Droidinsider | Tutorials, Examples UX/UI Designs

Another Neil Gaiman property is being adapted for the small screen. The Hollywood Reporter says that Netflix is closing in on a deal with Warner Bros. to adapt the author’s acclaimed comic series Sandman into a live-action TV show, in what is being described as “the most expensive TV series that DC entertainment has ever done.” Wonder Woman screenwriter Allan Heinberg will act as writer, producer, and showrunner for the series, with Neil Gaiman and David Goyer acting as executive producers. THR notes that a final deal hasn’t been finalized, and but indicates that the project is headed for a straight-to-series pickup. Sources told the publication that Warner Bros. (which has the rights to the show), opted to sell the series to another... Continue reading…

After detecting an unusual spike in energy consumption, Iranian authorities seized nearly a thousand computers being used to mine cryptocurrency, according to the country’s state media . Authorities discovered two bitcoin farms operating in abandoned factories in Yazd province, which caused a seven percent spike in the country’s power consumption this month. Iran’s central bank banned cryptocurrencies last year, citing concerns over money laundering. According to RadioFreeEurope , officials have said that the practice is making the local power grid “unstable,” and warned that people engaging in the practice could be cut off. Cryptocurrency is “mined” as high-powered computers solve mathematical problems, a task that requires... Continue reading…

Amazon is making it easier for users to find live television on its Fire TV units. The company says that it will soon roll out a “Live” tab that collects all of the various live programming across apps that users might have installed. Amazon describes the tab as a “single destination” that “brings together your live sports, news, and channels from select OTT services, streaming apps (e.g. PlayStation Vue), paid subscriptions, and over-the-air antennas into one consolidated view.” The tab is located on the TV’s main navigation menus, and the section will group the channels that you’ve recently viewed. It’ll also show off lists of other channels “which share similar programming,” like sports or breaking news. The tab isn’t quite live... Continue reading…

Apple’s head of services and programming says that the company has adopted a quality-over-quantity mindset when it comes to its forthcoming Apple TV Plus service. This weekend, The Sunday Times released an interview with Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, Eddy Cue, in which he talks about what to expect from the service forthcoming service, which is expected to launch later this fall. The revelation is a rebuke to Netflix programming model: releasing as much original content as it can to attract viewers. In the interview, Cue says that Apple won’t be “creating the most” original content for users, but will be “creating the best.” When asked about Netflix’s model, he notes that there’s “nothing wrong with... Continue reading…

Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of blood-testing startup Theranos, will officially go to trial in San Jose next year, according to the US District Judge Edward J. Davila of the Northern District of California. Federal prosecutors indicted Holmes and the company’s former president and COO, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani last summer, charging the pair with two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud. The pair face 20 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. According to TechCrunch , the trial will begin in August 2020, with jury selection beginning on July 28th, 2020. The Wall Street Journal also reports that prosecutors have collected millions of pages of documents, and that the... Continue reading…

The US Army will soon be equipping some units in the field with tiny personal drones, reports Stars & Stripes . The 1st Battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment will begin using the devices next month in Afghanistan as the military works to figure out the best way to use them. FLIR Systems has been testing the Black Hornet Personal Reconnaissance System with a variety of units — the US Army began testing the drone back in 2016 and 2017, and the company picked up a trio of big contracts with the American , British , and French militaries this year. At the end of April, the 82nd Airborne’s 3rd Combat Brigade began training with the drones, playing out a variety of scenarios in which the devices could be... Continue reading…

It can be difficult to find time to finish a video game, especially if you only have a few hours a week to play. In our biweekly column Short Play we suggest video games that can be started and finished in a weekend. Gato Roboto opens with what has to be the worst possible outcome of a cat stepping on a keyboard: the misstep causes a spaceship to crash into a mysterious abandoned planet. For players, though, it’s a great outcome, because you get to play a streamlined Metroid game as a cat in a mech suit. After crashing, Kiki the cat’s owner and partner Gary is pinned down on their ship. Unable to do anything except communicate with Kiki, he sends her off to find a way for them to get off the planet. What Kiki finds is a dilapidated,... Continue reading…

