The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The UK may reverse its decision to allow Huawei as a supplier for the country’s 5G network buildout after a report concluded that US sanctions would make the Chinese telecom giant’s equipment less safe. The report from GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre, leaked by The Telegraph and corroborated by Bloomberg, claims that the restrictions on Huawei’s operations “will force the company to use untrusted technology that could increase the risk to the UK.”The report “is likely to force Boris Johnson to abandon the company entirely,” according to The Telegraph. A source told Bloomberg that the British prime minister is preparing to phase out Huawei as soon as this year, although the exact timetable is reportedly yet to be confirmed.“We are... Continue reading…

Back in 2015, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said he had started a school to teach his five kids, eventually expanding it as a non-profit school for some children of SpaceX employees. He said at the time that his kids’ school wasn’t “doing things I thought should be done,” so he hired away his kids’ teacher to help found the Ad Astra School. It did away with formal grade structures and put a focus on problem solving, per Musk’s direction, and he paid for all the costs involved.Now, he’s given an initial donation to a new online, for-profit school in Los Angeles, according to an investigation by The Daily Beast. According to business filings uncovered by The Daily Beast, the Astra Nova School, which plans to open in September was... Continue reading…

Photo: Hulu If you have spent the holiday weekend watching the Hamilton movie on repeat, let’s just say I’m not judging you. At all. Polygon has an interesting analysis about how different the musical is on film.But if you’re looking for a break from Lin Manuel & co. and want something a little different to watch this week however, there are a few new originals on Netflix and Hulu worth checking out.The Baby-Sitters Club (Netflix, now playing)OK so maybe we’re not quite the target audience for The Baby-Sitters Club, but there is a great deal of nostalgia around this new show based on the beloved Ann M. Martin book series (that’s right, I said “beloved”). Polygon says the production meets the challenge of setting the series in 2020 “updating... Continue reading…

Artist(s) unknown, Oakland, CA | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Artists have turned boarded-up businesses into powerful Black Lives Matter art Continue reading…

Rocket Lab’s 13th mission ended in failure on Saturday, after the company’s rocket experienced “an anomaly” after launching to space. As a result, Rocket Lab lost its rocket, as well as all the satellites it carried on board.The company’s Electron rocket successfully took off at 5:19PM ET from Rocket Lab’s primary launch facility on the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. The launch seemed to proceed just fine for the first crucial minutes, but about six minutes into the launch, live video from the rocket stalled. At that point, Rocket Lab’s livestream indicated that the rocket started to lose speed, and the vehicle dropped in altitude.Rocket Lab eventually cut the livestream. Afterward, the company revealed that the Electron rocket had... Continue reading…

Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has been restored in India after being unreachable for many users there since July 1st, Android Police reported. Reports about what was causing the outage have varied. Some users reported the Indian government appeared to be behind the block, and others said they were getting what appeared to be DNS lookup errors, according to Android Police.DuckDuckGo tweeted that the service appeared to be restored in India as of Saturday morning.

Image: Pixar Like seemingly everyone else right now, I watched back through Avatar: The Last Airbender for the first time in years (actually, just the second and third seasons since my wife got through most of the first one without me) because it’s come back to Netflix. It’s been really wonderful seeing such a brilliant, funny, epic, and deserving show suddenly getting this widespread recognition.On (what is probably my fourth) rewatch, what really stood out to me is the incredible attention the show gives to building out vibrant, fascinating cultures throughout its world. The show’s protagonists are constantly traveling, yet even towns and characters that only show up for an episode get distinct traits and humanizing moments. It adds up to a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit says it’s releasing a fix for a piece of code that copied contents from users’ clipboards. Users in a beta version of iOS 14, which sends an alert when an app tries to copy clipboard information, reported receiving the alerts with each keystroke in Reddit’s iOS app.“We tracked this down to a codepath in the post composer that checks for URLs in the pasteboard and then suggests a post title based on the text contents of the URL,” a Reddit spokesperson wrote in an email to The Verge. “We do not store or send the pasteboard contents. We removed this code and are releasing the fix on July 14th.”User Donald Morton posted a video of the issue to Twitter:

Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images LinkedIn plans to stop its app from repeatedly copying the contents of an iOS device’s clipboard, after a user highlighted the seemingly privacy-invasive practice earlier this week. ZDNet reports that LinkedIn called the behavior a bug.The app copies clipboard contents in order to perform an “equality check” between what a user is typing and what’s in their clipboard, according to LinkedIn engineering VP Erran Berger. Berger did not say why this check was necessary. “We don’t store or transmit the clipboard contents,” Berger wrote on Twitter.The behavior was discovered thanks to a new privacy feature in iOS 14, which is currently in a limited beta for developers. The operating system now notifies users when an app copies something from... Continue reading…

After watching contestants keep their fingers attached to a phone screen for more than 70 hours, YouTube creator Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson called an early end to a massive competition originally designed with one winner and a $25,000 prize in mind. The result? Four winners, each walking away with $20,000 in hand.Donaldson’s “Finger on the App” was a one-time game designed in partnership with internet collective MSCHF. The rules were simple: be the last person to take your finger off a phone screen, and win $25,000. The game kicked off at 3PM ET on June 30th, and ran until Donaldson called an end to the madness on Twitter at 1:15PM ET today.“Dear the four remaining contestants with your finger still on the app, I’m ending it here,” D... Continue reading…

We already knew that Horizon Zero Dawn, long one of the PlayStation 4’s prized exclusives, would be making its way to PC. And now we know precisely when that will happen: the game will be released on August 7th. It’ll be sold through both Steam and the Epic Games Store for $49.99.Guerilla Games, the Sony-owned developer behind the hit title and its upcoming PlayStation 5 sequel, released a new trailer today for the complete edition of Horizon Zero Dawn. The video lays out a number of features and improvements coming to the PC version, including ultrawide display support, an unlocked framerate, dynamic foliage, deep graphics customization settings, improved reflections, and expanded controller options. It all looks fantastic in this... Continue reading…

Epic Games/Fortnite Fortnite’s Party Royale will air an in-game showing of We The People on Saturday, part of a series of conversations around race in America, the company announced Friday. The program, hosted by Van Jones of CNN, will include journalists Elaine Welteroth and Jemele Hill, and musicians Killer Mike and Lil Baby. The group will hold a discussion about systemic racism in media, culture, and entertainment.To watch We The People, launch Fortnite on Saturday morning, and select Battle Royale game mode. Enter the Party Royale playlist and go to the Island’s Big Screen. The event will get underway at 9:46AM ET, and will re-air several times throughout the day Saturday.Epic Games debuted Party Royale in April, a separate non-violent social space... Continue reading…

Image: OneWeb As part of a consortium that includes Indian telecom Bharti Global, the UK government will invest $500 million and take a “significant equity share” in space exploration firm OneWeb, it announced Friday. OneWeb, which has its headquarters in the UK, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US in March, after it was unable to secure financing. Bharti Global also will invest $500 million as part of the deal.OneWeb is one of several companies working on an Internet-from-space project, using a combination of low-altitude satellites to beam internet connectivity to ground terminals on Earth’s surface. It was slated to launch a constellation of 650 spacecraft, and its plans included providing internet coverage for the Arctic. So far,... Continue reading…

The Ananta is a 17.3-inch touchscreen portable display. Working from home (which many of us have been forced to do for the past few months, whether we want to or not) can be more productive than being in an office — provided you have a comfortable and functional place to work within your home. Unfortunately, for many who have been suddenly thrown into this situation, the best space they have to work is on a small laptop at a dining room table.If you’re used to working at a desk with a large monitor, having to do the same job on a laptop at a table can be frustratingly confining. And since you also need to use this space for other activities when you’re not working, it may not be feasible to set up a traditional monitor or desktop computer there.A portable, USB-C powered monitor might be... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Tomorrow is July Fourth, or Independence Day if you live in the US. Like all major US holidays, there are some good sales happening on tech that are worth mentioning. We’ve listed the best ones we know about below, broken up by category. Many of them are happening through tomorrow night, so it’s best to hurry if you want to get your shopping on. Though, some of them last for a few more days.ComputingAcer is offering a 20 percent discount on almost anything from its online store, including laptops, monitors, desktops, accessories, and more. Use the code JULY2020 at checkout to save. In terms of exclusions, certain products listed here can’t be discounted. Image: Lenovo Lenovo’s new Legion 5 gaming laptop is... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Despite all of the ills and upheavals that 2020 is bringing, there is at least one thing that we can celebrate: summer is here. And while your favorite sports team may be on hiatus, your vacation trip may be canceled, and your family get-together will have to wait, there are still things to enjoy and ways to relax. The staff of The Verge has gotten together to recommend some of their favorite gadgets, devices, and gizmos to help you have the best summer possible.Olympus OMD E-M10 Mark II camera Olympus OMD E-M10 Mark II. Sitting inside all day means that even the most simple and short visits outside can feel kind of magical and otherworldly. It’s fun for me to bring my camera, Olympus’ E-M10 Mark II, along for walks... Continue reading…

