A demo of Epic’s upcoming Unreal Engine 5 release, scheduled to come out next year and designed for not just game developers, but all kinds of industries needing real-rendering and computer graphics. | Image: Epic Games Apple and Epic’s Fortnite fight has spiraled into something much more Continue reading…
You might not have Henry Cavill’s arms, but you can still pretend to be a witcher thanks to a new mobile game. Today, developer CD Projekt Red announced The Witcher: Monster Slayer, an augmented reality game for iOS and Android that has players doing their best Geralt impression to hunt and kill fantasy monsters. Think of it like Pokémon Go, but a whole lot darker.Monster Slayer is a roleplaying game with a heavy emphasis on combat. Here’s how the studio describes it:
Starlink satellites passing through the night sky | Photo by Yuri Smityuk\TASS via Getty Images In the future, as astronomers make observations of the night sky, they might see more and more satellites pass overhead that ruin their work — and this problem is likely to get a lot worse, according to a new report from a working group of astronomers. As space companies continue to inject tens of thousands of new satellites into low orbits around Earth, the new additions could “fundamentally change” astronomical observations of the night sky and the Universe.To dampen the effects of these giant constellations as much as possible, the group is proposing 10 recommendations to mitigate satellite influence on astronomy. But if upward of 100,000 satellites are added to Earth orbit, as many companies have proposed, there’s no way to... Continue reading…
Courtesy of DJI DJI is expanding its lineup of motorized smartphone video stabilizers with the newly announced Osmo Mobile 4.The OM4 keeps the same foldable design as its predecessor, but it now comes with two magnetic mounts so you can quickly attach and detach your phone without needing to clamp it down and rebalance it between shoots. One magnetic mount is a clamp which wraps around your phone, while the second one attaches to the back of your phone and doubles as a finger ring so you can get a better grip with one hand. Image: DJI Aside from keeping the foldable design that let the Osmo Mobile 3 shrink down easily into a bag, OM4 also retains the same intuitive button layout and the same 15-hour battery, which can be used to... Continue reading…
Nvidia is getting ready for its big GeForce event next week by teasing the design for its next-generation graphics cards. In a newly published video, Nvidia engineers and designers discuss the changes being made to its next Ampere-based GeForce cards. Recent leaks have suggested Nvidia will announce RTX 3000 Series cards on September 1st, including an RTX 3080 and a flagship RTX 3090 card.At the end of Nvidia’s video, the company briefly flashes up what appears to be an RTX 3090. It matches recent card leaks that claim the RTX 3090 will ship with a pennant-shaped board and a new cooling shroud. Nvidia focuses heavily on cooling throughout the video, noting that it has redesigned its cooling solution to improve airflow and overcome some... Continue reading…
Health care workers in the COVID-19 unit in Houston, Texas. | Photo by MARK FELIX/AFP via Getty Images After the first nine months battling COVID-19, it’s clear that we’ll probably be dealing with COVID-19 forever. That means the public health system in the US will have to change to accommodate it and permanently incorporate COVID-19 into doctors’ offices, virus surveillance, and hospital planning.“It is going to become part of our daily, or certainly seasonal, reality within the healthcare system and within the country,” says Megan Ranney, an emergency physician and associate professor at the Brown University department of emergency medicine. That means adjustments to how we diagnose respiratory diseases, how we do surveillance for COVID-19, and how many hospital beds we have available.The US health care system has adjusted to new,... Continue reading…
Niantic is releasing a new Mega Evolution feature for Pokémon Go, bringing more powerful evolved forms of certain pokémon to the game. Mega Evolution was introduced to the mainline Pokémon series in Pokémon X and Y and continued in Sun and Moon, but it doesn’t appear in the most recent games Sword and Shield, which have a similar feature called Dynamax.In Pokémon Go, Mega Evolution is handled with a new resource called Mega Energy that is earned by battling Mega-Evolved pokémon in raids. You can Mega Evolve pokémon including Beedrill, Blastoise, Charizard, and Venusaur once you have enough energy. The pokémon will become much stronger in their new forms, so Mega Evolution is likely to have major implications for high-level play.Only... Continue reading…