Synthesizers are mysterious and intimidating boxes to me, but electronic music company Ableton is setting out to explain and demystify the instrument. The company has created an interactive browser game called Learning Synths that teaches users the basics of synthesizers. The friendly tool is thoughtfully designed with fun illustrations and widgets that make it perfect for beginners to tinker around with. Learning Synths starts out with a lesson on amplitude and pitch, but if you want to skip ahead to synth concepts, you can click on the hamburger menu on the top left corner to learn about envelopes, LFOs, and oscillators. The lessons culminate in the Playground, seen above, where users can play with presets and sequences. The site works... Continue reading…

The Justice Department announced this week that former Equifax CIO Jun Ying has been sentenced to four months in prison for insider trading. He pled guilty earlier this year for for selling his stock in the company prior to the announcement that it had been hit with a massive data breach in 2017 . The Security and Exchanges Commission charged Ying with insider trading last year . The Department of Justice says that in August 2017, after learning about the breach, he began researching the impact that a similar breach had on another company’s stock price. Later that morning, he promptly exercised and sold all of his stock options, earning nearly a million dollars from the sale. In doing so, he avoided a loss of $117,000 that he otherwise... Continue reading…

It’s a good time to be an indie developer making games for the Nintendo Switch, and the most recent title to prove that point is My Friend Pedro . From developer DeadToast Entertainment, the formal entity by sole designer Victor Agren, and renowned indie publisher Devolver Digital, My Friend Pedro is an evolution of Agren’s Flash experience fans of Adult Swim web games might have played a half decade ago. Now as a full-fledged console title, it’s easily one of the most stylish and aesthetically distinctive games I’ve played in quite a while. Even as a $20 indie game meant to be played over just a few sittings, what makes the game truly shine is both its replay value and how it pushes you to engage with its perfection-demanding higher... Continue reading…

I love industrial design and have for as long as I can remember. As a child, I broke my dad’s Braun electric razor playing with the dial that raised and lowered the blades because the action was so cool and “clicky.” At school, I dreamed of being either a product designer or an architect. Those dreams were dashed when I flunked technical drawing (I was off by over 4cm and the tolerance of the test was less than 0.5cm) and failed my physics and maths exams, both of which are somewhat vital to designing beautiful buildings that don’t fall down. So for the past 30 years my inner industrial designer has lived vicariously through the career of my contemporary (he’s only a few years younger than me) and fellow Brit, Sir Jony Ive. Ive made... Continue reading…

I watched (most of) the new Bob Dylan documentary that Martin Scorsese made for Netflix the other week. It has some really relaxed and quirky behind-the-scenes footage of Dylan and the (often famous) people around him, along with some great performances. But there’s one thing about the documentary that is completely bizarre: portions of it are fake . Scorsese introduces viewers to a handful of talking heads who say they played a key role in documenting or creating the tour Dylan is embarking on, but in reality, they’re just actors. It’s not really clear why Scorsese did this (maybe it would be clearer if I had finished the film, but reviewers seem to say otherwise). It’s sort of just a prank, one you could seemingly go without finding out... Continue reading…

BMW unveiled some of its plans for electric vehicles earlier this week, saying that it would debut 25 electric vehicles by 2023 , as some nifty concepts, like its Motorrad Vision DC Roadster motorcycle and the sleek BMW Vision M NEXT concept sports car. The company decided to launch a website (via TechCrunch ) to have some fun with its futuristic-looking EV, which included getting Blade Runner 2049 composer Hans Zimmer to develop a science fiction-like sound for it. The car does look like something out of a cyberpunk movie or video game, and I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if it pops up as part of a product placement deal with some Hollywood studio in the next couple of years. EVs don’t produce any engine noise, so companies have been... Continue reading…

Prices tend to drop around each major US holiday, and with July 4th around the corner, we’re seeing that start to happen. And then there’s Amazon Prime Day 2019 , a shopping holiday that will begin on July 15th, though we expect to see a few early bird sales before then. We’ll be keeping you in the know about any good deals coming up, but these are the best deals that we’ve seen this week. Phones Sony’s Xperia 1 is now available for preorder. The price is $949.99, which is admittedly not cheap for a phone, but if you order before July 12th, you’ll receive a free set of Sony’s 1000X M3 wireless noise-canceling headphones with your purchase. Those usually cost around $300 or more, which is a great incentive if you were tossing around the... Continue reading…