A massive laptop you probably don’t need Continue reading…

The Fitbit Inspire HR fitness tracker. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Antitrust regulators and consumer advocacy groups are increasing their scrutiny of Google’s planned acquisition of fitness tracker firm Fitbit.Google announced it was buying Fitbit last year for $2.1 billion and said it hoped to complete the deal some time in 2020. But it’s possible the acquisition will be delayed over fears about the search giant’s increased access to sensitive data from Fitbit’s hardware, including users’ heart rates, their fitness activity, and their sleep patterns.The EU has sent 60-page questionnaires to Google and Fitbit’s rivalsThe Financial Times reports that EU regulators have sent 60-page questionnaires to Google and Fitbit’s rivals, asking them to assess how the acquisition will affect the digital... Continue reading…

Image: Evo Fighting game tournament organizer Evo has canceled Evo Online and removed its co-founder and president from the company after serious allegations surfaced about his past behavior. The long-running esports event had previously been scheduled to take place in a new online-only format starting July 4th due to the coronavirus pandemic.Joey Cuellar “will no longer be involved with Evo in any capacity,” the company said. Tony Cannon, another of the organization’s co-founders, will act as CEO going forward. Cuellar apologized in a tweet, and said he was “not proud of” his past actions.The announcement of the event’s cancellation came less than 24 hours after fighting game player Mikey “Crackpr0n” Pham alleged that Cuellar had behaved... Continue reading…

Photo by David Cliff/NurPhoto via Getty Images Lime is relaunching Jump’s electric bike-share service in London in its first move since acquiring the struggling bike brand from Uber.To start out, the bikes will be available to rent in the Uber app only — they will added to the Lime app at a later date “following further systems integration,” Lime said. A few hundred e-bikes will be available at first, and will grow with demand, the company says. Pricing will be £1 unlock and 15 pence per minute after. The bikes will initially be deployed in Camden and Islington.The return of Jump’s e-bikes may come as a surprise to some who were pessimistic about the brand’s survival following Lime’s acquisition in June. The bikes were removed from all of their US and European markets after the... Continue reading…

A Captain America skin is now available in Fortnite, Epic Games announced today. He’s the latest comic-themed skin to be added to the popular free-to-play battle royale game.Captain America costs 2,000 V-bucks (about $20) from the Fortnite in-game store. If you buy the skin, you’ll also get Captain America’s iconic shield, which isn’t just cosmetic — you’ll be able to wear it on your back and use it as a pickaxe in-game. Captain America’s shield has actually already appeared in the game before — you could wield it last year as a special item in a limited time Avengers-themed mode, but you weren’t able to buy it to wear whenever you wanted.There’s also a new Captain America-themed fireworks emoteThere’s also a new Captain... Continue reading…

Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images Billionaire Peter Thiel, the most famous Trump supporter in tech, is distancing himself from the president’s reelection campaign. Thiel fears President Donald Trump will lose the race, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Thiel soured on Trump after COVID-19 left tens of millions of Americans unemployed; the billionaire believes that there will be a profound recession when November rolls around, making Trump vulnerable to challenge.Thiel was a vocal supporter of the president in 2016, speaking at the Republican National Convention in 2016 and donating $1.25 million that year to his campaign and other adjacent political groups and causes. Thiel, who earned his fortune co-founding PayPal before becoming one of the earliest... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Ubisoft is making a number of internal changes in response to allegations of misconduct against multiple employees, including two executives accused of groping and otherwise sexually assaulting female employees, that surfaced last week. The company has already placed those employees on leave and opened investigations into the abuse — now, Ubisoft is promising to undergo a “structural shift” to make a safer work environment and improve accountability.Ubisoft’s CEO Yves Guillemot outlined the changes an email sent to employees on Thursday, which Ubisoft also shared on its blog. “The situations that some of you have experienced or witnessed are absolutely not acceptable,” said Guillemot. “No one should ever feel harassed or disrespected... Continue reading…

