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FuboTV is the latest virtual TV service to introduce a sharp subscription fee hike, not long after YouTube TV announced that it was drastically increasing its subscription fees to $65 a month. The company sent out emails to subscribers today letting them know that standard plans are increasing from $55 a month to $65 as of their next billing cycle following August 1, 2020. As part of the hike, people on standard accounts will be rolled into Fubo’s Family Bundle plan, which includes three simultaneous streams, Cloud DVR Plus, and 500 hours of DVR space, according to the email. Fubo last increased the price of its standard plan in March 2019 , going from $45 to $55 a month. Other FuboTV customers posted screenshots on social media of... Continue reading…

Dreams , the expansive game creation tool for the PlayStation 4, is getting VR support. Development studio Media Molecule made the announcement on the official PlayStation blog, saying that PlayStation VR compatibility would arrive as part of a free update later this month. There’ll be new tutorials that teach you how to create VR content, and the update will also bring games and experiences that are ready to play right away. There’ll be a lot of flexibility in the interface: VR experiences can be crafted both in and out of the PSVR headset, and PlayStation Move controllers are optional. Sculpting with Move controllers “is a very one-to-one experience and lets you fully immerse in the creation process,” according to Media Molecule, which... Continue reading…

If you play Forza Horizon or Forza Motorsport , you have some freedom to personalize cars in the game, even adding your own custom designs. One popular example: players have used the feature to recreate the General Lee , the 1969 Dodge Charger from The Dukes of Hazzard , in almost every single Forza game since at least 2007 . But the General Lee famously includes the controversial confederate flag on its back — and Microsoft has just announced it will ban players who use that symbol (among others) in the game. In a statement posted on Twitter last Friday, Microsoft updated its enforcement guidelines to have a zero-tolerance policy for any player using the confederate flag or other symbols that represent “ notorious iconography ,” including... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok has gone viral — and then some. A spiritual successor to Vine and an actual successor to Musical.ly, the shortform video sharing app has swept the world in the past year. Like other social media apps, it’s frequently the source of viral memes, slang, challenges, and dances . You may have seen it on the news when teenagers used the app to spread the word about a plan to reserve tickets for a Trump rally (and then not show up), when lawmakers called for a national security review of the app , or when it launched last year’s runaway hit song , Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road.” Initially popular mostly among teenagers and young adults, since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, TikTok has exploded in popularity among users of all ages. T... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Qualcomm is announcing two new Wear OS processors today, the Snapdragon Wear 4100 Plus and the Snapdragon Wear 4100, the first major updates to its smartwatch platform since 2018. Qualcomm claims the new chips will have vastly improved speed, with a “significantly faster new processor,” and big jumps in performance for the GPU, memory, camera, and overall battery life. They’re big promises, but put simply, Google’s Wear OS badly needs this kind of hardware overhaul. The last major revision to the Snapdragon Wear lineup, the Snapdragon Wear 3100 , was a minor update to 2016’s Snapdragon 2100. In fact, given that the 2100 and 3100 have the exact same main processor, the debut of the 4100 marks the first concrete speed improvements for Wear... Continue reading…

Electric scooters have become an increasingly common sight on British streets, despite technically being illegal to ride there. | Photo by TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images Rented electric scooters will be legal to ride on some British roads starting this Saturday, July 4th, as part of trials to be held in cities around the country, BBC News reports . Around 50 councils are reportedly interested in hosting trials, with Middlesbrough listed as one initial site. The UK government is expected to make an official announcement soon. Privately owned electric scooters will continue to remain illegal to use on public roads. The move would mark a big step forward for electric scooters in the UK, which have been illegal to use on the country’s roads despite how common they’ve become in the US and other European countries. This is because the country’s preexisting laws treat them like traditional motor vehicles,... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple’s second-generation AirPods that include a wireless charging case cost $170 if you buy them new, but Best Buy is offering a very good deal on refurbished models if you want to save another $60. This refurbished set of second-generation AirPods is $110 , the best price we’ve seen yet, and they come with all of the original accessories. If you want to charge them wirelessly, you’ll need to use a wireless charger you already own or pick one up for less than $20. Best Buy claims that they are tested, though your mileage may vary in terms of whether there are scratches on the charging case. These are covered with a 90-day warranty through Best Buy. While that’s nowhere near as good as the one-year coverage you’ll get with buying a new... Continue reading…

