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The Apple Watch’s fall detection has already been credited with saving lives, and now Google is applying that sort of thinking to car safety. According to XDA Developers , Google is at work on a Personal Safety app with “car crash detection.” With the help of various sensors including the accelerometer and even the microphone, Pixel phones will attempt to detect an accident. If one occurs, the phone will loudly sound an alarm, and if there’s no response, it will automatically call 911 and provide your location to emergency services in the US. XDA Developers managed to catch the Play Store listing that Google posted prematurely, which included several screenshots of the Personal Safety app. Based on those images, people will have more... Continue reading…

Dyson’s latest air purifier, the Pure Cryptomic, can eliminate formaldehyde that’s floating around in your home. It’s the main selling point that distinguishes this model from the presently-available Pure Cool and Pure Hot + Cool, which can only capture formaldehyde, not destroy it. But before you drop $649 on a formaldehyde-fighting device there are a few things that you should know. First, it is almost guaranteed that there is formaldehyde in your home. Formaldehyde is just about everywhere . It’s a chemical that’s found in your body, in the environment, and in furniture and wood products. People tend to hear about it in conjunction with health problems, and it’s true — when there’s enough of it in the air, formaldehyde can irritate... Continue reading…

Image: Evan Blass / Twitter Microsoft’s new Surface lineup appears to have leaked almost in its entirety, thanks to product images obtained by journalist and leaker Evan Blass. Blass posted a series of images to his Twitter account this evening featuring what he says are the upcoming Surface Pro 7, Surface Laptop 3 (13-inch and 15-inch), and an ARM-powered Surface 2-in-1 device. The images look authentic, and Blass has a storied track record of getting his hands on pre-release images of countless devices over the years. Blass also ended his series of tweets with yet another product announcement, “Not pictured here: dual-screen Surface,” although that seems to indicate Blass may have an image to share later. Microsoft is expected to announce all of these... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple’s bumpy rollout of iOS 13 has hit another roadblock in the form of major iCloud Reminders issues. Since the release of Apple’s mobile OS update last week, some users have reported problems trying to sync notes to the revamped Reminders app , which Apple redesigned this year to feature a new look and feel and some more robust organizational features. Other users are reporting missing lists or entirely deleted reminders, names of lists resetting to defaults, dates and times not transferring properly, and other syncing errors. Even Apple itself admits that reminders won’t sync across devices properly unless every single machine you use is running the latest software. Yes, that includes macOS Catalina, which isn’t out yet, in the event... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Today, Apple announced that Apple News Plus, its premium news subscription service, is now available in the UK for £9.99 a month and in Australia for $14.99 a month. It’s the first expansion of the service since its March launch ; previously, it had only been available in the US and Canada. The service seems to be exactly the same as it is in the US and Canada; while Apple does highlight major British publications such as The Times, FourFourTwo, and Empire and notable Australian publications such as The Australian , The Daily Telegraph , and Australian Geographic in its press materials, US and Canadian subscribers can already access those too. It’s a notable expansion for the service Still, it’s a notable expansion for the service, which... Continue reading…

Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge The US Trade Representative’s office has denied Apple tariff relief on five parts for its new Mac Pro computer, as reported by Bloomberg . Each of the imported parts — the optional wheels, a circuit board for managing input and output ports, power adapter, charging cable, and a cooling system for the processor — are now likely to be subject to the proposed 25 percent tariff on goods imported from China. Apple initially asked the Trump administration to exclude parts for its Mac Pro desktop from tariffs back in July , including the exterior enclosure, the Magic Mouse 2, and the Magic Trackpad. The office recently granted Apple exclusions on 10 different items , so not every imported part will be subject to the tax. The news comes on the... Continue reading…

Photo by Steve Dietl / Netflix A young hero must learn to use his exceptional powers to stop a terrible threat and save his friends, family, and possibly the entire world. It’s a pretty typical setup for a superhero origin story, but Netflix’s new series Raising Dion , which launches its nine-episode first season on October 4th, changes things up by making its hero a seven-year-old. Splicing family drama with comic-book action produces some engaging story beats, but the friction between the two genres eventually makes the show fall apart. Raising Dion follows Nicole Warren (Alisha Wainwright), who’s left raising Dion (Ja’Siah Young) alone after his brilliant meteorologist father Mark (Michael B. Jordan of Black Panther and Creed ) drowns saving a woman’s life. When Dion... Continue reading…

