The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In May, we saw the arrival of the first viral hoax of the COVID-19 era: “Plandemic,” a meandering 26-minute video which falsely asserted that vaccines “weaken” people’s immune systems and that wearing a mask would “activate” the coronavirus. Despite the best efforts of Facebook and YouTube, a single upload of “Plandemic” got 7.1 million views before it was removed.As I wrote at the time, the problem was not that the platforms were ignoring the video — it was that, at their scale, even the few hours it took them to research the issue were enough for “Plandemic” to get all the way around the world. “It likely won’t be the last piece of harmful misinformation about COVID-19 that becomes a blockbuster,” I wrote back then. “And when the... Continue reading…

Photo by Franziska Krug/Getty Images Novelist and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, whose ex-husband is Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, announced on Tuesday that she’s already donated close to $1.7 billion of her immense wealth in the past year. The causes and nonprofits she has so far chosen include those supporting racial, LGBTQ+, and gender equity, as well as those dedicated to combating climate change and improving public health and economic mobility, among others. Scott has a net worth of more than $60 billion, thanks to recent gains in Amazon stock.The announcement, made as part of a Medium post under Scott’s new name (taken from her middle name) following her divorce, comes after Scott last May signed The Giving Pledge. The campaign was launched in 2010 by Microsoft... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge You can now play games on Google’s Stadia cloud gaming service on your Android phone over 4G and 5G connections, though you have to opt in to an “experiment,” Google announced today (via 9to5Google). Since the service’s launch in November 2019, you’ve only been able to play Stadia games on your phone over Wi-Fi — that is, unless you tricked Stadia into playing over a cellular connection by tethering a laptop to a phone or hotspot, like my colleague Sean Hollister did as part of his review.If you want to opt in to the experiment, open up the Stadia app on your Android phone, tap on your avatar, select Experiments, and then “Use Mobile Data,” according to Google.Sean found that when he played Stadia over a 90Mbps LTE connection for his... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Television’s most important award might be going to its least important streaming service: Quibi. The service was nominated for 10 Emmy Awards, of which it’s almost certain to win at least one.Quibi — which one estimate claims retained only 8 percent of people who signed up for its three-month free trial — hasn’t suddenly started putting out content on the same level as Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones. Instead, the short-form streaming service is competing in a game that no one else is playing.At face value, Quibi’s nominations and near-certain win seem impossible: Quibi only has 16 original drama or comedy shows, has been around for just over three months, and has made about the same impact on the media landscape as a water balloon... Continue reading…

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg leaves the Elysee Palace in Paris, France after a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on May 10, 2019. Macron and Zuckerberg discussed the spread of misinformation and hate speech. | Photo by Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images A majority of polled voters, 64 percent, think Facebook should be held accountable for failing to warn users about opinion articles that spread misinformation about climate change, according to a survey by the think tank Data for Progress. Fifty-nine percent of respondents believe social media companies, including Facebook and Twitter, ought to label opinion articles containing false information about science and climate change.The poll, which included a group of 1,318 people representative of the voting population in the US, was first published by journalist Emily Atkin. Atkin published the results this morning on her newsletter, Heated, after readers submitted questions for the poll.A high-profile moderation incident that called... Continue reading…

Whenever I’ve tried using Discord’s mobile app to call a friend, I’ve found the audio quality to be pretty subpar. Sure, Discord’s desktop app gives you a few options, like simply using a better mic, and there are a few ways to add noise suppression — particularly if you have an Nvidia graphics card. But now, Discord has added the same background noise suppression feature to its mobile app that it rolled out on desktop in April, meaning your phone’s built-in mic or your earbuds should be able to take advantage as well.Like the desktop version, Discord partnered with Krisp.ai to create a virtual microphone that should intelligently filter out the background noise that might keep people from hearing your voice, like the clack-clack-clack... Continue reading…

Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images As Facebook battles mounting regulatory pressure, one of the most powerful judges in the country is facing renewed scrutiny over his ties to the company. On July 24th, a coalition of nine progressive groups, including Demand Justice, Freedom From Facebook and Google, and Accountable Tech, released a statement calling on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to recuse himself from a case involving Facebook due to his close friendship with the company’s vice president of public policy, Joel Kaplan.The case in question — a lawsuit brought by non-Facebook user Noah Duguid that argues Facebook violated anti-robocall rules by sending out unsolicited text messages — is minor in terms of platform regulation. But Kavanaugh’s decision here could... Continue reading…