This afternoon, SpaceX is set to launch a new GPS satellite for the US Space Force out of Cape Canaveral, Florida — part of an ongoing quest by the Department of Defense to update the GPS constellation already in orbit. This satellite will replace one of the older, less powerful GPS satellites currently in the system, maintaining the total number of satellites in space at 31. This is the third GPS satellite model of its kind to launch into orbit and SpaceX’s second time launching a GPS spacecraft. Called GPS III SV03, it’s part of a block of satellites known as GPS III, designed and built by Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin claims that compared to older GPS spacecraft, the GPS III satellites “have three times better accuracy and up to... Continue reading…

The Nod They pitched and host the show, but they don’t own it Continue reading…

The new 870 QVO will be available in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and — for the first time — 8TB configurations. | Image: Samsung Samsung has introduced the next generation of its QVO lineup of high-capacity consumer solid-state drives: the 870 QVO. It will be available starting on June 30th from Samsung and other retailers, and you’ll be able to choose from a few different storage configurations. The 870 QVO starts with 1TB at $129.99, moving up to 2TB of storage for $249.99 and $499.99 for the 4TB model. If you churn through a lot of data, you might be interested in the 8TB option that will be available in August, which is the first of this capacity Samsung has created. The price for the 8TB option isn’t public yet, though a leak on Amazon picked up earlier this month by Tom’s Hardware indicates it might cost $900 and release on August 24th. Lots of storage but... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The European Union has confirmed that American citizens will not be allowed to enter its borders as the bloc begins to ease travel restrictions imposed earlier this year in response to the pandemic. Travelers from America, as well as Brazil and Russia, have been barred from entry because of their countries’ inability to contain the spread of the coronavirus. The EU is easing restrictions to rejuvenate tourism Citizens from 14 nations, including Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and China — subject to a pending reciprocal agreement — will all be allowed entry for the first time since March as the EU attempts to rejuvenate the continent’s vital tourism industry. Despite the pressing economic need, though, the EU has judged that... Continue reading…

OnePlus has announced a new product line of cheaper phones called OnePlus Nord, with the goal of making the “premium OnePlus experience accessible to more users.” “We are immensely proud of our flagship products and will continue to create more tech-leading flagships for our users. Now we are excited to share the OnePlus experience with even more users around the world through this new product line,” commented OnePlus CEO Pete Lau in the announcement. OnePlus originally began by selling cheaper devices (the original OnePlus One started at just $299 ), but it’s become best known for its premium smartphones over the past few years (like the current OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro ). Those models have attempted to challenge phones from more entrenched... Continue reading…

You can choose from 10 dinosaurs, including Tyrannosaurus Rex, Velociraptor, and Triceratops. | Image: Google It’s one thing to read about the massive dinosaurs that used to roam the Earth; it’s quite another to imagine how they’d look stomping around your neighborhood. Google can help, though. The company has added 10 augmented reality dinosaurs to Google search, meaning that next time you’re looking for vital statistics on a Brachiosaurus or Pteranodon , you’ll also be able to get an idea of how these creatures looked in real life. Google started adding augmented reality animals to searches last year at Google I/O and has since introduced a veritable menagerie , covering cats, scorpions, bears, tigers, and many more. Now, a herd of dinosaurs has also been added to this list, each of which uses graphics developed for the Jurassic World Alive... Continue reading…

Image: Motorola Motorola has announced that the regular Edge — the cheaper sibling to its recently released flagship Edge Plus — will cost $699.99, which puts it at $300 less than the $999.99 Edge Plus. There’s still no release date, though, outside of the previously announced “summer” window. Motorola has also announced that it’ll bump up the specs a bit for the standard Edge. Instead of the originally planned 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, the Edge will now offer 6GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The Motorola Edge features a similar design to the Edge Plus — including the eponymous 6.7-inch “edge” display — but it achieves that cheaper price point by cutting down on some of the specs. The Snapdragon 865 on the Edge Plus is replaced with a slightly... Continue reading…

Image: Niantic Labs Pokémon Go creator Niantic Labs is partnering with Punchdrunk, the New York City-based production company behind seminal immersive theater piece Sleep No More . The partnership will see both companies work toward “developing multiple projects that will reinvent storytelling for a 21st century audience and further expand the horizon of interactive entertainment.” Sleep No More , launched in 2011, is an immersive theater production that lets audiences walk through a series of rooms and experience various storylines and other elements of the production at their own pace. Influenced in part by haunted houses and other nonlinear live productions, immersive theater sounds like a prime fit for augmented reality because it could allow for Niantic... Continue reading…