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images Amazon might be slowing down the expansion of its own Amazon Go locations, but the company is in talks to license out the technology that powers those cashierless stores to other retailers. Per a new report from CNBC , Amazon has discussed the possibility with Cineworld, which owns Regal Cinemas, and OTG, which operates mini-grocery stores at some airports. Concession stands at stadiums and baseball parks are another area of interest, according to CNBC, with Amazon hoping it can retrofit Go technology into these partner locations in as little as two weeks and have “hundreds” of stores using the scan-and-go checkout by the end of 2020. Amazon itself has opened 16 Go stores — 18 have been announced in total — and they join the company’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit has revised its policies to make cracking down on abuse easier. An administrator posted the new rules earlier today, saying that the “narrowness” of the earlier policy had reduced its effectiveness. These new changes broaden the definition of threats, harassment, and bullying, and they allow bystanders (not just victims) to report violations of the rules. Like previous changes, this gives Reddit greater leeway to police its platform, but it also creates confusion for users of the large and sometimes chaotic forum. As administrator Landoflobsters lays out, Reddit previously defined harassment as “systematic and/or continued” behavior that made people fear for their “real life” safety. Now, Reddit proscribes “anything that works to... Continue reading…

Image: Halide Halide has released a massive iOS update that offers extended support for the multi-lens camera systems on the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro . The most important new feature is the “Tactile Lens Switcher,” which lets you switch between the three lenses of the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max at will. This feature can be summoned by long-pressing the camera switcher next to the shutter button, then releasing when you hover over your desired lens. Image: Halide This lens switcher offers few quality-of-life tweaks that put it ahead of Apple’s native solution . For one, unlike Apple’s on-screen overlays in the Camera app, Halide’s options don’t obscure the viewfinder. Instead, the dial is accessible in the corner of... Continue reading…

Image: Rabbit TV (YouTube) It’s coming October 15th Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Investors weren’t interested in Tosh Velaga’s idea when he started pitching it this summer. Facial recognition software for retail stores to catch shoplifters made sense in theory, but people were skeptical it would work. So Velaga and his co-founder Igor Nefedov did what entrepreneurs do best: they pivoted. “We were like, ‘what if we repurposed this for something stupid, like AI that could detect the faces of investors?’” Velaga remembers. This month, the resulting project finally made it onto the Play Store. It’s called AngelFace , an Android app that lets users identify whether someone is a venture capitalist by capturing a quick photo of their face. According to Velaga, “You just hold your phone up to someone’s face for a second,... Continue reading…

Instagram Instagram might soon allow brands to set up reminder notifications about merch drops. The company announced today that it’s partnering with around 20 brands in the US to start, including Adidas, Highsnobiety , Chinatown Market, Revolve, and Huda Beauty. The reminder works similarly to one users can already set for more general launches in Stories, although this new sticker brands and creators can use is more specific and launches Instagram’s in-app shopping feature. The reminder will show up the day before the drop, as well as fifteen minutes before launch. Although this is just a test, it makes sense for Instagram to explore, given that artists and brands already use the platform to tease limited-edition merch drops. Right now, people... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple is continuing to update iOS 13 at a breakneck pace. On Friday, the company pushed out iOS 13.1.1 with a few bug fixes — and iOS 13.1 had only just launched on September 24th. Fast-forward to today, and Apple is already rolling out iOS 13.1.2 and iPadOS 13.1.2. It’s getting a little hard to keep these things straight. The newest update addresses a handful of issues impacting iCloud backups, the camera (“fixes an issue where camera may not work”), flashlight, Bluetooth, and the HomePod. It also patches up an unusual bug that “could result in a loss of display calibration data.” You wouldn’t want that happening to your new iPhone 11 Pro display, now would you? You should be able to find the latest iOS and iPadOS... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge At Google I/O in May, Google showed off an impressive new accessibility feature coming to Android 10: Live Caption , which can automatically transcribe spoken audio from videos or audio playing on your phone. My colleague Dieter Bohn spent some time with Live Caption when it was announced and found it to be one of the most exciting features coming to Android 10. It’s not just about accessibility, either; think of the moments where you’ve wanted to know what’s being said in a video but didn’t have headphones nearby. Now you can do it without annoying anybody with the loudspeaker, since Live Caption works even if the volume is turned all the way down. However, Live Caption wasn’t ready in time for Android 10’s release (despite it being... Continue reading…

