at its launch event yesterday for its new RTX 3070, 3080, and 3090 graphics cards.The end goal is that, by reducing latency, the odds of getting a shot off first in competitive play should greatly increase in your favor. And along with fast refresh rate and minimal latency, the monitor’s G-Sync feature will ensure that it doesn’t show any screen tearing or... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge For many years, Europe has been unhappy with the tax habits of US tech giants. As regulators and politicians have often noted, these firms make vast amounts of money from European citizens but pay a pittance in tax. In the absence of an overhaul of the global tax system, a number of European nations have introduced new taxes aimed specifically at these companies. And the tech giants are responding by passing on the costs.Over the last month, for example, Apple, Google, and Amazon have all announced price changes for UK enterprise customers specifically designed to offset a new “digital services tax” introduced by UK government. This increases tax on any revenue produced by “search engines, social media services and online marketplaces”... Continue reading…

The Mandalorian will return with new episodes beginning on October 30th, Disney announced today on Twitter.The announcement seems to indicate that the show will continue its weekly release schedule, much like the first season did. We don’t have a trailer for the new season yet, but expect that imminently now that we have a date. Hopefully, it’s full of adorable Baby Yoda — or, sorry, “The Child” — moments! The Mandalorian’s return to Disney Plus marks the first big show the streamer will have in months. Series like Marvel Studios’ The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (originally set to debut over the summer) were delayed because of production issues brought on by the pandemic.The release date isn’t entirely a surprise; Disney CEO Bob... Continue reading…

Panasonic went in at the high end when it released its first L-mount full-frame mirrorless cameras last year, but today it’s announcing a more mainstream and versatile model. Like the $2,499 Lumix S1, the new S5 is built around a 24.2-megapixel full-frame sensor and is designed for both photo and video work.The Lumix S5 is $500 less expensive, though, and significantly more compact. Here’s a picture Panasonic supplied of its current highest-end mirrorless cameras, including the Micro Four Thirds-based GH5 on the left, the videography-focused S1H on the right, and the S5 in the middle. Despite the huge difference in sensor size, the S5 is actually smaller than the GH5. Panasonic says, however, that a new camera in the GH... Continue reading…

India is banning another 118 apps said to be either based in or linked to China. PUBG Mobile, Alipay, and Baidu are among the biggest names on the list. India banned TikTok, WeChat, and more than 50 other China-based apps in June, suggesting they were a security issue.The country’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said that it had received complaints about apps “stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorized manner to servers which have locations outside India.” The ministry’s announcement doesn’t mention China specifically. It broadly states that the action will “safeguard the interests of crores of Indian mobile and internet users.” News reports suggest the bans may be more related to e... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Lucid Motors has been making a lot of bold claims in the lead-up to the September 9th unveiling of its first all-electric sedan, the Lucid Air: longest range, fastest charge, biggest battery. But today, the Newark, California-based company is truly laying its cards on the table with its claim to have built one of the quickest production cars ever made.Not just one of the fastest-accelerating electric cars, mind you. One of the fastest-accelerating cars, period.How fast? We already know that the Lucid Air can sprint from 0 to 60 mph in 2.5 seconds and will have a top speed of 200 mph. But thanks to Lucid’s 1,080 horsepower, dual-motor configuration, the company now claims the Air can run a quarter-mile in 9.9 seconds “on a consistent,... Continue reading…

I’m currently reviewing the Microsoft Surface Duo and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 — they’re sitting on my desk right now next to another folding phone, the Galaxy Z Flip. All three represent different ideas for how to make a folding phone and all three are prohibitively expensive. Even if at the end of my reviews I have to go hunt down the socks they knocked off, I think it’s incredibly unlikely I would tell you to buy either of them — or the Flip.That doesn’t mean, however, that I would harshly judge anybody who does buy one of them. That’s because these super expensive phones belong to a category that the smartphone industry has been trying to break into since before the iPhone: luxury products. Vertu once made a name for itself by... Continue reading…