Photo by Jacob King/PA Images via Getty Images The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has made 746 arrests and dismantled dozens of organized crime groups after intercepting millions of encrypted text messages, BBC reports. The messages were sent through EncroChat, a subscription-based phone system popular among career criminals. The NCA said in a press conference on Thursday that the operation has had “the biggest impact on organized crime gangs it has ever seen.”European law enforcement agencies appear to have been monitoring these conversations for months. French police first hacked the network, deploying a “technical device” to penetrate EncroChat communications after discovering that some of its servers were hosted in the country. Authorities first cracked EncroChat’s encryption... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter engineers have been working since January on an internal effort to replace problematic yet commonplace programming language like “master” and “slave,” CNET reported. It’s part of a larger effort among open-source developers who have been working to remove references to slavery from the programming community.Microsoft-owned GitHub made a similar move last month when CEO Nat Friedman said the company was replacing the term “master” with more neutral language. Regynald Augustin was one of the programmers who spearheaded the effort.

Anduril Industries US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has signed a deal with Anduril, the “virtual border wall” startup launched by Oculus founder Palmer Luckey. The Washington Post reports that the agency awarded Anduril a five-year contract to deploy portable surveillance towers meant to detect moving vehicles and human figures across the US border. The deal will see CBP purchase 140 towers in 2021 and 2022, supplementing 60 towers that were already part of a pilot program. A company executive told the Post that the deal was worth “several hundred million dollars.”Anduril has been working with CBP since 2018, and it’s secured additional contracts with groups like the US Marine Corps and UK Royal Navy. Its sentry towers use a variety of sensors,... Continue reading…

Amazon is making a new Fallout TV series based on the popular post-apocalyptic RPG games from Bethesda.There are virtually no details on the project, except that it’ll be an Amazon Prime original produced by Kilter Films. A report from The Hollywood Reporter adds that the project is coming from Westworld creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan as part of their overall deal with Amazon. Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard and Bethesda Softworks’ James Altman will also serve as executive producers on the project, which is still in the development stages.

Facebook will add messaging to its News Feed and Instagram’s feed to encourage people to wear face masks, the company said on Thursday. An alert will appear at the top of News Feeds on Facebook that directs users to the COVID-19 Information Center, and they will have links to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more information. Instagram will include a similar prompt with CDC links.The company says the move is in response to the increase in COVID-19 cases in the US. On Wednesday, the US set a single-day record, adding 50,000 new cases, as many states began reconsidering their June reopening plans. As of Thursday, the US has more than 2.7 million cases of COVID-19, and more than 128,000 people have died.The current CDC... Continue reading…

Photo by Jan Woitas/picture alliance via Getty Images BMW has detailed an overhaul to the digital systems that power its luxury vehicles, including a new map and navigation system, a revamped digital assistant, a “digital key” (first shown off at Apple’s annual developer conference last week), and wireless Android Auto. But the most interesting thing BMW shared about the changes is that the company is going all-in on in-car microtransactions.Cars are more full of computers and software than ever before, which has made it possible for automakers to add new features or patch problems on the fly with over-the-air software updates. This has also presented these automakers with new ways of making money. Take Tesla, which pioneered them and currently sells access to a variety of features after... Continue reading…

Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve a bill that would weaken Section 230 protections to ensure social media companies remove child abuse imagery from their platforms.Introduced in March by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), the EARN IT Act is intended to curb the spread of child abuse images on social media, but has undergone a number of significant changes on its way to a full Senate vote. The version that emerged from the committee today follows the legislative framework of FOSTA, or the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, from 2018. While FOSTA created a carve-out in Section 230 for online conduct that “promotes or facilitates prostitution,” EARN IT would create a similar carve-out for... Continue reading…