Recently leaked press images have lead to speculation of a July 22nd launch. | Image: Evan Blass Several software features from Samsung’s unannounced Galaxy Watch 3 have leaked, after the smartwatch’s firmware was downloaded early by XDA-Developers’ Max Weinbach . According to Weinbach’s sleuthing, Samsung’s unannounced smartwatch could include more customizable watchfaces, alongside updates to its music, email, and calendar apps. Watchfaces are seeing some of the biggest software changes. Weinbach says there are new designs to choose from , and some of these will include a feature called “ informative digital edge ,” where custom details like your heart rate or current steps can be shown around the edges of the watchface. I really like this one https://t.co/RoWsuuKBQk pic.twitter.com/vvx9AtxQyS — Max Weinbach (@MaxWinebach) June 30,... 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 will look at what some of those buttons and switches are like on devices old and new to appreciate how we interact with them on a physical, tactile level. It goes by many names : the TrackPoint, the nub, the mouse nipple, the pointing stick, the weird red dot on your keyboard. Love it or hate it, the famous — or infamous — mouse solution has practically become the symbol for ThinkPad’s business-focused laptops. It’s a well thought out, but ultimately failed alternative to the now-ubiquitous trackpad. But there’s an argument to be made that it might actually be a better form of mouse for laptops, as... 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. The goal of the Stop Hate for Profit campaign is to pressure the social media behemoth into changing how it handles hate speech and misinformation, including often incendiary posts from President Trump . The companies pledge to stop advertising on Facebook and Instagram for at least a month. Some companies have taken the boycott a step further, pulling advertising from all (or most) social media platforms — not just Facebook — and that list includes Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and Unilever. Microsoft has... Continue reading…

The TVs will include a push-to-talk remote for use with Vizio’s voice controls. | Image: Vizio First announced back at CES, Vizio’s latest lineup of 4K TVs is starting to roll out to retailers. The company’s first OLED model will take a little longer and isn’t expected to ship until the fall, however. Still, the other sets in the 2020 family — Vizio is confusingly calling it the 2021 lineup for some reason — should offer excellent picture quality and be near the top of your list if you’re planning to upgrade your TV for the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X this holiday. As before, the flagship LED remains the P-Series Quantum X, which can hit up to 3000 nits of peak brightness and comes in 65 ($1,499.99), 75 ($1,999.99), and 85-inch ($2,999) sizes. Vizio says the entire panel can reach up to 800 nits of brightness. The standard... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Over the weekend, lots of sites reported that Apple analyst Ming-chi Kuo is claiming that the iPhones due to be released later this year won’t have chargers or EarPods in the box. If you want to know what most tech bloggers thought of the rumor, you can head over here to see all the tweets , almost all of which amount to “that sounds like a bad, user-hostile thing to do.” I say good: drop the in-box charger (but I have a couple requests). The clearest piece I’ve seen about pulling the charger out of the box comes from venture capitalist MG Siegler . He points out that there are four reasons that Apple might have for doing this: increased margins, shipping costs, the transition to a future no-port iPhone, and the environment. That list, for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Spotify is launching a new real-time lyrics feature in 26 markets today, including India and countries in Southeast Asia and Latin America, TechCrunch reports . Where available, users can access them by tapping the “lyrics” card at the bottom of the service’s “Now Playing” screen. The new feature uses lyrics provided by Musixmatch, and will be shown in the song’s language. Lyrics have a complicated history on Spotify. The service has actually worked with Musixmatch previously, before breaking ties with the company in 2016 . That same year, Spotify started working with Genius on its “Behind the Lyrics” feature , which gives background information about select tracks, alongside the lyrics themselves. It’s an interesting feature, but this... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales It was a big news day for bans: Twitch temporarily banned Donald Trump , Reddit banned The_Donald , YouTube banned a group of far-right creators , and India banned TikTok . But I still haven’t written about the Facebook ad boycott, which accelerated since last I wrote — so let’s talk about that today, and we’ll get to the rest later this week. I. A social media advertising boycott that began with some outerwear brands picked up steam over the weekend, and has been joined by some of the giants of consumer brand advertising. Unilever , Verizon , Starbucks , Coca-Cola , and Clorox are among those who have pulled their ads. ( Microsoft did so quietly in May.) Some pulled their ads for a month; some put their ads on an indefinite “pause.” Some pulled... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is hosting a virtual smart home developer event on July 8th in lieu of its cancelled Google I/O conference , the company has announced , promising to cover “new and upcoming features for smart home developers and users.” The online Works with “Hey Google” Smart Home Summit , as the event is catchily titled, includes a 45 minute keynote, a series of developer sessions and a panel featuring Google and other companies in the smart home industry. The keynote, which will be presented by Google’s Product Management director of the Smart Home Ecosystem Michele Turner, will go over Google’s new smart home API features along with their benefits for developers and users. Although it’s developer-focused, previous Google I/O keynotes have... Continue reading…