For as long as esports have existed, fans have debated whether the video game-based competitions have counted as a “real” sport. But Champion is here to settle that debate with its new Gamer Collection, which will bring esports players into the sport and activewear fold with specially designed hoodies and sweatpants for gamers.“We wanted to create an unofficial uniform for gamers that modernizes the classic hoodie and recognizes that they are athletes with distinctive needs for their sport,” said David Robertson, Champion’s director of global brand management. The hoodie will be available in both zip-up and pullover versions, and it has a variety of gamer-focused features that should make it more comfortable for long... Continue reading…
Photo by Andrew Liptak / The Verge General Motors is offering a sneak peek of the two new versions of the Chevy Bolt, the automaker’s mass-market electric car that has been on sale since 2017. A refreshed Bolt and a larger Bolt Electric Utility Vehicle were first announced at the automaker’s “EV Day” earlier this year and are expected to enter production in summer 2021.The glimpse we get of both vehicles is only a fleeting one, which makes sense because it was offered during GM’s virtual fleet solutions summit meeting recently. It shows a silhouette of the refreshed Bolt, which then morphs into the Bolt EUV.The refreshed Bolt will feature a sportier look, new seats, adaptive cruise control, and a few other minor changes. GM bumped up the range in this past year’s... Continue reading…
Apple is planning to add augmented reality content as a companion to its TV Plus streaming service next year, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The AR content could be characters or objects from the show itself, which would then be overlaid onto the real-world environment via an iPhone or iPad app. Apple had originally intended to launch the feature this year, before the coronavirus pandemic delayed its plans.Bloomberg reports that the experiences are being designed to draw in and retain subscribers, as well as promote Apple’s AR technology. The report compares it to bonus content, like a director’s commentary for a TV show or movie:
Photo Illustration by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images The US government is announcing $1 billion in new funding for multidisciplinary AI and quantum computing research hubs today, according to multiple reports. A total of 12 hubs will be funded, each embedded within different agencies of the federal government. Their work will span a diverse range of topics, from using machine learning for atmospheric and ocean science, to speeding up high-energy physics simulations with quantum systems.The investment is part of a slow push from the White House to fund emerging technologies. Many policy advisors have worried that America is falling behind in AI and quantum research compared to rivals like China, and warn that these technologies are instrumental not only for economic development but also... Continue reading…
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Over at the New York Times, Andrew Ross Sorkin and Mike Isaac spoke to “more than a dozen people” familiar with Microsoft’s plans to buy TikTok in order to tell the full “political soap opera:”
How aggressively should a tech platform be allowed to compete before it becomes anticompetitive? In a summer overflowing with big issues for tech giants, from hate speech to election interference, competition might rank above them all. It was questions about competition that led the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google to appear jointly before Congress for the first time last month. And the discussion that followed may have lasting consequences for multiple ongoing state and federal antitrust investigations, as well the new laws that Congress is expected to draft in response.In recent weeks, the brunt of discussion about competition has centered around Apple. The company found itself in a new controversy over its App Store rules... Continue reading…
Image: Neuralink Elon Musk has said that his secretive neurotech firm Neuralink will demonstrate a working “device,” presumably a brain-machine interface, at 6PM ET on Friday. Musk has spoken repeatedly about his belief that BMI devices are needed to help humans keep up with AI by supplementing our brainpower, but right now, his goal is much simpler: to create an implantable device that lets people control phones or computers with their mind.Musk initially announced the August 28th “progress update” back in July, and has now offered more details on what will be shown. He says the update will include the unveiling of a second-generation robot designed to attach the company’s technology to the brain, and a demo of neurons “firing in real-time,” though... Continue reading…