Image: JBL JBL isn’t a newcomer to true wireless earbuds, but today the company is announcing several new sets with noise cancellation at prices that reflect just how competitive the market has become. The JBL Club Pro Plus earbuds ($199.95) have adaptive noise cancellation and “a unibody design inspired by professional in-ear monitors” and offer JBL’s best sound quality with up to eight hours of continuous battery life (plus 24 extra hours with the battery case).Like many other earbuds of late, they’ve got a feature for tailoring the sound output to your own hearing preferences, which JBL calls Personi-Fi. They’re IPX4 rated for water and sweat resistance, support Fast Pair for easy setup on Android, and either earbud can be used independently.... Continue reading…

The JBL Go 3 (left) next to the JBL Clip 4 (right). | Image: JBL JBL has announced new Clip 4 and Go 3 miniature Bluetooth speakers. Both have gotten a visual makeover from their predecessors, with a streamlined design and a few new colors available. The Go 3 will launch first in October for $39.95. The Clip 4 will follow in December for $69.95.In terms of improvements, both speakers support Bluetooth 5.1 and have IP67 water and dustproofing. And instead of charging via Micro USB, which can be inconvenient, they feature a USB-C port. JBL claims the Go 3 will provide up to five hours of sound before needing to be recharged, while the Clip 4 can apparently provide 10 hours. Neither of those figures strays from the performance claims of the previous iterations.The Go 3 costs $39.95, and the Clip 4... Continue reading…

An artistic impression of colliding black holes | Image: Mark Myers, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) Astronomers may have detected the most massive collision of two black holes ever discovered, a chaotic merger that occurred some 7 billion years ago, the signs of which have only just reached us. The cataclysmic event offered researchers a front-row seat to the birth of one of the Universe’s most elusive objects.The distant show included two major players: one black hole roughly 66 times the mass of our Sun, and another black hole roughly 85 times the mass of our Sun. The two came close together, rapidly spinning around one another several times per second before eventually crashing together in a violent burst of energy that sent shockwaves throughout the Universe. The result of their merger? One single black hole roughly 142 times the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is covertly monitoring private social media groups used by Amazon Flex workers to discuss their working conditions. According to what appear to be official company documents discovered online by Vice, the retailing giant employs staff to track and categorize discussions in closed Facebook groups, public subreddits, and on Twitter. Some posts are then “escalated” to internal Amazon teams and company leadership.As Vice notes, these reports are seemingly compiled primarily to identify and respond to complaints from Flex delivery drivers about things like bugs in the company’s app. But Amazon also appears to be keeping tabs on more sensitive discussions. Those compiling the reports are instructed to note the apparent sentiment of... Continue reading…

The Samsung Wireless Charger Trio powering three devices. | Image: Samsung Samsung has announced a host of new devices at its Life Unstoppable virtual event today, including the Galaxy A42 5G, which the company said during its presentation would be its most affordable 5G device yet. Alongside it, Samsung also announced a new wireless charger that can charge multiple devices at once, as well as a new Android tablet, the Galaxy Tab A7.The Galaxy A42 5G is the latest in Samsung’s midrange A-series lineup. Samsung says it has a quad camera array on the back, a 6.6-inch OLED display, and will be available in black. It will launch later this year, according to CNET. Image: Samsung Samsung is billing the Galaxy A42 as an affordable 5G device. Meanwhile the Wireless Charger Trio is a... Continue reading…

Screenshot: Twitter Twitter will add pinned tweets and short descriptions to some of the trending topics on its service to help people understand why they’ve become popular. In a blog post announcing the news, the company said it would immediately start adding representative pinned tweets to some topics in the iOS and Android apps, and that these would be coming to Twitter on the web soon. Descriptions will roll out in the coming weeks, Twitter said.According to Twitter, the new feature is designed in part to help the 500,000+ people who tweeted “why is this trending?” over the course of 2019. Although the trending topics section is designed to give users an overview of what people (and bots) are discussing on the service, in reality it’s often filled with... Continue reading…