The G20 Summit wrapped up today in Japan, during which US President Donald Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Following their meeting, Trump announced that the two countries would resume trade talks and that the US would hold off on implementing new tariffs indefinitely. He also indicated that US companies would be permitted to resume sales to Huawei, although it’s unclear when or how that will happen. In May, Trump signed an executive order that allowed the US government to block sales by US companies to foreign firms deemed a security risk. It’s not immediately clear what — or if any — steps have been taken to lift the restriction on sales to the beleaguered Chinese technology company. According to The Washington Post ,... Continue reading…

For just over a month, Twitch has been trying to track down a group of anonymous trolls who spammed the platform with violent footage of the Christchurch shooting in the wake of the attack. That hunt kicked off in earnest when Twitch filed suit against the trolls earlier in June, but new filings show the company has more clues to the perpetrators’ identity than anyone suspected, including specific email addresses for at least three people and Discord logs where the attack was organized. The evidence was submitted in an ex parte filing on Thursday, which included a deposition from an incident response engineer at Twitch . According to the filings, Twitch has identified a specific user it believes to be responsible for coordinating the... Continue reading…

Despite some new improvements to user privacy , Google’s popular Chrome browser has recently been lambasted in some quarters as problematical when it comes to privacy issues . These same articles suggest that if you’re concerned about the security of your data, you should try an alternative browser, such as Firefox, Safari, or Brave. Of course, anyone who has used a browser for any length of time will have built up a considerable library of bookmarks, preferences, and saved passwords. If you do move to a new browser, you won’t have to sacrifice your bookmarks; you can easily import them from Chrome into your new browser. Here’s how to do it. If you’re moving to Firefox : After you’ve installed Firefox, click on the “Library” icon to the... Continue reading…

Grubhub has been buying tens of thousands of domain names that resemble those of businesses they either work with or are pitching to get on the platform, reports New Food Economy . Those domains, of which Grubhub owns as many as 23,000, are used to resemble a landing page for the official business, complete with an online ordering form, despite the sites being completely unassociated with the restaurants themselves. Restaurant owners are calling the practice predatorial, noting that Grubhub is leading customers to believe they’re ordering directly from restaurants to help businesses avoid paying fees to Grubhub. The online ordering giant, the largest in the country, is the parent company of multiple food delivery services, including... Continue reading…

Bumble’s figured out a new way to bring video to its app: in-app voice or video calling . The feature applies to all of Bumble’s use cases, including Bumble Bizz for making professional connections; Bumble BFF for making friends; and Bumble for dating. The option to start a call will surface only once a match has been made. Women can call from that initial match while men have to wait until a woman has made the first move. The overall appeal is that people don’t have to swap phone numbers to chat, so if they unmatch, the other person loses their ability to make a call. Only one other major dating app, Badoo, allows for video calling within the app, which isn’t coincidental. The same man — Andrey Andreev — operates both Badoo and Bumble.... Continue reading…

My first time seeing a launch through the lens Continue reading…

Gaming company Valve pioneered VR as we know it today, creating a sophisticated tracking system and prototyping several headsets. It runs the popular SteamVR platform, and it’s partnered with HTC on the Vive system. But it hasn’t actually produced a VR headset. That’s changing with the Valve Index : a high-end, PC-tethered headset that starts shipping today. The Valve Index is specialized and expensive even by VR’s standards. It costs $999, which is more than twice as much as the $399 Oculus Rift or $499 HTC Vive. Like those systems, you’ll need a gaming PC to use it. If you need convenience and portability, it’s not the right choice. You can find headsets with higher resolutions or wider fields of view. But for people who spend a lot of... Continue reading…