At the tap of the button, the Zenfone 7’s rear cameras flip over to shoot selfies. | Image: Asus Just over a year after Asus charmed us with the flipping cameras on the Zenfone 6, the company is back with the Zenfone 7 and 7 Pro. Both devices still have rotating camera arrays like last year’s model, as well as the same massive 5,000mAh batteries. But this year, there are a bunch of new features including an extra zoom lens in the camera array and a new OLED display with a 90Hz refresh rate.Asus says the phones are planned for launch in select European markets on September 1st, but not in the US. Exact European pricing is due to be announced on that date. The phone is going on sale in Taiwan starting today. In that country the Zenfone 7’s price starts at NT$21,990 (around $749), while the Zenfone 7 Pro costs NT$27,990 (around... Continue reading…
Earlier this year LG was reported to be working on a dual-screen phone codenamed “Wing” with a swiveling design. Android Authority now claims to have an exclusive video of the phone in action.While a previous Wing mockup showed a smaller screen at the bottom with the larger screen positioned in landscape orientation, this video shows how the device could work with the main screen in portrait and the secondary screen off to the side. In the video, a driver is using the larger screen for GPS navigation with music controls on the second screen. Then, when a phone call comes in, it’s handled on the smaller display without obscuring the driving directions.It’s a neat use case that seems like it would make a lot of sense in this scenario. Of... Continue reading…
Data-mining firm Palantir has filed its prospectus to take the company public, and its S-1 confirms leaked information that showed the company has not turned a profit since its founding in 2003.Palantir plans to debut with a direct listing rather than selling shares in an initial public offering. It’s among a handful of tech companies that have taken this route to go public in recent years; Slack did last year, Spotify did in 2018, and Asana did earlier this week.The company lost $580 million in 2019, the filing shows, and in the first half of 2020 it has lost $175 million. The S-1 shows the company had 125 customers in the first half of this year, “including some of the largest and most significant institutions in the world,” the... Continue reading…
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As it predicted would likely happen, YouTube removed more videos in the second quarter of 2020 than it ever has, as the company leaned more on its algorithm in place of most of its human content moderators. That’s according to the Community Guidelines Enforcement report the company released Tuesday (via Protocol), which shows it took down more than 11.4 million videos between April and June. In the same period last year, YouTube removed just under 9 million videos.“When reckoning with greatly reduced human review capacity due to COVID-19, we were forced to make a choice between potential under-enforcement or potential over-enforcement,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Because responsibility is our top priority, we chose the latter —... Continue reading…
Verily Life Sciences, the health care company owned by Alphabet, is getting into insurance, the company announced today. Verily is launching a new subsidiary for the effort called Coefficient Insurance Company, which will be backed by the commercial insurance unit of Swiss Re Group.Coefficient plans to offer stop-loss insurance. The explanation for stop-loss is a little technical, but it boils down to this: Employers that pay for employee health claims out of pocket buy stop-loss insurance. Once they hit the predetermined point of money they pay for their employees’ health, the stop-loss insurance company pays the rest.Historically, Verily has been a turbulent companyInsurance is something of a departure for Verily. A previous... Continue reading…
In October 2016, a startup named Vue promised Kickstarter backers a pair of prescription eyeglasses that could double as wireless earbuds, a fitness tracker, and a smartwatch all at once, plus bone conduction speakers so nobody can eavesdrop on your music and calls. By 2018, $3 million later, the company hadn’t shipped a single pair.But fast-forward another two years, and Vue is now ready to sell you on the idea again. The new $179-and-up Vue Lite glasses ditch some of the fancier features to focus on Bluetooth audio, with standard speakers instead of bone conduction, a microphone for calls and your phone’s voice assistant, touch controls, and an estimated 3.5 hours of music playback on a charge. Image: Vue The... Continue reading…
Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Samsung announced its new Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra phones at its Unpacked 2020 online event in early August 2020. At this point, The Verge’s Dieter Bohn has now published his full review of the larger Note 20 Ultra. You can read that here or watch the video component of the review above. I’m just here to tell you where to buy them. Oh, and if you’re curious about when you can preorder the new Galaxy Z Fold 2, that’s coming on September 1st.Both Note 20 phones have already released, and if you placed a preorder, you can go ahead and redeem free goodies with your purchase. Buying the $1,000 Note 20 earned you a $100 Samsung credit that can be redeemed on its site or through the Shop Samsung app, and it can go toward “curated... Continue reading…
NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps | Image: NASA Two years after being unexpectedly pulled from a flight to the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps is now assigned to a new mission to the ISS. Rather than flying on the Russian Soyuz rocket as first planned, Epps will join the first operational crew of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner, a new private capsule developed to ferry NASA astronauts to and from the station.Epps was originally supposed to fly on the Soyuz back in June 2018Epps was originally supposed to fly on the Soyuz back in June 2018, as one of three crew members headed to the ISS for a six-month-long stay. That would have made her the first Black crew member of the ISS to live on the station long term. But in January 2018, NASA took Epps off the flight,... Continue reading…
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook is planning to expand its dedicated news section and says it is “considering” the UK, Germany, France, India, and Brazil as possible recipients, it announced Tuesday. The company’s timeline is vague: “within the next six months to a year,” so it’s curious why Facebook would announce something not yet imminent. But given Facebook’s volatile history with the news industry, and the trend toward requiring platforms to pay news outlets for their content, it’s possible the company is simply testing the waters for its next move.Facebook launched its News tab to US audiences in June, with plans to pay publishers that participated. To qualify as a partner, Facebook required publishers to pass its integrity standards and to have large... Continue reading…
Image: YouTube Samsung finally announced the follow-up to the beleaguered first generation Galaxy Fold, the Galaxy Z Fold 2, earlier this month, but the phone still isn’t out yet — Samsung promised to reveal more on September 1st. Ahead of then, though, it seems at least one Z Fold 2 has made it into the wild, as a Chinese YouTube channel has already posted a review of the upcoming foldable (via SamMobile).I don’t speak Chinese, so I can’t tell you what the reviewer is saying. But if you want to see what an actual powered-on Z Fold 2 looks like doing a bunch of different things, I recommend watching the whole video. And there’s a few interesting tidbits worth calling out.Perhaps most noticeably, the outer screen seems like a major improvement, as it... Continue reading…
Image: iFixit Tech teardown specialist iFixit has published a new article taking apart the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra, providing us a better look at what’s underneath the giant camera bump of Samsung’s $1,300 stylus-equipped smartphone and its cheaper sibling. Surprisingly, iFixit found that both phones are missing the vapor chamber and copper heat pipes Samsung had been using on previous phones to cool their processor during extended gaming sessions.Instead of copper, iFixit found a multi-layered graphite thermal pad inside each device during its teardowns and says that JerryRigEverything reportedly found one as well. But weirdly, at least one other Galaxy Note 20 Ultra does have the copper heatpipe and vapor chamber cooling, as you... Continue reading…
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Monday, Epic Games and Apple faced off in the first hearing of their ongoing legal fight, held in a public Zoom call because of the ongoing quarantine restrictions. The hearing sought to determine whether Epic’s developer privileges should be legally protected — initially by a temporary restraining order, setting the stage for a more powerful preliminary injunction that would remain in force for the duration of the trial.Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers did not issue an immediate ruling on the issue, but said she would be issuing a written order after the fact “and I will issue it quickly.”However, Judge Rogers opened the hearing by indicating she was likely to take action to protect the Unreal Engine, but let the Fortnite ban stand. “I... Continue reading…
So it looks like Disney Plus has revived a Mouseketeers special from the 1970s (via Gizmodo) because Gen X deserves to wallow in nostalgia once in a while. But! Not only is the 60-minute promotional show The Mouseketeers at Walt Disney World available to stream, but all the commercials that aired during the original 1977 broadcast are in there as well.Credit to artist / director Rob Sheridan for the discovery, which he posted on Twitter. Shake ‘n Bake, man. We didn’t know how good we had it. “I wish all archival TV streaming content up through the 90s was presented with the original commercials and badly dubbed from VHS, it’s such a more authentic cultural preservation,” Sheridan tweeted. Amen to that.
Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge In this week’s episode of “should the social network leave it up or take it down?” we have Facebook wading into another thorny moderation situation, this time in Thailand. According to a report from The Guardian, the company has removed a Facebook group with more than 1 million members after it was threatened by the Thai government for violating local laws around defaming the ruling monarch.The group, called “Royalist Marketplace,” was created in April by academic Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a critic of the Thai government and its king, Maha Vajiralongkorn, who now lives in Japan. However, on Monday, the group was restricted based on a legal request from Thailand’s Ministry of Digital Economy and Society. The group was dedicated to... Continue reading…
Unity, maker of the popular Unity Game Engine, has filed to go public at an incredible moment in time. Its chief rival, Epic Games, is currently busy arguing that Apple is holding the Unreal Engine hostage, and Epic will appear in court this very afternoon to demand a restraining order so Apple can’t cut off access to developers.What’s more incredible, though: the numbers revealed in Unity’s new S-1 filing show the company is far more of a formidable rival to Epic than we thought.We knew the early surge of interest in Unity may have forced Epic’s hand, first when Epic drastically dropped the price of Unreal Engine in 2014, and in 2015 when it started letting developers build with Unreal for free.But despite those moves, Unity says... Continue reading…
Photo by Roslan Rahman/AFP via Getty Images Apple’s worldwide retail network may be struggling during the coronavirus pandemic, but that hasn’t stopped the company from indulging in its penchant for pricey-looking, unique, and outlandish exterior design. The iPhone maker’s newest retail location, located in Singapore on the city-state’s waterfront and known officially as Apple Marina Bay Sands, can claim a world’s first title: it’s the only Apple retail shop on the planet that floats on water.The location, part of the luxury hotel and resort of the same name, is Singapore’s third Apple Store following Orchard Road, which opened as Singapore’s first in 2017, and Apple Jewel Changi Airport, located in the world-famous retail sector of Singapore’s transportation hub that also... Continue reading…
Photo by Brennan King / The Verg Samsung’s Find My Mobile feature is a handy tool to help you find a lost phone. With the latest app update, Find My Mobile will now work for Galaxy devices that aren’t connected to Wi-Fi or cellular. Max Weinbach of XDA Developers spotted the feature on Saturday.The “Offline finding” function will leverage a network of nearby Galaxy devices — it looks similar to the “Community Find” feature that Tile trackers use when they’re out of Bluetooth range. If your phone can’t be found by Wi-Fi or cellular connection, nearby Galaxy devices might be able to locate it.If you have offline finding enabled, your phone will also be able to scan for other devices, meaning you’ll be able to help others find their lost phones if you’re in range of the... Continue reading…
YouTube has banned the controversial creator Calvin Lee Vail, better known as LeafyIsHere, for repeatedly violating the company’s harassment policies. The ban follows big changes to YouTube’s harassment policy meant to deter behavior that in part helped creators in the commentary community like Leafy develop a following.Although Vail has a history of making videos that include offensive comments about other creators on the site, including a now-deleted video from 2016 that mocked the appearance of another creator, the termination only came after his channel amassed at least three violations of YouTube’s harassment policy over the last 90 days. That includes videos featuring cyberbullying (including malicious insults and name-calling... Continue reading…
Photo by Travis Dove-Pool/Getty Images The Republican National Convention officially kicked off Monday at the Charlotte Convention Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. It’s the third location of the event after it was moved twice due to restrictions resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. The convention is set to feature a mix of online and in-person events.WHEN IS IT?The convention is scheduled to last two hours each night, Monday through Thursday, starting at 8:30PM ET.HOW DO I WATCH IT?The event is available to stream on the RNC’s official Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube channel, and on Amazon Prime Video by searching for the “Republican National Convention.If you’d rather listen to the convention, you can ask your Alexa device to play it as well. Spotify is... Continue reading…
Amazon may be looking to bring the cashierless tech found at its Go convenience stores to Whole Foods supermarkets as early as next year, the New York Post reports.Amazon may start implementing the tech in Whole Foods sometime during the second quarter of 2021, according to the New York Post’s source. This technology, which is currently available in more than 20 Amazon Go convenience store locations, uses cameras, sensors, and computer vision to let customers walk out the store with groceries in hand and avoid cashier checkout lines.Amazon Go stores initially launched in 2016 for Amazon employees before opening to the public in 2018The New York Post’s source claims the rollout of the new technology into Whole Foods is one of two... Continue reading…
Photo by Alain Pitton/NurPhoto via Getty Images With schools across the country beginning virtual classes this week, videoconferencing platform Zoom had an unexpected gift for all the schoolchildren in the form of a lengthy outage that affected the ability to conduct meetings and webinars. The outage affected North America and some parts of Europe.