Image: Ubisoft Ubisoft’s new battle royale, Hyper Scape, was officially announced today in unconventional fashion: by rising to the top of the Twitch charts. Ubisoft has been teasing the game, which was leaked earlier this week, with a fake company website and via cryptic Twitter updates. Starting at 12PM ET, the game effectively went live in a technical test phase, when various Twitch and YouTube personalities were permitted to start streaming the game, and just 30 minutes later, it has amassed nearly half a million viewers. The publisher is planning an official reveal live stream for 2PM ET.Ubisoft’s strategy here is reminiscent of the abrupt surprise launch of Respawn’s Apex Legends and the Twitch-focused beta of Riot’s Valorant. Developers for... Continue reading…

2K Games has announced that it’ll sell the next-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X versions of the upcoming NBA 2K21 for $69.99, a $10 increase to the current-gen Xbox One and PS4 versions of the game. And it’s the first indication that the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 may be bringing a price increase from the standard $60 that major video games have been sold at for years when they arrive this fall.Most video games have been sold at a $60 price since the “seventh-gen” console era of the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3, and the Nintendo Wii, which was a $10 price increase from the $50 standard that had preceded it. But if NBA 2K21 is any indication, that $60 era is about to be over: assuming other game studios follow 2K Games’ lead here, the PS5... Continue reading…

Shane Dawson has apologized for his use of blackface, anti-Semitic and racist language, and disturbing comments about children and animals on several occasions in the past — and audiences have largely given him a pass. But after posting a new apology video on Friday that didn’t go over well with some high-profile viewers, that’s suddenly started to change.Target said it would stop carrying Dawson’s books. Makeup company Morphe reportedly cleared its shelves of Dawson’s products. YouTube temporarily suspended ads on all three of Dawson’s channels, including his main account that boasts more than 22 million subscribers. And that account lost nearly 1 million subscribers over the past week.“It’s something that I shouldn’t be able to get... Continue reading…

Image: Sony “I am not Iron Man,” I mutter to myself after crashing into a wall for the umpteenth time while waving my arms around. But it’s not for a lack of effort.Iron Man VR is a game with a simple premise: putting players inside the famous metal suit of Marvel’s Armored Avenger, letting you fly around and battle supervillains with laser blasts and gadgets galore. It’s also the first real console title from Camouflaj, which had previously developed the high-profile mobile game, République, back in 2013 (which has since been ported to PC, Xbox One, PlayStation, and a variety of VR platforms).“I am not Iron Man.”It’s the sort of idea that’s uniquely suited to virtual reality. What better way to capture a hero who’s most famous for their helmet... Continue reading…

Illegal e-waste dumping grounds in Yuen Long, Hong Kong. | Photo by Bruce Yan / South China Morning Post via Getty Images 2019 set a record for the amount of e-waste ever generated worldwide: 53.6 million metric tons of discarded phones, computers, appliances, and other gadgets. That’s more than the combined weight of all the adults in Europe. It’s also a 21 percent increase since 2014, according to a new international report.Just 17 percent of that waste was officially recycled, the report finds. The vast majority of it was either sent to a landfill, incinerated, or vanished somewhere into the bureaucratic ether when officials lost track of it. The report was meant to document global progress on getting a handle on e-waste, authors of the paper say. Instead, they found that the world has backtracked.Just 17 percent of that waste was officially recycledT... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge For the first time in its history, Facebook is facing an organized boycott from advertisers set to begin July 1st. It’s not from small companies, either — large corporations including Hershey, Honda, and Verizon have stopped their spending. Several companies joined the initiative after July 1st, including Sony, which reportedly said July 2nd it would suspend ads on Facebook and Instagram through the end of the month.Companies from a variety of industries, including health snack brand KIND and retailer Target, have followed suit. Target said it would use the July pause on advertising “to re-evaluate our plans for the remainder of the year,” suggesting the retailer could extend its participation in the boycott. KIND founder Daniel... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Congratulations! The world is falling apart (or at least feels like it’s falling apart), and you’ve decided to do something about it. That’s a commendable urge. Here’s where I tell you that you’ve also decided to do something very hard. Hosting a charity stream (on Twitch, YouTube, or on any other platform) is much more difficult than hosting a regular live stream, mostly because charity streams involve more moving parts — there’s the charity, the donation flow, guests, and, obviously, anything else you’re doing to make the experience special for your viewers.And it will be! More than anything, charity streams are about sharing a moment with the people who tune in. You will be overwhelmed, and it will be glorious. The other beautiful... Continue reading…

Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images For over a year, a mystery shopper known only as “John Smith” has been creating confusion across the web. He’s repeatedly visited numerous online stores, ranging from auto supply shops to home goods merchants, placed single items in multiple shopping baskets, and then left without buying anything. The Wall Street Journal has the story of the mysterious shopper, and it’s well worth reading to get to the bottom of what’s been happening.The remarkable thing about John Smith is just how relentless his online shopping seems to have been. On a recent Wednesday, he went on a spree lasting a total of 48 hours. One screenshot shared by FinnBinn, an online store that sells boxes for newborns to sleep in, shows 17 abandoned shopping carts from a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla said on Thursday that it was able to deliver 90,650 vehicles during the last quarter, despite its Fremont, California factory being partially shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. Wall Street analysts had expected the electric automaker to only deliver about 72,000 vehicles during the last three months, according to CNBC.This was the second consecutive quarter of better-than-expected delivery numbers from Tesla. The company delivered 88,400 vehicles in Q1 of 2020, down from the fourth quarter of 2019, when Tesla shipped around 112,000 vehicles.This was the second consecutive quarter of better-than-expected delivery numbersTesla said it delivered 80,050 of its Models 3 and Y vehicles and 10,600 of its Models S and X... Continue reading…

Facebook will pin a box with information about voter registration on the top of the News Feed for every US user who is of voting age starting tomorrow, July 3rd, the company announced today.The box, once it’s live, will show you information about how to register to vote, including a link to your state’s registration website or to a nonpartisan partner if your state doesn’t have voter information readily available online. Here’s what you can expect it to look like on your phone: Image: Facebook Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs and communications, first announced the voting boxes would be showing up on top of the News Feed in an open letter published on Wednesday.Facebook says it will host... Continue reading…

Lasso was an app designed to let users make short 15-second videos. | Image: Facebook Facebook is shutting down Lasso, the heavily TikTok-inspired video app it launched back in 2018. CNN’s Kerry Flynn spotted the notifications being sent to users, telling them that the app won’t be usable after July 10th, and advising them to download any videos they want to keep.Ex-TechCrunch editor Josh Constine notes that Facebook appears to be shutting down Lasso as its focus shifts to Instagram’s Reels feature. Reels is a video editing tool that lets users record and edit TikTok-style videos which they can then post to their Instagram Stories, send via DM, or post to a new section of the Explore tab called Top Reels. The feature launched in Brazil last year and expanded to France and Germany last week, according to TechCrunch.