Netflix has renewed its incredibly popular series Stranger Things for a fourth season, and it’s now teasing a world beyond the setting of Hawkins, Indiana, which fans have gotten to know very well. The company made the announcement today on Twitter in a brief teaser video. Stranger Things not set in Hawkins might sound strange, but after three seasons, it’s probably time to explore other areas of the show’s world. The last time Stranger Things tried to do this, however, people were divided about whether the episode fit within the series . There isn’t a premiere date at this time, but Netflix used the renewal confirmation to announce that co-creators Matt and Ross Duffer have signed a multiyear overall film and series deal with Netflix. w... Continue reading…

Levi’s is announcing new jackets with Google’s Project Jacquard technology, which turns a portion of the fabric on the sleeve into a touch-sensitive remote control for phones. Both versions are less expensive and much more like the original versions of the Levi’s jackets they’re based on than the first Jacquard Commuter Trucker Jacket, which Levi’s released two years ago . The standard Trucker Jacket will be $198, and a Sherpa Jacket, which adds insulation for colder weather, will be $248. They should also be more widely available than the Commuter Jacket in many Levi’s retail channels and on its website. The jackets are much more “normal” than the Commuter Jacket, thanks to two things: a new Jacquard Bluetooth module that’s smaller and... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2019 Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. One of the chief joys of the time travel subgenre is strictly mechanical: it’s all about the ways nonlinear characters let creators deconstruct a standard narrative, bringing different segments of the story together in unexpected ways. Construction-oriented movies like Timecrimes or Predestination scramble the order of the pieces on-screen, bait viewers to guess why certain things happen, and then slowly fit those pieces together into a startling whole. But the same thing can be done in movies without time travel, like Memento , where the audience just... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Tesla’s new “Smart Summon” feature is already causing confusion — and some minor fender benders. It’s another example of the real-world complications that arise from Tesla’s willingness to beta test features using customers. Smart Summon is the new name for Tesla’s autonomous parking feature, which enables a Tesla vehicle to leave a parking space and navigate around obstacles to its owner. Tesla owners who purchased the Full Self-Driving option on their car received it as part of the version 10 software update that went out last week. Using just a smartphone, you can “summon” your car to you from a maximum distance of 200 feet, as long as the car is within your line of sight. So, @elonmusk - My first test of Smart Summon didn't go so... Continue reading…

Verizon Communications has acquired all software and technology as well as “certain other assets,” from augmented reality company Jaunt XR. Jaunt, formerly a virtual reality startup, announced the news today. Notably, it didn’t say that Verizon was actually acquiring Jaunt, and the company didn’t confirm whether it will keep operating separately. Jaunt was founded in 2013 with the purpose of creating VR video. It released a 360-degree camera and worked on some of the best-known early VR video productions, but in late 2018, it shifted focus to augmented reality. The press release describes Jaunt’s specialty as “the scalable creation and distribution of volumetric video of humans,” which may hint at why Verizon is interested. The company’s... Continue reading…

Image: Amazon YouTube TV, Google’s paid TV streaming service, is now available on Amazon’s Fire TV platform. In a blog post , Amazon announced that the service is available now on a wide range of its streaming sticks and streaming boxes, and it can also be found on “Fire TV Edition” smart TVs, which have the Fire TV operating system built in. After a price hike that Google announced back in April , YouTube TV now costs $50 a month. The reason it’s taken so long for YouTube TV to arrive on Amazon’s streaming platform is that, up until April of this year , Amazon and Google were locked in a feud. Google refused to allow its streaming apps on Amazon hardware, and Amazon withheld Chromecast support from its Amazon Prime Video streaming app. YouTube arrived... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Earlier this summer, Apple announced a host of changes to its Maps app as part of the upcoming iOS 13 update. Now that the new operating system is finally here , the tech giant is beginning to gradually roll out those changes in the US. It started with California and Texas, and, as of this week, now includes the US Northeast. Some of the new features are on par with what Google Maps offers, while others still lag behind. For example, Apple Maps offers detailed transit directions in just 10 cities now, which, while incredibly useful, pales in comparison to Google, which has transit directions in thousands of cities and towns around the world. There’s a new feature called “Look Around” that lets you — you guessed it! — look around a... Continue reading…