Image: Google If you check in on Google’s cute frog mascot that accompanies search results for weather in the Google app on Android, you might see that the froggy is wearing a mask, as first observed by some Reddit users over the weekend (via 9to5Google).The froggy is still doing things it did before wearing a mask, such as hanging up clothes, walking through a field, or riding a bike, but now it might also be wearing one of many different masks, as found by Verge staffers and seen in screenshots on Reddit and 9to5Google.You might not be seeing the mask on the froggy just yet, though — the frog wasn’t wearing one for some users on Reddit this weekend. Google tells The Verge the mask on the frog will be rolled out globally by the end of the day... Continue reading…
Blizzard is releasing an original animated series based on World of Warcraft, the developer announced today. Afterlives will premiere this Thursday during Gamescom 2020’s online celebrations.It’s a move that feels inevitable; Blizzard has long hyped its games, from World of Warcraft to Hearthstone and Overwatch, with beautifully animated shorts. They’re a way to hype characters or stories — promotional material that rarely has a long tail. Afterlives is its first original series that takes the lore of World of Warcraft and turns it into something standalone.For now, little is known about the series. “Just as our choices determine who we are in life – they pave the paths we take in the afterlife,” the teaser video’s description reads.... Continue reading…
Workers board up windows in the French Quarter in anticipation of Hurricane Marco and Tropical storm Laura on August 23, 2020 in New Orleans, Louisiana. | Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images The US Gulf Coast is bracing for back-to-back tropical cyclones forecast to batter the same communities. Tropical storms Marco and Laura are both on track to slam into Louisiana.“These storms are not to be taken lightly, especially because there are two of them and they’re going to impact so much of south Louisiana so close together,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said in a press conference yesterday. Edwards described the storms as a “one-two punch” that would pose a challenge the state has never seen before.Flash flooding could be a problemHurricane Marco was downgraded to a tropical storm as its winds weakened to 70 miles per hour yesterday. Still, the wind will be strong enough to push a wall of water onshore, potentially... Continue reading…
Photo Illustration by Ajay Kumar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds may have been eclipsed on console and PC by the flashier battle royale games it inspired, but the mobile version of the seminal shooter continues to be one of the largest and most successful games on the planet. And now it’s getting a 1.0 update that promises huge boosts to performance and other benefits just in time for a planned $2 million esports tournament set to kick off in November.The PUBG Mobile team, part of Chinese tech and gaming giant Tencent, says the 1.0 update is scheduled for release on September 8th, and it will bring up to a 30 percent increase in frame rate and a 76 percent decrease in lag, depending on the type of device you’re using. The game is also getting a number of visual and... Continue reading…
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Videoconferencing giant Zoom experienced widespread outages this morning, with users in the US and UK reporting problems joining video calls, but service has now been restored.DownDetector showed outages beginning in North America and some parts of Europe from around 9AM ET, with Zoom’s status page reporting problems with users joining meetings and webinars. At around 11AM ET, the company said it was “deploying a fix” and around 12.15PM ET it updated its status page to note that all systems are fully operational again.The company thanked users for their patience in a tweet, and noted that it was having some residual problems with customers signing up for paid accounts and upgrading accounts.
Foxconn is reportedly considering producing iPhones at the factory. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge A number of major Asian manufacturers such as Foxconn, Pegatron, and Luxshare are considering opening new factories in Mexico, Reuters reports, responding to the coronavirus pandemic and ongoing US-China trade war. Foxconn reportedly has plans to produce iPhones at the new factory, according to two Reuters sources, although Apple isn’t thought to be directly involved at this time.The plans are thought to have come in response to looming tariff barriers between the US and China. Reuters notes that locating factories in Mexico could allow companies to benefit from the new United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, allowing them to take advantage of tariff-free exports to the US under certain circumstances. The idea of encouraging firms... Continue reading…
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Overall Twitch viewership shrank slightly in July, and streams of top games like League of Legends and Fortnite fell with it. But in other corners of Twitch, viewership is still growing: the platform’s “Just Chatting” category saw millions more hours watched, and there were increases in Twitch’s “Creative” and “Music & Performing Arts” categories, too.Just Chatting grew to 176 million hours watched in July, up from 166 million in June, according to the latest streaming report from StreamElements and Arsenal.gg, and it remains the biggest section on Twitch. Meanwhile, the games mentioned above fell by 5 to 6 percent in viewership. Fortnite remains in third place with 91 million hours watched, down from 95 million in June.The continued... Continue reading…