Photo by ERIC BARADAT/AFP via Getty Images Sarah Friar, CEO of the neighborhood-focused social network Nextdoor, says the company is to blame following widespread reports that moderators were deleting posts that discussed racial injustice or voiced support for the Black Lives Matter movement. The app will be changing its policies to explicitly allow discussion of the movement in future, and will be offering new unconscious bias training to its unpaid moderators.In an interview with NPR, Friar said it “was really our fault” these posts were removed, and blamed the actions taken by the company’s unpaid moderators (known as “leads”) on a moderation policy that prohibited discussion of national issues in the app’s local groups.“Black Lives Matter is a local topic.”“We did not... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Programming note: The Interface is off Thursday. Back on Monday.I.Should Reddit pay its volunteer moderators? The thought had not really occurred to me until last week, when I joined a call with CEO Steve Huffman and his general counsel, Benjamin Lee. The executives were briefing me and some other reporters about a significant expansion of the site’s content moderation policies, which were unveiled on Monday and resulted in the removal of 2,000 subreddits, including the notorious forum for hate speech The_Donald.Reddit’s content moderation scheme differs sharply from the Facebook News Feed or the Twitter timeline. Instead of applying one set of rues for the entire user base, Reddit sets a “floor” of rules that no one can violate but... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The CEOs of Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Google will testify before Congress later this month to answer questions related to its broad antitrust investigation of Big Tech. The plans were first reported by Kara Swisher, before a spokesperson for the House Judiciary Committee confirmed the plans to The New York Times. Apple’s Tim Cook, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet/Google’s Sundar Pichai, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos have all agreed to testify.News of the July hearing marks a significant step in the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee’s inquiry, which is investigating different alleged abuses by each of the four companies. For Google, the discussion has centered on its control of the ad market, but for Facebook the focus has been its... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge With traditional trade shows like E3 and Gamescom cancelled in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Microsoft is planning to bring a slice of the show floor experience to your living room. As part of Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest, Microsoft will make dozens of demos for upcoming Xbox One games available to download for a week.In a blog post, Microsoft’s Glenn Gregory cautions that the demos won’t always be representative of the final product, since many of the games are some way off their release. That’s standard practice for show floor demos, of course, but it’s unusual for a major gaming platform to make unfinished games available to such a wide audience.There’ll be more than 60 demos available, and while the list is still being... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Google has discontinued its mid-range Pixel 3A and 3A XL smartphones, the company announced today (via Android Police). “Google Store has sold through its inventory and completed sales of Pixel 3A,” Google said in a statement to The Verge. “For people who are still interested in buying Pixel 3A, the product is available from some partners while supplies last.”That might be disappointing to hear for people who were on the market for a more affordable Google-made phone. In his review last year, my colleague Dieter Bohn found the 3A had an excellent camera, especially for its low price.The 3A is, in fact, listed as out of stock on the Google Store. However, as of this writing, there’s stock available on Amazon of both the 3A and 3A... Continue reading…

Image: Dark Sky Popular weather app Dark Sky, now owned by Apple, is keeping its doors open on Android for a little longer.The company said on Wednesday in an update on its website that it plans to keep the Android version going until August 1st, after initially announcing it would shut it down today, on July 1st. Presumably, the Wear OS version is still functioning as well, but we’ve been unable to check that. Both apps appear to have been removed from the Play Store, however, so you need to have the app downloaded or have downloaded it at least once in the past to be able to continue using it for another month, according to 9to5Google.On August 1st, all existing subscribers to Dark Sky’s Android version will receive a full refund — Dark Sky has... Continue reading…

Image: Crytek When Crytek announced that a remaster for the original Crysis would launch this year, fans were excited to see how much the game’s legendary graphics would improve — but a leaked trailer has left so many fans disappointed with the graphical changes that Crytek has now pushed the game’s release by several weeks.A trailer showing some gameplay and a July 23rd release date was leaked on YouTube, and the visuals left a bad taste in some fan’s mouths. Several commented how the game’s graphics remained significantly unchanged from the 2007 original; one fan even said the remaster “looks like original Crysis but with the lowest settings.”You can decide for yourself if the game looks too similar to a 10+ year-old game:Crysis, a sci-fi... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge UK regulators are scrutinizing a longstanding deal between Apple and Google over the default search engine in the iPhone maker’s mobile Safari browser, reports Reuters.According to an updated report compiled by the UK government’s Competition and Markets Authority, Google pays Apple a “substantial majority” of the £1.2 billion (roughly $1.5 billion) it pays every year in the UK alone for so-called default positions, in other words when Google pays a company to make its search engine the go-to one in a browser or other platform.The report says the deal creates a “significant barrier to entry and expansion” for Google competitors. The report also suggests either limiting Apple’s ability to monetize such deals or to give users a choice... Continue reading…

Microsoft is introducing a new Windows 10 Start menu design that will de-emphasize its Live Tiles. The software giant first hinted at the refreshed design earlier this year, and it’s arriving for Windows 10 testers today. “We are freshening up the Start menu with a more streamlined design that removes the solid color backplates behind the logos in the apps list and applies a uniform, partially transparent background to the tiles,” explains Microsoft in a blog post.Essentially, the reduction in the color of the blocky tiled interface on the Start menu will simplify it slightly and make it easier to scan for the apps you use on a daily basis. It’s a subtle change, but it certainly makes the Start menu look a little less chaotic and avoids... Continue reading…