In this week’s Vergecast interview series, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel talks with Wired senior editor Andy Greenberg, author of Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers.As the title describes, Greenberg’s book is all about a group of hackers inside the Russian government called Sandworm, who were responsible for damaging cyber warfare attacks in various countries over the past few years and forever escalated what we think of as “cyberwar.”Andy and Nilay discuss the origins of Sandworm, the intricacies and ramifications of their attacks, and what mysteries and situations are still left unsolved. Listen here or in your preferred podcast player to hear the entire conversation.Below is... Continue reading…

The nominations for the 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards are in, and once again, streaming services dominated the nominees. Netflix led the pack with 160 nominations, with Amazon and Hulu making waves, too. But there are also some big new names on the list this year, with Apple TV Plus, Disney Plus, and even Quibi picking up their first nominations for the coveted TV awards.Apple TV Plus picked up a total of 18 nominations across various categories, including two major nominations for prestige series The Morning Show: Steve Carell was nominated for Best Actor in a Drama Series, and Jennifer Aniston was nominated for Best Actress in a Drama Series. Billy Crudup and Mark Duplass were also nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Drugstore chain Rite Aid secretly deployed facial recognition software across a network of security cameras in hundreds of locations in the US, according to a new investigation from Reuters published on Tuesday. The company had been doing so for more than eight years, and it only recently stopped using the technology, it told Reuters, following a “larger industry conversation” around facial recognition and the grave concern over privacy risks and racial discrimination it presents.Yet, Reuters says Rite Aid initially defended its use of facial recognition as a deterrent against theft and violent crime, having nothing to do with race. The investigation found that not to be entirely true. “In areas where people of color, including Black... Continue reading…

An artistic rendering of the interior cabin of VSS Unity. | Image: Virgin Galactic I was standing inside Virgin Galactic’s tourist spaceplane with three translucent green heads floating in front of me. One of the heads was explaining how the white-and-teal passenger seats that dotted the walls of the cabin were made out of aluminum and carbon fiber materials. White disembodied hands gesticulated in the air as the head — which belonged to Jeremy Brown, Virgin Galactic’s design director — spoke.In reality, Brown’s head is neither green nor detached from his body. Brown, the other two virtual tour guides, and I were all wearing Oculus Quest headsets, which allowed us to meet virtually and peruse the cabin interior of Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane called VSS Unity. It’s the company’s primary spacecraft, designed to take... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As antitrust pressure mounts against Apple’s App Store policies, The New York Times is reporting on how vacation rental company Airbnb and fitness class service ClassPass have run afoul of the policies in recent weeks. According to the report, both companies started offering virtual services as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, only for Apple to get in contact to request 30 percent of sales made through their iOS apps.The Times also reports that Airbnb met with lawmakers from the House Judiciary’s antitrust panel, who will be responsible for questioning Tim Cook about the iOS policies in an upcoming hearing.The report initially claimed ClassPass had also met with lawmakers, but has since been corrected after ClassPass denied the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon’s Alexa app on iOS, Android, and Fire OS is being redesigned to focus on Alexa’s core functionality rather than its third-party “skills” or weather forecasts, TechCrunch reports.The home screen is where the biggest changes appear to have been made. For starters, the button to summon Alexa is now shown prominently at the top of the home screen, rather than the bottom. Then, instead of showing you a weather forecast and a list of recommended third-party skills, the app will now show a personalized list of Alexa actions — ranging from setting alarms, to accessing recently played music, or making a shopping list — which will vary depending on how you use the app. Image: Amazon The new app design places the... Continue reading…