EA Access will launch on the PlayStation 4 on July 24th, Electronic Arts announced today. The service — which has been available for Xbox One for nearly five years — gives players access to a massive library of Electronic Arts games. The subscription service is $4.99 per month and includes games such as Mass Effect: Andromeda, Dragon Age: Inquisition , Battlefield V , and A Way Out . Subscribers also get access to prelaunch trials and a 10 percent discount on EA digital purchases. EA revealed back in May that the service would finally come to the PS4 sometime in July . Subscribers who own EA Access on Xbox One will still need to pay separately for PS4 access; the service acts as a different account across various consoles. Continue reading…

At the risk of being reductive, there’s very little to say about Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night other than this: it is good. From the day this game hit Kickstarter more than four years ago, it’s always been clear what it was intended to achieve. If it managed that, it would be good. If not, it would be a failure. So yes, Ritual of the Night is good, and that’s because its developers pulled off their one job: revive the “Igavania,” a specific style of Castlevania game that producer Koji Igarashi worked on at Konami for a little over a decade. Beginning with 1997’s Symphony of the Night , Igarashi transformed the action-focused Castlevania series into a mixture of Metroid-style exploration with heavy role-playing elements. Two trilogies... Continue reading…

The ongoing US-China trade war under the Trump administration is threatening the livelihood of the last remaining television manufacturing factory in America, reports Reuters . Element Electronics, a South Carolina-based factory that assembles TVs for Walmart, is at risk of closure after a new proposal would impose a 25 percent import tax for all Chinese goods. Element opened its plant in 2012, supplying the majority of its TVs for Walmart’s Made in America initiative . The factory assembles its TVs using Chinese-made components by testing, packaging, and inserting memory boards onto the device. Though most of the TV itself made in China, Element is careful to specify on the packaging that its products are “Assembled in the USA.” (This... Continue reading…

Tetris Royale , a 100-player battle royale game, is coming to mobile devices in a partnership between N3TWORK and The Tetris Company. It’ll essentially be a mobile version of the Nintendo Switch’s impossibly addicting Tetris 99 . The game is the first Tetris game to come out of N3TWORK and The Tetris Company’s exclusive multiyear partnership, which means we’ll be seeing more Tetris games for mobile in the future. Aside from the 100-player competitive mode, Tetris Royale will have other modes like a Solo marathon mode and daily challenges where players can earn rewards to gain customization options, power-ups, and boosters that can be used in battle games. The game is currently in development and will be available for beta testing for iOS... Continue reading…

What a topical show we’ve got this week on The Vergecast . I’m going to be honest, there’s a little bit more editing than usual here. Initially, we began the episode with some overviews of the public beta software for Apple’s iPadOS , iOS 13 , and macOS Catalina . The Verge ’s Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Paul Miller discussed what’s different with the updates and how the iPad feels now compared to using an iPhone. My favorite part is when Dieter questions what it even means to be an iPhone. But halfway through the show, Apple put out a press release announcing that Jony Ive , Apple’s chief design officer and one of the most influential people in Apple history , will be leaving the company later this year to start his own design firm. It’s... Continue reading…

Phone-based augmented reality has started regularly showing up on apps like Snapchat, YouTube , and, of course, Pokémon Go . And virtual reality has found a reliable niche in gaming, film festivals, and arcades. Augmented reality glasses, meanwhile, are a rare sight in everyday life, but they hold an outsized place in our imagination. And in many ways, they’re the most exciting and scary of these three technologies. AR glasses promise to untether us from our increasingly hated phones. Google co-founder Sergey Brin once claimed that smartphones were an “emasculating” and isolating “nervous habit,” while products like Google’s Glass headset offered the promise of freedom and connection. The “everyday smart glasses” startup North calls them a... Continue reading…

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge ’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend. What to watch Yellow Submarine , a 1968 animated feature in which cartoon versions of The Beatles help the kindly citizens of Pepperland resist the authoritarian, fun-hating Blue Meanies. Based (very loosely) on a cheery, kid-friendly, sea shanty-like song that was originally released on the band’s 1966 album Revolver , the movie was the group’s third... Continue reading…