Instagram is launching a new branded account today called @creators , which is meant to encourage wannabe influencers and content makers to keep creating for Instagram. The account page says it’ll address “tips, tricks, updates, IGTV, BTS (behind-the-scenes), access, insights, and tutorials.” Instagram-chosen creators, including dancer Susie Meoww and comedian Adam Waheed, will walk people through their process for creating content and offer advice that ranges from the equipment they use to the sound effects they like. The page also seemingly serves as a FAQ for Instagram. Its first Story highlight answers basic questions about verification, the algorithmic feed, and comment filtering. The account unsurprisingly focuses on IGTV, the... Continue reading…

Image: HP HP’s Spectre x360 13 has undergone a fairly drastic makeover for 2019. It’s still very much a Spectre: the premium 2-in-1 has glossy edges, a cleverly placed power button, and one USB-C port embedded into its two diagonally cut corners. But HP has cut away a lot of the excess from the old design, making its latest version smaller. Still, somehow, it feels bigger when you use it. That effect is achieved in part by its significantly trimmed-down top and bottom bezels, giving it a 90 percent screen-to-body ratio. The top bezel is 5.8mm thick, seemingly too thin to fit a webcam. But HP has engineered the world’s smallest Windows Hello-enabled IR webcam for that bezel. It’s 2.2mm thick, and while that’s impressive, I’m skeptical that such a... Continue reading…

In today’s digital age, it sometimes feels like hardware has taken a back seat to the software that drives our devices. Button of the Month is a monthly look at what some of those buttons and switches are like on devices old and new, and it aims to appreciate how we interact with our devices on a physical, tactile level. I think a lot about power buttons these days. With modern devices — especially smartphones — we don’t really use them as power buttons, because our phones are never really off. But that’s a double-edged sword, because while they don’t actually “power” on our phones, we press them more than ever: my iPhone X’s “power” button probably gets pressed dozens of times every day now. Power buttons are a subtle reflection of... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Microsoft is holding a big Surface hardware event in New York City on Wednesday, October 2nd. The company has been teasing this event continually on Twitter, and is even inviting Surface fans to attend. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will be in attendance, alongside Surface chief Panos Panay. It seems like we’re on the cusp on a significant event, perhaps as big or bigger than the Surface 2015 event when the Surface Book, Microsoft Band 2, Surface Pro 4, and three Lumia phones were introduced. There haven’t been any major leaks about what we might see on Wednesday, but rumors suggest we’ll see some refreshes of popular devices like the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, alongside a new mysterious ARM-powered Surface. The most significant part... Continue reading…

Image: HyperX HyperX’s first wireless gaming mouse , the PulseFire Dart , is now available to buy . As well as supporting charging via a USB cable, the mouse can also be wirelessly charged via the Qi wireless standard. HyperX is also shipping its Qi wireless charging pad, the ChargePlay Base, which is able to charge up to two devices simultaneously at 10W. The advantage of using the the common Qi standard is that you can charge the PulseFire Dart using any existing Qi chargers you might own, and you’ll also be able to use HyperX’s charging pad with your phone if it supports the standard. However, the charging pad is small, so unlike some wirelessly charging mouse pads, you won’t be able to use your mouse as it charges. HyperX says you should get 50... Continue reading…

With the barely believable Mi Mix Alpha and its wraparound display dominating attention last week, you could have been forgiven for not noticing the other phone Xiaomi announced at its event, the Mi 9 Pro 5G . Xiaomi has released a lot of phones that look and feel very similar this year, and frankly it’s getting hard to keep up. Another Xiaomi phone that I’ve been using in recent weeks, the Mi 9T Pro, very much falls into that category. Nothing about its spec sheet particularly stands out even within Xiaomi’s lineup, let alone the Chinese smartphone landscape at large. That I’m only getting around to writing about it this week is down to quirks of Xiaomi’s convoluted naming schemes and global release schedules. But I still think it’s one... Continue reading…