Audible Audible, an Amazon company, is separating its exclusive audio content out into its own plan today with a cheaper subscription that doesn’t include audiobook access outside of its catalog. Audible Plus, for $7.95 a month, is the company’s cheapest plan, giving subscribers access to Audible’s collection of exclusive audio content, like podcasts. Crucially, they won’t receive any credits to purchase audiobooks or content outside that catalog.In the coming weeks, Audible plans to launch more new, exclusive content, including a podcast made with Pushkin Industries, author Malcom Gladwell’s podcast company, and the NBA about the continuing impact of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, as well as multiple audio narratives starring... Continue reading…
Google’s hidden Dinosaur runner game that pops up in Chrome when people are offline is a treasured Easter egg for Chrome users, but it was arguably in need of an update.Enter a modded version of the game called Dino Swords, created by a partnership between Internet collective MSCHF and 100 Thieves that gives the adorable, granulated T-Rex an assortment of weapons to use. Weapons are bound to various keys that players can use, but there’s a catch. Some of the weapons will lead to self-inflicted damage (I found out during one of my play-throughs of the modded version).Google’s “Dino game is the final holdover from the golden age of things like Addicting Games and Miniclip games,” Daniel Greenberg, MSCHF’s head of strategy, told The... Continue reading…
Based on wallpaper by Michael Gillett (Wallpaper Hub) TikTok has sued President Donald Trump’s administration for banning transactions with parent company ByteDance. “The [Trump] administration ignored our extensive efforts to address its concerns, which we conducted fully and in good faith,” TikTok wrote in a press release. “We do not take suing the government lightly, however we feel we have no choice but to take action to protect our rights, and the rights of our community and employees.”The lawsuit alleges that Trump’s order violates due process protections and offers no evidence to back up its claims that TikTok presents a national security threat. It also argues that Trump ignored TikTok’s cooperation with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which... Continue reading…
Photo: Volvo Luminar, a Florida-based startup that makes LIDAR sensors and other components essential for autonomous driving technology, is the latest transportation company to go public via a “reverse merger” with a special acquisition company, or SPAC.The company announced Monday that it was merging with Gores Metropoulos, a so-called “blank check” company sponsored by an affiliate of The Gores Group, a global investment firm. As a result, Luminar will become a publicly traded company listed on NASDAQ under the new ticker “LAZR.” The Gores Group has been called “the king of SPACs” for the number of reverse mergers it has pulled off.equity valuation of $3.4 billionThe combined company will have an “implied pro forma enterprise value” of... Continue reading…
Image: NASA Headlines abound this week about an asteroid heading toward Earth at perhaps the most opportune time during a terrible year: November 2nd, the day before the presidential election. It sounds too good to be true — an asteroid to wipe us all out before what will surely be a very contentious election process — and that’s because it is.This so-called “dangerous” asteroid, dubbed 2018VP1, has a 0.41 percent chance of crossing paths with Earth on November 2nd and entering our atmosphere — incredibly low odds. And even if it did take a turn and hit us, no one would be in danger. The asteroid is a measly 2 meters, or 6.5 feet, across, making it slightly smaller than a compact Smart car. If it did hit our atmosphere, it would completely... Continue reading…
If you’ve been tested for COVID-19 then you’ve probably experienced the unpleasantness of a nasal swab. Someone takes a long-handled cotton swab and sticks it up your nose — way up your nose — until it reaches the back of the mucus-cave that is your nasal cavity. Upon arrival they give the swab a good twirl to collect your secretions and beat a merciful retreat. I can say from personal experience that it’s a uniquely unpleasant sensation. It’s something that just feels wrong, like the opposite of scratching an itch.That’s perhaps why I was so unsettled by the sight of this autonomous nasal swab robot developed by Taiwanese medtech startup Brain Navi. Of all the entities I don’t want sticking cotton swabs up my nose, an industrial robot... Continue reading…
The wildly popular game Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is coming to mobile, but only in China. Games analyst Daniel Ahmad tweeted that Chinese entertainment company Bilibili has secured the rights to publish a mobile version of the game, but in China only.On its website, Bilibili says it will be the “exclusive agent” for a genuine mobile game in mainland China that Google is translating to “Jelly Bean: Ultimate Knockout,” with “jelly bean” a likely reference to the game’s bean-shaped characters. In China, the PC and PS4 versions of the game go by the same name.Bill Croft, co-founder of Fall Guys developer Mediatonic, confirmed the news Monday. “We can confirm Bilibili have secured publishing rights to a mobile version in China,” Croft... Continue reading…