Samsung has announced its latest high-end home entertainment device: The Premiere, a new 4K short-throw laser projector that’s meant to be a viable alternative to the QLED TVs that Samsung usually focuses on.The Premiere is the latest entrant to Samsung’s “Lifestyle” lineup, which includes other design-forward hardware like The Serif, The Frame, The Sero, and The Terrace. They’re products that are meant to blend into your living room, something that The Premiere takes to the logical conclusion by eschewing a screen entirely. Billed as an “ultra-short throw” projector, Samsung says the projector can be placed directly in front of a wall or screen while still providing optimal results. It’s also meant to be an all-in-one... Continue reading…

After teasing for a while, ZTE has followed through on its promise to launch the world’s first commercial smartphone with a selfie camera embedded in the display. The Axon 20 5G turns out to be a fairly mid-range device, aside from its headline feature.ZTE says the under-display 32-megapixel camera has been made possible due to the use of “high transparency material that includes new organic and inorganic films” as well as optimized software algorithms to offset the impact on image quality.Of course, it’s hard to judge this without seeing the phone in person and testing the camera in practice. It’s also questionable how much value the feature offers over a hole-punch, a pop-up, or even a notch. But we’ll see. The phone... Continue reading…

LG has provided the first public acknowledgement of its rumored “Wing” handset, said to be a device with two screens in a swiveling form factor. A teaser video posted to YouTube hints at the sliding mechanism and serves as an invitation to an announcement event on September 14th.In a separate press release, LG says the new device will be part of an initiative and product category it calls the Explorer Project. The project is intended to “deliver much-needed curiosity and excitement to the mobile sector,” LG says, and “will focus solely on new usability that is discovered with innovative designs.” The recently released Velvet, meanwhile, will form part of LG’s “Universal Line.”Reporting on the Wing so far has indicated that it’ll have... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon has deleted two job listings posted to its corporate employment website detailing “intelligence analyst” roles that involved, among other duties, monitoring “labor organizing threats” within the company. The listings, which were posted days ago, first began circulating on Twitter earlier today, before Amazon removed them in response to widespread outcry on social media.The company now claims the listings were not accurate representations of the roles, according to CNBC. “The job post was not an accurate description of the role — it was made in error and has since been corrected,” an Amazon representative said in a statement, although Amazon does not appear to be offering any information as to how the listings were inaccurate.

Image: Razer If you’re on the hunt for a gaming laptop to help you run your games at reasonably fast frame rates that will also serve as a great all-around machine for non-gaming tasks, the Razer Blade 15 is a solid option. You can get this machine at Amazon for $400 off its original price, which brings it down to $1,400. It comes with Intel’s competent six-core Core i7-10750H processor, Nvidia’s RTX 2060 graphics chip, 16GB of RAM, and a fast 512GB SSD.Its 15.6-inch 1080p display has a 144Hz refresh rate, raising the ceiling of how smoothly games can run on the laptop. This feature also allows for fluid scrolling outside of games. Razer’s Blade 15 costs more than many other 15.6-inch gaming laptops, but it’s worth considering if you want stellar... Continue reading…

Vlambeer, the indie studio behind beloved games such as Super Crate Box, Nuclear Throne, and Ridiculous Fishing, is shutting down. The developer, which celebrates its 10th anniversary today, announced the news on Twitter. “We had a beautiful run, made incredible games, and worked with amazing people, but it is time for new things,” the developer said. “So we’re announcing the end of Vlambeer.”The Dutch studio was founded in 2010 by Jan Willem Nijman and Rami Ismail and has been a stalwart of the indie community. Vlambeer has been especially vocal on issues of game clones; Ismail is a well-known advocate within the community for topics like diversity and independent development. “It’s not a sad day for us, but the happy conclusion to a... Continue reading…