Nintendo has announced a new Brain Age game, bringing the brain-training series to the Switch for the first time. The phenomenally popular Brain Age games for Nintendo DS starred Japanese neuroscientist Dr. Ryuta Kawashima and featured various simple puzzles designed to help keep your brain active. Also sudoku. The latest entry has only been confirmed in Japan so far, where it’s called “ Train Your Brain: Nintendo Switch Training for Adults ,” which is the same title as the original DS game only with the platform swapped out. The original DS game was called Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! in the US and Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? in PAL regions. This won’t work so well with the Switch Lite Based on... Continue reading…

Stainless steel steals the show Continue reading…

Dir Gute Fabrik 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. For a game that’s a little experimental or offers a particularly unique take, it is often easiest to explain it by finding something to compare it to. That way, in a few words, you can roughly understand what sort of game it is. A Short Hike is like Animal Crossing plus The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Pear Quest is like an adventure game crossed with a Where’s Waldo? book. But for Mutazione, it’s difficult to find that comparison point. Mutazione is an adventure game in the sense that “adventure game” has become a... Continue reading…

Last-minute touches are made to the Starship prototype near sunset on September 27. | Pauline Acalin SpaceX CEO Elon Musk would like his Starship spacecraft to make it to orbit in six months, he said during an evening presentation on September 28. The event seemed aimed squarely at fans, with little new information and a lot of SpaceX history. “This is going to sound totally nuts, but I think we want to try to reach orbit in less than six months,” Musk said. “Provided the rate of design improvement and manufacturing improvement continues to be exponential, I think that is accurate to within a few months.” This is going to sound totally nuts During the presentation at SpaceX’s testing facility near Boca Chica, Texas, just north of the US-Mexico border, Musk also said that he expected the Starship prototype towering behind him to do... Continue reading…

This evening, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will give an update on the design and future of his company’s next-generation rocket, Starship, a massive vehicle that is meant to take people to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The concept for Starship has evolved in numerous ways over the last few years, and now Musk plans to reveal the vehicle’s latest blueprints. Musk is giving an hour-long presentation on the rocket at SpaceX’s test facility in Boca Chica, Texas, a tiny town just north of the Mexican border. SpaceX has been building lots of test hardware for Starship at the site, and the CEO will likely be surrounded by this shiny material during his talk. As you watch, keep an eye out for a large Starship test vehicle that’s meant to perform... Continue reading…

I’m filling in for Jake this week, and this is usually where he writes some pithy thoughts about a movie or show that he watched recently. I was really hoping that there would be a new Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker trailer out so I could write about that, but, sadly, there wasn’t. Although, if history is anything to go by, we’ll probably get one sometime over the next few weeks, so hopefully there won’t be too long to wait. I did watch Once last week. It was very cute, and the music was fantastic . It was also nice to see a movie that didn’t just go straight for a boy-meets-girl love story. Once ’s relationship between Guy and Girl was more complex, bittersweet, and honest than that. Check out nine trailers from this week below. F... Continue reading…

One of the big themes we’ve been tracking for a few years now is Amazon’s various attempts to make Alexa useful outside your home. Amazon has a very good value proposition for customers inside their houses: Echo speakers are great for music, timers and such in the kitchen, and smarthome controls. Amazon clearly has ambitions to make Alexa the leading platform for ambient computing . But to do that, it needs more ubiquity than it can achieve right now. That’s one reason that Amazon was so excited to announce a partnership with GM to make Alexa available on those cars. It’s also one reason I was surprised to see the company didn’t announce any updates to the Echo Auto . But the most obvious way to do that is to be the default assistant on... Continue reading…