You’re likely familiar with Pi Day , perhaps the most popular of geeky holidays. Hooray. But I’m here to tell you that Pi Day is wrong — or rather, the entire idea of pi as a mathematical concept is wrong, and why you should be celebrating Tau Day, instead (which happens to be today!) It’s easy enough to see why people like Pi Day: the whole thing starts with a mathematical pun of sorts (The date is written as 3/14 in American notation. Pi starts with the digits 3.14. You get it.) It’s an easy, fun ritual to see how many digits you can pointlessly memorize of the famously never-ending, never-repeating number (even though 39 digits is more than sufficient for almost any calculations you’ll ever need). Plus pi sounds like pie, and who... Continue reading…

Trump called it the ‘eighth wonder of the world’ — then the factory began to shrink Continue reading…

They’re hard to beat, provided you never have to rely on their bad microphones Continue reading…

When Takashi Tezuka served as assistant director on the very first Super Mario Bros. for the NES, creating levels was a laborious, time-consuming process. First, a designer would sketch out their vision for a level on graph paper. Then they would bring the drawing to a programmer, who would try to translate it into the actual game. This process would happen multiple times, as the team adjusted each stage to get them just right. “That cycle really took a long time,” Tezuka explains. It’s a far cry from his most recent project where Tezuka served as producer on Super Mario Maker 2 for the Nintendo Switch, which launches today. Like its predecessor, it’s more of a tool than a game, an intuitive and playful way for players to craft their own... Continue reading…

As the news about Jony Ive leaving Apple sinks in , you’ll be seeing a lot of people weighing in on what the Ive era of Apple meant and what’s next. That’s all for the good, because Ive was remarkably influential — a singular person who drove the design not just for Apple’s products, but for the industry at large. The only person who could claim the same level of both fame and influence was Steve Jobs himself. It’s annoying to keep using the word “era,” but that’s the word. It sounds unnecessarily portentous for talking about designing computers, but it’s appropriate to the scale of this turnover. So, with Ive leaving, I’ll join in and say this: the era of the singular genius at Apple is over. The truth is, it’s been over for some time.... Continue reading…

Microsoft might be working on making Cortana better at holding conversations , but the software maker is also increasingly separating its digital assistant from Windows 10. This first started with the decoupling of Cortana from search in the recent Windows 10 May 2019 Update , and now Microsoft is bringing Cortana to the Microsoft Store as a separate app. A Cortana beta has appeared in the store , and it hints that the digital assistant could eventually not be built into Windows 10. Microsoft is using this beta app to update Cortana separately from Windows 10, so the digital assistant can supposedly get new features quickly. However, Cortana was always built as a web-based service, so that it could be updated without core Windows 10... Continue reading…

Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg made an appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival. In keeping with the spirit of the event, Zuckerberg brought some ideas. The big ones: Facebook was right not to remove the doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi . Zuckerberg said it should have been flagged as misleading more quickly, but defended leaving it up. (I basically agree with him on this one.) ”This is a topic that can be very easily politicized,” Zuckerberg said. “People who don’t like the way that something was cut...will kind of argue that...it did not reflect the true intent or was misinformation. But we exist in a society...where we value and cherish free expression.” But Facebook will treat deepfakes differently than other forms of... Continue reading…

During Thursday night’s Democratic debates , former Vice President Joe Biden pitched his “smart gun” policy on the national stage when asked how he would work to combat gun violence. “We should have smart guns,” Biden said. “No gun should be able to be sold unless your biometric measure could pull that trigger. It’s within our right to do that. We can do that. Our enemy is the gun manufacturers, not the NRA. The gun manufacturers.” It’s a policy Biden has been touting frequently along the campaign trail, but the first it’s been brought up throughout this year’s Democratic debates. Generally, Biden has been advocating for some form of regulation requiring gun manufacturers to include a biometric system that would prohibit guns from being... Continue reading…

Google announced on Thursday that it is introducing new transit crowdedness predictions in its Maps app. Now, you can see how crowded your bus, train, or tube is likely to be before heading out on your commute. Google is basing these details on past rides. For months, Google has been asking some people who use Google Maps to provide additional details about the level of crowdedness of their transit trips. After completing their trips, riders were given four options: many empty seats, few empty seats, standing room only, or cramped standing room only. Now, the company has collected enough data that it can begin offering predictions to customers who use Google Maps to plan their daily commute. The new feature is available starting today... Continue reading…