Photo by Horacio Villalobos#Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images Uber has made an offer to buy food delivery company Postmates, according to a report in The New York Times . The report doesn’t say how big the deal would be, but it could be finalized as soon as tonight; discussions are said to be ongoing. Demand for Uber’s ride-hailing business has plummeted during the coronavirus pandemic as people stay at home, but the same circumstances have driven a huge increase in food delivery orders. Uber has been looking for ways to boost its food service, Uber Eats, after laying off more than a quarter of the company’s overall workforce. Uber attempted to buy GrubHub earlier this year, but the deal fell apart amid reported antitrust scrutiny and GrubHub ended up going to European service Just Eat Takeaway for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge AT&T’s low-band 5G network is expanding to 28 new regions today , including Austin, Miami, Dallas, and Salt Lake City. If you’ve been waiting for a slight speed boost over your current LTE connection and have a 5G-compatible phone, you might want to check if your neighborhood is part of this latest expansion. Technically, we’re talking about AT&T’s low-band 5G network, which has slightly better speeds and latency compared to 4G LTE. When OpenSignal tested 5G speeds from major phone carriers in downtown cities over the winter, it found AT&T’s low-band download speeds averaged 59.3Mbps. The low-band network is not to be confused with AT&T’s 5G Plus , a high-band network with mmWave frequencies, which offer far faster internet speeds than... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Watching 4K Netflix video on a Mac seems like it’s about to get much easier, as the forthcoming macOS Big Sur includes a Safari update that reportedly lets you watch Netflix in 4K, along with Dolby Vision HDR, according to a tweet from Ishan Agarwal ( via 9to5Mac ). This may mark the first time that macOS users will be able to stream Netflix in 4K. Previously, streaming 4K Netflix on a computer at all required you to be on Windows and using Microsoft’s Edge browser or the Netflix Windows 10 app . That means, in theory, you could watch Netflix in 4K on a Mac via Windows in a Boot Camp partition — but just loading up Safari, which is installed with macOS Big Sur, could be a far easier option once Big Sur is released (it’s scheduled to come... Continue reading…

‘Xbox Series S’ concept. | jiveduder on Reddit A leaked Microsoft document recently hinted at the company’s second next-gen Xbox, and now rumors suggest it will be fully revealed in August. Eurogamer reports that Microsoft had originally planned to unveil the console, codenamed “Lockhart,” in June. Microsoft has now reportedly moved these plans to August, and Eurogamer claims the console will be named the Xbox Series S. Microsoft has been working on this second cheaper next-gen Xbox console for months. A Microsoft document, leaked last week , shed some further light on the company’s plans. Microsoft’s Xbox Series X devkit, codenamed “Dante,” allows game developers to enable a special Lockhart mode that has a profile of the performance that Microsoft wants to hit with this second... Continue reading…

Photo by Eduardo Sanz / Europa Press via Getty Images If you’re a weather geek, you probably already know that Dark Sky, one of the most popular weather apps around, has been acquired by Apple and is probably being integrated into iOS 14 . As a result, anyone who uses an Android device and has the Dark Sky app is going to lose access on July 1st. In addition, a variety of other apps (some not even weather-related) will lose access to the Dark Sky API. If you’re an Android user with Dark Sky and you’re wondering where to go now for your weather report , there are a few alternatives to choose from. But first, here are a couple of things to consider. Several Android weather apps have been found to ask for more permissions than they need and to have shared location data with advertisers and other... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube has banned several prominent white supremacist channels, including those belonging to Stefan Molyneux , David Duke , and Richard Spencer . Other channels banned include American Renaissance (with its associated channel AmRen Podcasts) and the channel for Spencer’s National Policy Institute. The channels repeatedly violated YouTube’s policies, a YouTube spokesperson said, by alleging that members of protected groups were inferior. These come alongside other violations that led to YouTube taking action. “We have strict policies prohibiting hate speech on YouTube, and terminate any channel that repeatedly or egregiously violates those policies,” a YouTube spokesperson told The Verge. “After updating our guidelines to better address... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge The New York Times has announced that, as of today, it will no longer be distributing articles in the Apple News app, making it one of the largest publishers to end its association with Apple’s publishing platform. In a memo announcing the change, Meredith Kopit Levien, chief operating officer at the Times , said the company wants “a direct path for sending those readers back into our environments, where we control the presentation of our report, the relationships with our readers, and the nature of our business rules.” She added that the paper’s “relationship with Apple News does not fit within these parameters.” While Apple has had a tougher time getting publishers (including the Times ) to sign on for its monthly News Plus subscription... Continue reading…