Photo: Netflix At the press conference following the New York Film Festival press screening of the Netflix-produced feature The Irishman , director Martin Scorsese discussed the project’s long gestation, noting that he and star Robert De Niro had wanted to work together again “since Casino .” It sounded odd to hear it put that way, because before Casino , De Niro and Scorsese had one of the most prolific collaborations in American movies — to the point where during Casino ’s 1995 release, critics largely received it as an old-hat retread of Goodfellas . Now it’s 2019, Casino has a better reputation, and De Niro and Scorsese haven’t made a feature together in decades. That kind of time-passing blink is at the heart of The Irishman , even if its... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge | Photo by Joshua Lott / Getty Images In 2017, Tesla violated the National Labor Relations Act several times, Bloomberg reports, by threatening employees and retaliating against them, an administrative judge ruled today in California. Also, a May 2018 Elon Musk tweet — where Musk said that joining a union meant giving up Tesla stock options — was also illegal, the judge found. Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than when plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 21, 2018 Tesla fired one union supporter; the judge’s order says this person should be reinstated with back pay. Another... Continue reading…

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge The week on The Vergecast , we covered two events that happened simultaneously on Wednesday: Amazon’s fall Alexa and Echo product event and Facebook’s Oculus Connect virtual reality developer conference. Amazon had 80 announcements at its event in Seattle, Washington, so Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Adi Robertson, Ashley Carman, and Paul Miller run through the gadgets and what we know about them. Dieter was able to attend the event, so he talks about his experiences with products like the Echo Buds and the Echo Loop ring . At the same time, Facebook held its Oculus Connect conference in San Jose, California. Adi Robertson explains its new multiplayer VR world Horizon, its plans for AR , and Facebook’s acquisition of neural interface startup... Continue reading…

Photo: Well Go USA Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. “This is fucking wild !” a wounded yakuza member bellows to no one in particular, deep into the heart of Takashi Miike’s latest action-thriller, First Love . And he certainly isn’t wrong. The line may read like a self-congratulatory bit of meta-commentary, like Miike and screenwriter Masaru Nakamura praising themselves for the sheer extremity of the situation they’ve gotten their characters into. By the time he delivers the line, Miike and Nakamura have already crammed the film with warring Japanese gangs, a modern-day samurai, a ruthless assassin, an... Continue reading…

Oculus has spent years selling virtual reality fans on a diverse ecosystem of products. At last year’s Oculus Connect developer conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off a family of headsets for different kinds of VR: the low-end Oculus Go, the tethered Oculus Rift, and the midrange Oculus Quest. This year, Oculus’ message was subtler, but no less clear: there’s only one headset that matters for consumers, and it’s the Quest. Up until this point, Oculus has clearly explained why people should want its three flagship devices in their homes. (The Samsung Gear VR still exists, but Oculus admits it’s essentially dead .) The Oculus Go is cheaper and has its own ecosystem of video-focused apps and simple games, but it doesn’t offer... Continue reading…

Image: Valve The citizens of Half-Life 2 have it pretty rough. Not only are they being forced to live under an oppressive police state led by a multidimensional empire known as the Combine, but for the past five years, an unfortunate bug has left every NPC in the game unable to blink. RockPaperShotgun reports that the issue first seems to have cropped up in 2014, when Valve moved its games into its new SteamPipe content distribution system. It’s such a weird little bug that one user who reported it actually dug out an Xbox 360 copy of Half-Life 2: The Orange Box to verify that the NPCs actually did blink in the original game. Reports of the blinking bug first surfaced in 2014 Thankfully, with a patch released yesterday, the issue has now been... Continue reading…

Pokémon is entering the wild world of animal camming with a new “live stream.” Beginning at 6AM PT / 9AM ET on October 4th, The Pokémon Company will broadcast “live footage for 24 hours from a camera set up in Glimwood Tangle—a strange forest located deep within the Galar region.” Sure, it’s no bearcam , but it’s fair to expect a few early looks at brand-new pokémon. Pokémon Sword and Shield ’s release date is creeping ever closer: both games are set to launch November 15th on the Nintendo Switch. Will any of them top the surprise announcement of Sirfetch’d ? Or those unfortunately designed cream pokémon ? Hard to say, but dare to dream. Continue reading…