Today, Twitter is rolling out a new notice for tweets belonging to public figures that break its community guidelines. Now, if a figure like President Donald Trump were to tweet something that broke Twitter’s rules, the platform could notify users of the violation and lessen the reach of the tweet. In recent interviews, Twitter executives have hinted that a change like this would be coming soon . This notice will only apply to tweets from accounts belonging to political figures, verified users, and accounts with more than 100,000 followers. If a tweet is flagged as violating platform rules, a team of people from across the company will decide whether it is a “matter of public interest.” If so, a light gray box will appear before the... Continue reading…

Daily Steals is offering an exclusive discount to Verge readers on Beats Solo 3 wireless on-ear headphones. This model usually costs around $199.99, but the open-box (new condition) model is $129.99 with the offer code VERGEBEATS used at checkout. You can choose between glossy or matte black color options. The Solo 3s were originally released almost three years ago, which is an eternity in the tech world, though they feature the same W1 wireless chip found in Apple’s first-generation AirPods. It allows for fast, easy Bluetooth pairing to your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch. In our review , Vlad Savov noted in 2016 that these are “commendably comfortable and surprisingly good at isolating exterior noise.” Bluetooth wireless performance is... Continue reading…

The producers of the 2016 film Arrival have picked up the rights to adapt another short science fiction story: The Message by Ken Liu, which has all the hallmarks that brought Denis Villeneuve’s film such considerable acclaim. The story follows an archeologist who reunites with his estranged daughter during a mission to a distant planet to study a long-extinct alien civilization. The pair encounters some problems on the planet that relate to the demise of the aliens and their own relationship. The Hollywood Reporter says that 21 Laps and FilmNation’s Shawn Levy, Dan Levine, and Aaron Ryder will produce the adaptation and that they’re currently working to find a director and screenwriter for the project. Liu originally published the... Continue reading…

Following the death of popular YouTuber Desmond “Etika” Amofah on Tuesday , friends, fans, and other creators have opened up about the toll that being an online personality can take on a person’s mental health. Balancing an intense upload schedule and coping with increasing pressures from being a public persona can worsen anxiety and depression, many creators have said in recent years. Amofah’s now-deleted final video, which has since reuploaded to YouTube by others, directly discusses the negative effects of social media on his health. “It can fuck you up,” Amofah said. “It can give you an image of what you want your life to be and it can get blown completely out of proportion, dog. Unfortunately, it consumed me.” There had been... Continue reading…

My esteemed colleague Russell Brandom leads our policy team. He was struck by the disingenuous response from conservative lawmakers to the most recent video sting from Project Veritas, which presented YouTube employees in an unfair light. Russell asked if he could take over the column today, and I was happy to oblige. I’ll be back tomorrow with thoughts on Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance at the Aspen Ideas festival. James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas has been on a tear against Google lately, with the most recent salvo coming this Monday. Like most of O’Keefe’s work, it’s deceptively edited and doesn’t add up to much, but he managed to catch one executive in a pretty poor choice of words. In a hidden camera conversation with Jen Gennai,... Continue reading…

Hulu’s live TV subscription service experienced lengthy downtime last night during the first Democratic debate ahead of the 2020 US presidential election. Customers voiced their frustrations on Twitter as they tried tuning into the debate, which was hosted by NBC News and aired live on NBC and MSNBC. Viewers were met with “playback failure” and “error playing this video” messages on both mobile and TV devices. The scope of complaints makes it pretty clear that this outage was nationwide, and it came at a bad time. Thanks to Chris Andrews, who wrote about this for Consumer Press , for flagging the situation to me. Hulu’s live TV troubles persisted for over an hour, according to his report, before things were fixed at around 10:40PM ET. T... Continue reading…