The 2021 Geneva Motor Show has been canceled because of the “financial consequences” of this year’s event getting the axe, but also because of concerns about the pace of the COVID-19 pandemic. The foundation behind the show announced on Monday that a “majority” of exhibitors recently said they would “probably not participate in a 2021 edition in and that they would prefer to have [the next show] in 2022” instead. The show itself is also now up for sale. The Geneva Motor Show was the first major automotive event to be canceled outside of China earlier this year, with organizers pulling the plug about two weeks before the World Health Organization officially declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic . It would have been the 90th edition of... Continue reading…

Image: Activision Popular battle royale shooter Call of Duty: Warzone is upping its already large 150-person lobbies to let 200 people compete in Quad mode contests, publisher Activision announced today . The new lobby size will arrive with an update releasing at 2AM ET tomorrow, June 30th. Warzone ’s large lobbies are one of many ways the game tries to differentiate itself from the increasingly crowded battle royale market. But after this update, if you’re playing in a full Quad mode lobby of 200 people, you’ll be competing against 49 other teams of four, which could make Warzone ’s already hectic games even more of a wild ride. Image: Activision It seems the mode will only be available for a limited time, according to an image from... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has banned TikTok, WeChat, and several dozen other China-based apps it views as “engaged in activities ... prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India,” according to a press release . A total of 59 apps are on the banned list. India is a huge market for TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance. According to SensorTower data from April , 30 percent of TikTok’s 2 billion downloads came from India. Messaging app WeChat, owned by Chinese internet company Tencent, has more than 1 billion users worldwide. TikTok and WeChat did not immediately reply to requests for comment Monday. It’s not the first time India has banned TikTok . Last year, the government instructed... Continue reading…

Photo by Drew Angerer / Getty Images Twitch has temporarily banned President Donald Trump, in the latest surprise and high-profile suspension from the streaming service. Trump’s account was banned for “hateful conduct” that was aired on stream, and Twitch says the offending content has now been removed. One of the streams in question was a rebroadcast of Trump’s infamous kickoff rally, where he said that Mexico was sending rapists to the United States. Twitch also flagged racist comments at Trump’s recent rally in Tulsa. “Like anyone else, politicians on Twitch must adhere to our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. We do not make exceptions for political or newsworthy content, and will take action on content reported to us that violates our rules,” a Twitch... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit will ban r/The_Donald, r/ChapoTrapHouse, and about 2,000 other communities today after updating its content policy to more explicitly ban hate speech. The policy update comes three weeks after Black Lives Matter protests led several popular Reddit forums to go dark temporarily in protest of what they called the company’s lax policies around hosting and promoting racist content. It marks a major reversal for a company whose commitment to free expression has historically been so strong that it once allowed users to distribute stolen nude photos freely on the site . “I have to admit that I’ve struggled with balancing my values as an American, and around free speech and free expression, with my values and the company’s values around... Continue reading…

Image: Universal Studios Japan Universal Studios Japan is delaying the opening of Super Nintendo World, the new Mario-themed expansion of its Osaka amusement park, NHK reports . Universal said the delay was due to concerns about the coronavirus. A new opening date has yet to be announced. The video game-themed area was originally set to open in July ahead of the 2020 Summer Olympics. However, the international sporting event was pushed back to 2021 as a result of the pandemic. Super Nintendo World will be based on Mario and other Nintendo properties Universal fears that Super Nintendo World is likely to be so popular it could be a health hazard, allowing the coronavirus to spread, according to NHK . Universal Studios Japan reopened on June 8th but at limited capacity... Continue reading…