Fool an algorithm today: wear a mask. | Photo by Robin Utrecht/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Face masks are one of the best defenses against the spread of COVID-19, but their growing adoption is having a second, unintended effect: breaking facial recognition algorithms.Wearing face masks that adequately cover the mouth and nose causes the error rate of some of the most widely used facial recognition algorithms to spike to between 5 percent and 50 percent, a study by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has found. Black masks were more likely to cause errors than blue masks, and the more of the nose covered by the mask, the harder the algorithms found it to identify the face.Error rates spiked as high as 50 percent for some algorithms“With the arrival of the pandemic, we need to understand how face... Continue reading…

A few minutes after I sent out Thursday’s newsletter previewing this week’s antitrust hearing, news came that the event would be postponed to accommodate the memorial for Rep. John Lewis. Indeed it was, but only for two days: the hearing will now take place on Wednesday, and you can stream it here.The bad news is that the entire tech-and-democracy world will now be sitting around for another two days twiddling our thumbs while we wait for the social networking event of the summer. The good news is that the extra time will give Congress more opportunities to consider their approach to navigating a strange hearing in which the CEOs of four very different but similarly successful companies will take questions about monopolies,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Spotify’s Mac and Windows apps can now start streaming to Chromecast devices, 9to5Google reports. Previously these apps have been able to control pre-existing Chromecast streams, but they couldn’t start them directly. Instead, you had to start a Chromecast stream on iOS or Android, before it could be controlled through the desktop app using Spotify Connect.You can start a Chromecast stream on the desktop apps the same way as a Spotify Connect stream — by clicking the “Devices Available” button on the bottom right of the interface. From there you can select between your streaming devices, which now include Google Cast as well as Spotify Connect-enabled speakers.The functionality, which arrives with version 1.1.38 of the desktop app, is... Continue reading…

Image: Logitech Logitech has announced a wireless version of its 2019 Pro X gaming headset called the Pro X Lightspeed. It’s almost identical to the wired version, complete with the same aluminum and steel design, but there are a few key differences. Going wireless isn’t even the biggest perk; it’s actually the USB-C charging. No other wireless gaming headsets that charge via USB-C come to mind, so in this regard, the Pro X Lightspeed in a league of its own.The other perk, of course, is being wireless. The audio and chat are delivered through its included 2.4GHz USB Type-A wireless receiver, and Logitech claims the headset can remain connected up to 13 meters away — if, for some reason, you find yourself 42 feet away from your PC or gaming console.L... Continue reading…

This year’s online-only Pokémon Go Fest took place over the weekend, and since it was the first one open to all players regardless of their physical location, it’s perhaps not surprising to hear that it was the biggest one yet. Niantic says “a record number of millions of trainers” took part from 124 countries and regions around the world, catching nearly a billion pokémon in total.The event involved new quest lines on each day, culminating in players battling Team Rocket leaders and catching Victini, a mythical pokémon that was made available in the game for the first time. Other features of the fest included new shiny pokémon and regional pokémon appearing outside their typical habitats, although not as many as might normally be found... Continue reading…

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images Staffers from Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential campaign must remove TikTok from personal and work phones, a campaign official told The Verge. That’s because of security concerns around the popular app.TikTok can access users’ clipboard content on iOS — potentially a problem for anyone using a password manager to log into secure accounts. Some politicians are particularly wary of TikTok because the video-sharing app is owned by Chinese internet company Bytedance.The White House is threatening a ban tooThe Biden campaign’s policy — first reported by Bloomberg — echoes that of other US government officials. The US departments of State and Homeland Security, the US Army, and the US Navy have already banned TikTok on government... Continue reading…

Image: Intel The executive in charge of almost all of Intel’s hardware, chief engineering officer Dr. Venkata (Murthy) Renduchintala, is leaving the company on August 3rd, Intel announced on Monday.His departure comes on the heels of Intel’s announcement that its next-gen 7nm chips are delayed until at least 2022, and after years of delays for the company’s 10nm processors as well, which bottlenecked advancements for much of the laptop industry. Intel did not cite a specific reason for Renduchintala’s departure.Intel poached Renduchintala from Qualcomm in February 2016, and put him in charge of everything from the design to engineering to manufacturing of Intel’s chips — and other hardware bets — under one group, the Technology, Systems... Continue reading…