Image: Alex Castro / The Verge OnlyFans confirmed new rule changes to The Verge today that could impact how much money creators make on the platform, as well as how quickly they get paid. The new rules include a $100 cap on paid private messages, compared to $200 before, and a $50 cap on pay-per-view posts for creators who don’t charge a subscription, compared to $200 previously.There’s also a new maximum tip price of $100 for the first four months a creator is active on the site. After that point, it increases to $200, which was the standard for all creators up until this point. OnlyFans is also lengthening the pending payout period from seven to 21 days for creators in 14 countries, including India, Belize, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Venezuela.OnlyFans... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple on Tuesday released iOS 13.7, adding support for a new exposure notification system for powering COVID-19 tracking. The system is an extension of the existing coronavirus contact tracing efforts, but it removes the burden on states of having to build a dedicated app. News of the new software framework was first announced earlier today in a joint statement from Apple and Google.This native support was expected, as it was announced when the exposure notification API — developed collaboratively between Apple and Google — was revealed in April. But at the time, we didn’t know exactly when it would arrive.Here’s how it will work, from The Verge’s report on the announcement:

Gogo, the in-flight internet provider, has found a buyer for its commercial airline business. Intelsat, the world’s second largest satellite operator by revenue, has agreed to purchase Gogo’s Wi-Fi business for $400 million in cash, the companies announced Tuesday. It’s an unlikely pairing, mostly because Intelsat filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May.The bankruptcy was seen as a means for Intelsat to begin paying down its nearly $15 billion debt load while positioning itself to participate in a Federal Communications Commission spectrum clearing program, the company has said. The FCC is clearing out the C-band (4-8 GHz) to make space for 5G customers, and Intelsat is participating in the program that could net the company nearly $5... Continue reading…

Photo by Bobby Quillard Dr Disrespect says he still doesn’t know why he was banned from Twitch, and he warned viewers that the mysterious ban has been causing him anxiety. “My anxiety levels are something that comes in these huge waves,” said Dr Disrespect, real name Guy Beahm, on a stream compilation posted to YouTube this afternoon. “And I’m having a hard time dealing with it. I’ll be honest.”Twitch signed Beahm to an exclusive contract at the beginning of the year. But in June, his account disappeared from the platform, and Twitch refused to say why or even confirm that he had been banned. It was a big surprise given that Beahm was one of the platform’s top streamers. The ban came amid criticisms about Twitch failing to deal with sexual harassment, though... Continue reading…

Nvidia might have just announced its RTX 3080 successor to the RTX 2080, but the company also had a surprise giant GPU ready: the RTX 3090. While the RTX 3080 will ship with 10GB of GDDR6X memory, the RTX 3090 ships with a huge 24GB of GDDR6X memory. Nvidia is promising that the RTX 3090 will be capable of 60fps gaming at 8K resolutions. This new flagship card is more akin to Nvidia’s Titan series and will ship on September 24th priced at $1,499.The RTX 3090 is based on Nvidia’s Ampere GPU architecture, which promises some impressive performance gains for PC gaming and ray tracing. Nvidia claims the RTX 3090 is the “world’s first 8K gaming GPU,” with 8K HDR ShadowPlay support, HDMI 2.1, and a whole lot more. Nvidia is using 10,496 CUDA... Continue reading…

Image: Nvidia Nvidia is unveiling its new GeForce RTX 3000 series graphics cards today. Nvidia has been teasing these new cards for weeks, and there have also been plenty of leaks before the RTX 3080 was made official today. Based on Nvidia’s new Ampere architecture, the RTX 3080 is designed to succeed the RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti cards with improved performance and ray-tracing support.Nvidia is promising big performance with the RTX 3080, up to two times that of the RTX 2080, and faster than even Nvidia’s RTX 2080 Ti card. The card will ship with 10GB of GDDR6X memory and will be priced at $699 when it ships on September 17th. Nvidia is using 8,704 CUDA cores on the RTX 3080, combined with a 1.71Ghz boost clock. Image: Nvidia At the... Continue reading…