Image: Sony / Marvel Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios will make a third Spider-Man movie together after all. Sony and Disney have struck a new deal over Spider-Man, which would let the web-slinging hero return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “I am thrilled that Spidey’s journey in the MCU will continue, and I and all of us at Marvel Studios are very excited that we get to keep working on it,” says Marvel Studios co-president Kevin Feige, according to Variety . “Spider-Man is a powerful icon and hero whose story crosses all ages and audiences around the globe. He also happens to be the only hero with the superpower to cross cinematic universes, so as Sony continues to develop their own Spidey-verse, you never know what surprises the future might hold.” The... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge A newly announced iOS exploit could lead to a permanent, unblockable jailbreak on hundreds of millions of iPhones, according to researcher axi0mX who discovered it. Dubbed “ checkm8 ,” the exploit is a bootrom vulnerability that could give hackers deep access to iOS devices on a level that Apple would be unable to block or patch out with a future software update. That would make it one of the biggest developments in the iPhone hacking community in years. EPIC JAILBREAK: Introducing checkm8 (read "checkmate"), a permanent unpatchable bootrom exploit for hundreds of millions of iOS devices. Most generations of iPhones and iPads are vulnerable: from iPhone 4S (A5 chip) to iPhone 8 and iPhone X (A11 chip). https://t.co/dQJtXb78sG — axi0mX... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge German officials have shut down a criminal web hosting service that was operating out of a former NATO bunker, according to a report from The Associated Press . a Dutch man purchased bunker in 2013 According to the report, investigators tracked down a Dutch man who bought the bunker, based in western Germany, in 2013. The man had allegedly converted the bunker into a so-called “bulletproof” web hosting service, which was then used by illicit marketplaces for weed, synthetic drugs, and hacking tools. Investigators also reportedly linked the hosting service to a botnet attack on Deutsche Telekom. The AP reports that seven people were arrested at a restaurant near Frankfurt in connection with the investigation, which also included raids... Continue reading…

Photo: 8bitdo If you just picked up a Nintendo Switch Lite and are looking for a suitably adorable controller to match, 8BitDo has just the thing. Today, the company announced the appropriately named 8BitDo Lite, a rectangular gamepad that emulates the look of the Switch Lite so precisely that you might confuse it for a first-party Nintendo product. It’s available in yellow and teal — sorry, gray Switch Lite owners — and features largely the same buttons and functionality as the built-in controls, except with a pair of D-pads in place of the joysticks. Now, you might be asking why you’d need an extra for a device designed specifically for portable gaming. The most likely answer is for multiplayer play; if you want to get in some impromptu games of M... Continue reading…

Two more classic adventures to play on the go 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 Election , a 1999 political satire directed by Alexander Payne and co-written by Payne and Jim Taylor, adapting Tom Perrotta’s novel of the same name. Set in an Omaha, Nebraska high school, the film stars Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick, an energetic overachiever who irritates her smugly idealistic history teacher Jim McAllister (Matthew... Continue reading…

Image: YouTube YouTube Music is the latest Google app that will come bundled as part of Android. The company has announced that the subscription music service will be preinstalled on all devices that run Android 10 out of the box — and it’ll take the place of Google Play Music. Until now, YouTube Music has required a separate download from Google Play, but not anymore. The app will also come preloaded on new devices that ship with Android 9 Pie in the future. “Google Play Music listeners with new Android 10 devices can continue to enjoy Google Play Music by downloading it from the Play Store and logging into their accounts,” YouTube Music product manager Brandon Bilinski wrote in a blog post. Since the launch of YouTube Music, Google has said the... Continue reading…

NOAH BERGER/AFP/Getty Images People might be able to trek out to theaters to see some of Apple’s biggest movies before they hit Apple TV Plus. Apple is reportedly going to pursue a traditional theatrical release plan, according to The Wall Street Journal , which could go beyond what Netflix offers for some of its biggest movies. That means some films would stay in theaters for a 12-week period before they’re available to stream. Apple plans to test the theatrical release schedule with its upcoming movie from Sofia Coppola On the Rocks , according to the Journal . The company wants to release it around mid-2020, possibly following a premiere at Cannes, the report adds. On the Rocks is the first film to come from Apple’s partnership with critically adored studio A24 . A... Continue reading…