Last year, Analogue announced the Pocket, a sleek and modern handheld designed to play all your old Game Boy cartridges. It was originally slated to launch this year, but due to the current state of the world, it’s now expected to debut in May 2021. Analogue cites “the unfortunate global state of affairs and supply chain challenges outside of our control” as the reason for the delay. But there’s good news. Analogue is starting pre-orders for the handheld very soon; they’ll open up on August 3rd at 8AM PT / 11AM ET.The company also revealed some slight design changes to both the handheld itself (the start, select, and home buttons have been moved to the bottom of the device) and its optional dock (Analogue says that “the USB-C insertion... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Shopping for a new set of wireless headphones can be a difficult and expensive journey. That’s not the case for today, as Amazon is selling the Beats Solo Pro for $70 off their usual price. Normally $300, they’re $230 in a wide range of colors, covering people who want a vibrant look or a muted one. These are Beats’ latest on-ear model, and they are packed with features, like active noise cancellation to silence distractions, a transparency mode to let you quickly hear what’s around you, and Apple’s H1 wireless chip, which grants enhanced wireless range and hands-free controls with “Hey Siri” support. Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge The “night black” model is seen on the left. The Ultimate Ears Boom 3 is... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / Alex Castro / The Verge How MSCHF managed to dominate the internet — with fun! Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google plans to keep 200,000 full-time and contract employees working remotely until at least July 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported. Other tech firms have announced long-term plans to keep employees working from home due to restrictions from the coronavirus pandemic, but Google would be the first to extend remote working into the middle of next year.According to the WSJ, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google parent company Alphabet, made the call last week following a meeting with top company executives.Google had previously announced plans to reopen some offices for a limited number of employees starting on July 6th, but it made the return to physical offices optional. Pichai made the decision to establish a more specific time... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix The fantasy realm of The Witcher is about to get even bigger. Today, Netflix announced a six-part live-action spinoff of its massively popular series, one that delves into a very different time period.Called The Witcher: Blood Origin, the series will take place “1200 years before Geralt of Rivia” and explore a period when “the worlds of monsters, men, and elves merged into one, and the first Witcher came to be.” It’s being helmed by Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, showrunner on the main Witcher series, and screenwriter Declan de Barra.It should be no surprise that Netflix is looking to capitalize on Geralt’s popularity. The first season of the show, which debuted last year, was the most popular in the streaming network’s history. Blood Origin... Continue reading…

The Refine Edge Brush on an iPad. | Image: Adobe. Photoshop is getting a couple of important new features on the iPad today: the refine edge brush and the rotate canvas tool.The refine edge brush is a big one for photographers, since it’s pretty much the only way to select the edges of fur or hair with any accuracy. The tool lets you brush around the edges you want to refine the selection of, and then toy with some controls to hone in on exactly what you want to select. The interface has been simplified for use with touch controls, but Adobe says the tool will deliver the same results as the desktop version. Image: Adobe Photoshop’s rotate canvas tool. Rotate canvas is the other addition. This isn’t as exciting of a tool, but it’s likely to be a lot more... Continue reading…

Samsung’s next big hardware event, Galaxy Unpacked, is confirmed for August 5th, and a new trailer from the phone maker suggests we can expect to see five hardware devices unveiled on the day.The silhouettes of all five are shown at the beginning and end of the trailer below. And judging by the shapes and the leaks we’ve seen so far, this is what we’re expecting to see: the new Galaxy Note 20 (regular and Ultra versions); the foldable Galaxy Fold 2; the Galaxy Watch 3; the bean-shaped Galaxy Buds Plus; and the Galaxy Tab S7 and S7 Plus tablets.So not quite a universe of galaxies, but a healthy number all the same.Every device on that list has been leaked in one way or another, but, as always, such leaks are provisional, and we’ll... Continue reading…

Samsung’s upcoming smartwatch, the Galaxy Watch 3, appears to have just leaked again, this time in an extensive hands-on video from YouTuber TechTalkTV, which we spotted via SamMobile. We already know a lot about the unannounced wearable thanks to a series of leaks over the past few months, but the video gives us our best look yet at the 41mm version of the watch.In line with previous rumors, including a series of photos TechTalkTV posted themselves last month, the Galaxy Watch 3 is shown with a physical rotating bezel (a popular feature that was missing from the Active models) and two buttons on the right of the watch face. As well as the 41mm version shown in the video which has a 1.2-inch display, there’s reportedly also going to be... Continue reading…

Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images Many election officials across the US are using email systems that could make them more susceptible to phishing attempts, according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal. Area 1 Security found less than 20 percent of 10,000 state and local election administrations had advanced anti-phishing controls in place, and about 666 of the election officials were relying on personal email addresses for election-related matters.Jurisdictions in several states were using a version of free Exim software that Russia’s GRU intelligence service had targeted for online attacks starting in 2019, according to the Journal. Security experts told the Journal it was unlikely that weak email security would lead to vote hacking, however, since the email... Continue reading…

Chelsea Klukas/ Lumen Couture At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, fashion designer Chelsea Klukas of Lumen Couture was planning to make some standard cloth face masks for friends. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends wearing homemade face coverings to prevent the spread of the virus.Lumen Couture has an entire line of tech-enabled fashion, including dresses, hoodies, and costumes, and Klukas shifted to masks when in-person events were being canceled and sales for other products were slumping. She decided to add the tech to make the face masks a little more fun.“I had the components around, so I put together a quick DIY YouTube tutorial for how to make them,” Klukas said in an interview with The Verge. “That really blew up, to the point... Continue reading…

Does a non-cardboard person get this excited for Cleveland’s baseball team? | Photo by Joe Sargent/MLB Photos via Getty Images As part of an attempt to make Major League Baseball games in this weird, coronavirus-shortened season seem as close to normal as possible, Fox Sports decided to create virtual fans, digital versions of cheering people who would react to the games broadcast on Fox the way real fans do.Let’s just say they didn’t quite knock it out of the park.As Nick Schwartz noted in USA Today, the virtual fans popped in and out of view during the broadcasts, appearing when cameras pointed toward the outfield, but then weren’t visible behind home plate, making for an unsettling experience. Ryan Parker of The Hollywood Reporter agreed:

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Staples is running an incredible sale on Apple’s AirPods Pro earbuds, bringing the retail price down to $200, or $50 off its usual $250 price tag. This the best deal we have seen yet for Apple’s flagship true wireless earbuds.Unlike its sibling, the AirPods, which has a hard plastic “one size fits most” design, the AirPods Pro design is an in-ear construction and with silicone tips, which included three different sizes to provide a customizable fit for your ears. The AirPods Pro also include active noise cancellation, better sound quality, and a wireless charging case. If you are an Apple user, my colleague Chris Welch thinks the AirPods Pro are the best wireless earbuds worth your money.The deal is available until August 1st, but we... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok has blocked several hashtags related to the QAnon conspiracy theory, but won’t be removing the videos using the hashtags from its platform, the BBC reported. The video sharing app has blocked the terms “QAnon,” “QAnonTruth” and the related phrase “Out of Shadows,” which are used by QAnon believers.But as the BBC reports, the QAnon videos themselves could still appear among TikTok’s For You suggestions or in users’ feeds, even if the hashtags are no longer visible.TikTok did not immediately reply to a request for comment Saturday.Other platforms have taken a harder stance against QAnon material; earlier this week Twitter announced it was banning 7,000 accounts, blocking QAnon-related links, and put restrictions on 150,000 more... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple manufacturer Foxconn has started building iPhone 11 units in a facility near Chennai in India, TechCrunch reported, the first time Apple has made one of its top-tier phones in that country.Apple has manufactured lower-priced iPhone models in India since 2017, and reportedly has been considering moving production of its more premium models there for some time.India was the second-biggest smartphone market in the world in 2019, ahead of the US and second only to China. According to TechCrunch, Apple plans to scale up production in India, which would in turn reduce how much it depends on China, where most of its iPhones are currently made. And while Apple tops the premium smartphone market in India, it has only about a 1 percent... Continue reading…