Leading Chinese EV startup NIO has recalled nearly 5,000 of its ES8 electric SUVs after multiple reports of battery fires surfaced over the last few months in China. SUVs built between April 2nd, 2018, and October 19th, 2018, are included in the recall and will need to have their battery packs replaced. It will take two months to swap out battery packs on all of the affected vehicles, the company says. The issue is with the battery packs themselves, according to an investigation performed by NIO with the help of “industry experts,” the supplier of the pack, and “other concerned parties.” They found that a module in the battery pack was, in some cases, pressing up against a voltage sampling cable in the wiring harness. Over time, this... Continue reading…

Facebook has published new terms of service , giving more details on content removals, ad targeting, and users’ intellectual property rights. According to Facebook, the new terms don’t represent a change in how the platform actually operates, but they are aimed at giving users a clearer picture of the platform. The new terms take effect on July 31st. Much of the updated language is the result of specific work with European regulators, a Facebook representative told The Verge . “Several of the updates are the result of our work with the European Consumer Protection Cooperation Network [a division of the European Commission],” the representative said. Facebook’s work with the European group was announced in April , and the company agreed to... Continue reading…

Verizon’s 5G service is switching on today in Denver, Colorado, and it will be available in Providence, Rhode Island, starting on July 1st. If you live in those cities, the carrier says that you’ll see typical download speeds of 450 Mbps, with peak speeds hitting 1.5 Gbps. Verizon plans to charge customers an extra $10 per month for 5G service, but it’s currently waiving that added fee. Verizon shared the image above of an LG V50 ThinQ, one of the four 5G-ready devices on its network , passing 2 Gbps download speeds in Aurora, Colorado. This is a huge improvement over the already-impressive 1 Gbps result that The Verge ’s own Chris Welch saw last month in Chicago, one of two cities where Verizon initially launched its mobile 5G service.... Continue reading…

In some circles, author Joe Hill is known for his horror novels like NOS4A2 , The Fireman, Heart-Shaped Box , and others, but he’s also known for co-creating the fantastic horror comic series Locke & Key for IDW. He’ll soon be returning to the medium with a “pop-up line” for DC Comics. The announcement comes just a couple of days after DC announced that it was rebranding its comic lines along age groups , effectively shuttering well-known comic brands like Vertigo. While it seems as though its adult-oriented comics will live under the company’s DC Black Label line, the company is open to straying from that structure for specific creators in instances like this. Hill will oversee Hill House Comics, which will publish five miniseries, two... Continue reading…

The next big mobile Pokémon game is launching this summer. This morning, the Pokémon Company provided some proper details on Pokémon Masters , its upcoming collaboration with DeNA. In addition to a release window for the iPhone and Android game, we also learned a bit about how the game will play, and it sounds like a big departure for the series. Pokémon Masters takes place in a new region called Pasio, which is described as an “artificial island.” The real shift, though, is that you’re not collecting pokémon; instead, you’re forming teams with other trainers. “The idea was to create a gameplay experience where you could befriend not only pokemon, but trainers,” Pokémon Company president Tsunekazu Ishihara explained during the... Continue reading…

Warning: Significant spoilers ahead for Avengers: Endgame . Spider-Man: Far From Home is arriving in theaters facing impossible expectations. In story continuity, it directly follows Avengers: Endgame , released just a few months ago to record-breaking box office success . In terms of Spider-Man stories, it follows the visually and narratively dazzling Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse , which is still possibly the most ambitious Spider story to ever hit the screen. And in terms of its own internal story continuity, it follows the thoroughly enjoyable Spider-Man: Homecoming , an admirably human film that followed up the big, world-spanning action of Captain America: Civil War by scaling down the action and taking a more personal focus on... Continue reading…

Facebook is making promises that Libra can’t cash Continue reading…

Walking the show floor at Amazon re:MARS Continue reading…

Google is being sued in a potential class-action lawsuit which accuses the tech giant of inappropriately accessing sensitive medical records belonging to hundreds of thousands of hospital patients. The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, is the latest example of how tech giants’ forays into the trillion-dollar healthcare industry are being met by concerns over privacy. In recent years, companies including Microsoft, Apple, and Google have all pitched their services to medical institutions, promising that they can help organize medical data and use this information to develop new AI diagnostic tools. But these plans are often met with resistance from privacy advocates, who say that this data will give tech giants an unprecedented view into the... Continue reading…