In a free-wheeling interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said his Twitter direct messages are mostly made up of memes, and he isn’t overly worried about them being hacked.Musk’s was one of more than 100 high-profile Twitter accounts compromised as part of a July 15th Bitcoin scam. The company has said the attackers may have downloaded the private direct messages and personal information of some people in the process, although Twitter said none of those were “verified” accounts, as Musk’s is.“I’m not that concerned about my DMs being made public,” Musk told Dowd. “I mean, we can probably cherry pick some section of my DMs that sound bad out of context but overall my DMs mostly consist of swapping... Continue reading…

Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images With Major League Baseball’s season shortened to just 60 games this year, Amazon won’t be broadcasting any New York Yankees games this season, Bloomberg reported.Amazon was slated to stream 21 Yankees games beginning April 17th with several high-profile games —including three against the Boston Red Sox— on the list. Amazon Prime members in New York state, northeast Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and central New Jersey would have been able to stream all 21 games.But the Yankees’ YES Network has opted to keep those games for its channel, and MLB rules limit streaming games that are shown on regional sports networks like YES.“Given the unique circumstances surrounding this season, YES Network will televise all New York Yankees games not... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 app has arrived in the Play Store, and a look at its features shows new gestures to silence alarms, take a picture, or answer an incoming call, 9to5Google reported (via XDA Developers)Rotating your wrist while wearing the watch will allow you to mute alarms as well as incoming calls, and clenching and unclenching your fist will answer a call. To take a photo or video with the Camera Controller app, make a fist, then open your hand. XDA Developers Gesturing will allow users of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 to answer calls and mute alarms And exploration of the app confirms new watch faces will be coming to the Galaxy Watch 3. According to 9to5Google, users will be able to shuffle... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A congressional hearing with the chief executives of Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple has been rescheduled for noon Eastern time on Wednesday. Originally scheduled for Monday, the hearing was bumped back a few days to allow members of Congress to pay respects to the late Rep. John Lewis, who died July 17th. Lewis will lie in state at the US Capitol next week.The House Judiciary Committee hearing with Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, and Sundar Pichai will focus on the various antitrust issues each CEO’s company is dealing with. It’s part of a yearlong investigation into the tech sector’s anti-competitive behavior. The hearing will be conducted remotely to adhere to coronavirus social distancing guidelines. Twitter CEO Jack... Continue reading…

Test tubes filled with blood samples, awaiting antibody tests in Amsterdam in July | Photo by Robin Utrecht/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images On January 8th, I asked The Verge’s science team to keep an eye on early reports of a new virus that had recently emerged in China. When I dropped an article about that new virus from The Washington Post in Slack, someone joked that 2020 was off to a strong start, clearly jinxing the entire year for the rest of humanity. Whoops.Jokes aside, this past decade, year, six and a half months has featured a disturbing flood of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad news. More than half a year in and not only do we still not know when this will all end, we’re also seeing a tsunami of new cases in the US and record-high hospitalizations.There’s so much we still don’t know, but we do know that this is going to keep going for a long, long time.... Continue reading…

Photo Credit: Patti Perret / Orion Pictures I spent last week burning through The Great, Hulu’s new-ish series that has Elle Fanning playing a very fictionalized version of a young Catherine the Great. The first season is about Catherine (not yet the Great) preparing to overthrow her husband, the emperor, and take power, which is a pretty amazing conflict to center on.The show is very reminiscent of The Favourite (it shares both a writer and a very identifiable shooting location), infusing this period drama with modern absurdity and some very over-the-top characters. Nicholas Hoult plays the amazingly pompous and bro-y emperor in a way that almost makes him feel like a tech CEO at times — at one point, he’s even wearing what looks a lot like a hoodie.I don’t know if the show can... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In the latest instance of iOS 14’s beta mode tattling on unexpected app behavior, some users reported that they were seeing the green “camera on” indicator while using Instagram when they were just scrolling through their feeds, not taking a photo or video.

A nice fit for small hands or if you just want a more portable on-the-go controller Continue reading…

Baseball is back. But the MLB will look a little different in the COVID-19 world, with empty stadiums full of silent cardboard cutouts instead of thousands of screaming fans in an effort to avoid spreading the virus. That is unless you’re watching on Fox Sports. Starting this weekend, the network will not only be piping in fake fan audio, but it’ll also be filling the stands with digitally rendered fans for its MLB broadcasts, starting with this Saturday’s Yankees-Nationals game.“We believe the crowd and seeing people in seats is part of a broadcast.”All 30 MLB teams will be relying on fake fan noise in the actual stadiums (sourced from Sony’s MLB: The Show games), along with the usual in-stadium announcers, walk-up music, and other... Continue reading…

uDrunkMate on Reddit If you’ve ever wanted to build a real and working Windows 95 PC inside Minecraft, now is the time. A new VM Computers mod has been created for Minecraft that allows players to order computer parts from a satellite orbiting around a Minecraft world and build a computer that actually boots Windows 95 and a variety of other operating systems.The mod uses VirtualBox, free and open-source virtual machine software, to run operating systems like Windows 95. Within Minecraft you simply place a PC case block and then use it to create virtual hard drives to install operating systems from ISO files. uDrunkMate on Reddit Doom running on a Minecraft PC. Naturally, the Minecraft community has been experimenting with the VM... Continue reading…

Image: WalkingCat on Twitter Earlier this week, we got our first look at what appeared to be a new Oculus Quest virtual reality headset thanks to an apparent marketing image shared on Twitter. Since then, more images — including ones of the device in the wild, and a rumored release date — have appeared online, indicating the headset could launch soon.The new images posted on Friday reinforce that this new Quest may look pretty similar to its successor but could come in a black-and-white color scheme. Take a look for yourself at these images shared on Reddit: Image: Tjtaco123 on Reddit The existence of these units, which appear to be some kind of testing devices, suggests the device could come out sooner rather than later.That sooner timeframe... Continue reading…

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge Many iPhone and iPad models let you unlock your device with your face using Face ID, but on a Mac, you still need to type in your password, set up your Apple Watch to auto unlock your Mac, or, depending on what model of Mac you have, use your fingerprint with Touch ID. But code reportedly discovered in the latest beta of macOS Big Sur by 9to5Mac suggests that Face ID could be coming to Macs at some point in the future, too.The code in the beta apparently references Apple’s codename for the TrueDepth camera, according to 9to5Mac. The TrueDepth camera is what enables Face ID in Face ID-capable devices like the iPhone 11 and the iPad Pro, but no Macs currently available have one. The code reportedly also has snippets mentioning the terms... Continue reading…

Photo by Jake Kastrenakes / The Verge Some users of Nest thermostats can no longer control the devices remotely, and the issue is forcing Google to replace the devices entirely if otherwise standard troubleshooting fails. The issue, which began popping up on Nest forums as early as last November and racking up more than 200 responses, is known as the “w5 error,” and it disables remote control of the company’s thermostats.Controlling the temperature of your home with your smartphone when you’re out of the house or away from the physical device is pretty much the sole selling point of the Nest thermostat. So that makes this a pretty serious issue, even if you still can manually adjust the temperature on the device itself. Google says it’s aware of the problem and that it’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge With his personal bankruptcy plan approved, here are some of the most interesting things that surfaced in court Continue reading…

Photo by David McNew/Getty Images A tribute book for Satoru Iwata, the beloved president and CEO of Nintendo who died in 2015, is getting an English release this spring, publisher VIZ Media announced today. The book, Ask Iwata, is a translation of Iwata-San, which was first published in Japan last year.“In this motivational collection, Satoru Iwata addresses diverse subjects such as locating bottlenecks, how success breeds resistance to change, and why programmers should never say no,” according to a summary of the book that VIZ Media shared with The Verge. “Drawn from the ‘Iwata Asks’ series of interviews with key contributors to Nintendo games and hardware, and featuring conversations with renowned Mario franchise creator Shigeru Miyamoto and creator of Earthbound... Continue reading…

Photo credit should read LOIC VENANCE/AFP via Getty Images The world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society has decided to take on systemic racism. The move by The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), publisher of the esteemed Science journals, comes after Black scientists came forward to protest racism within academia and the sciences, and organized a strike on June 10th, that AAAS joined. In a letter to its 120,000 members this month, AAAS CEO Sudip Parikh announced that the 172-year-old institution has come up with a plan to hold itself accountable for making itself and the sciences more diverse. By September, it will start sharing data on the diversity of its staff, fellows, and authors published in its journals.