With longer continuous battery life than the 1000XM3s — and proper sweat resistance Continue reading…

How close are deepfakes to being used in big-budget films and TV shows? Pretty damn close, if a new demo from Disney is anything to go by. In a video and paper being presented at a computer graphics conference this week, researchers from the House of Mouse show off what they say is the first photo-realistic deepfake at a megapixel resolution. And the results are... pretty good! They’re not mind-blowing, certainly, and not good enough to be used in the next Marvel movie, but it’s a solid step up from deepfakes we’ve seen in the past. As the researchers suggest, what’s new here is the megapixel resolution. Megapixels may no longer be the byword for high-quality images that they used to be. (The camera on your phone probably has a... Continue reading…

Photo by Paul Marotta/Getty Images COVID-19 has caused libraries around the US to stay closed since mid-March. Less than two-thirds of Americans in rural areas have broadband internet connections at their homes. The Markup has written about the ways in which libraries are attempting to keep their patrons online. It’s well worth a read. In the town of Cherokee, Iowa, about 40 percent of school-aged kids have no internet access. Tyler Hahn, director of the Cherokee Public Library, told The Markup that many of the services he previously provided to the town’s residents have had to take new forms. The library has left Wi-Fi on 24/7, and kids sit in the parking lot to use their phones. Hahn has helped older patrons access the internet by shouting instructions through the... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Mercedes-Benz is suspending its two-year-old subscription service after mediocre sales, Automotive News reports . Mercedes-Benz USA head of sales Adam Chamberlain described the service as a learning experience that would have been expanded if sales were better. “If the demand would have been unbelievable, then it could have gone further,” Chamberlain told Automotive News last week. “But demand was just OK, so we kept it.” Mercedes-Benz first rolled out its Collection subscription service in Atlanta in 2018 with the goal of appealing to customers who want to have access to a fleet of fancy cars but don’t necessarily want to own one. The program offered subscribers access to 30 models for a monthly fee, which included insurance, 24/7... Continue reading…

GIF by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 can now be configured with a LED dot-matrix display hidden in its lid, with a new model costing $1,999.99, Asus announced today. This “AniMe Matrix” display consists of 1,215 Mini-LEDs that support 256 levels of brightness each and can be used to show anything from the time to music visualizers, GIFs, or an animated logo from your favorite technology website (see above). Beyond its eye-catching exterior, the Zephyrus G14’s specs are excellent. Asus says it’s equipped with an AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS CPU and up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 GPU. There’s 16GB of RAM and a 1TB NVMEe M.2 SSD. When we reviewed the $1,449 version of the laptop (sans the dot-matrix lid display, unfortunately), we found that those specs... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Amazon’s Fire HD 8 tablets are $30 off today at Amazon and Best Buy. The base model with 32GB of storage costs $60 (usually $90). If you want the option to have wireless charging and to upgrade the RAM to make things a little more smooth with multiple apps open, the Fire HD 8 Plus is $80 (usually $110). The bundle that includes the Fire HD 8 Plus and a wireless charging dock is $30 off, too, costing $120 today instead of $150. Both of these tablets have a USB-C port for faster charging than previous iterations of the Fire HD 8, as well as a faster MediaTek processor. Still, compared to other Android tablets, the app selection is limited to ones that work on Amazon’s Fire OS. Thankfully, as Dieter Bohn points out in his recent review of... Continue reading…

Four workers describe the stress and chaos of the new H-1B proclamation Continue reading…

Surprise! There’s a smart lock in there Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Earlier this month, the Russian authorities lifted their ban on the Telegram messaging app , citing the company’s willingness to help with its counterterrorism efforts. However, despite the official ban being in effect for over two years , Telegram has reportedly remained accessible in the country for much of that time. In a new feature, The Washington Post has written how Telegram’s founder Pavel Durov, “humiliated and outmaneuvered Russia’s state telecommunications regulator,” in preventing the app from being successfully banned. Unsurprisingly, it’s well worth a read in full. Telegram initially gained the attention of the Russian authorities because it had reportedly become one of the apps of choice for the country’s opposition groups.... Continue reading…

Microsoft is releasing its own Windows File Recovery tool, designed to retrieve files you’ve mistakenly deleted. Windows File Recovery is a command line app that will recover a variety of files and documents from local hard drives, USB drives, and even SD cards from cameras. Recovery of files on cloud storage or network file shares is not supported, though. Like any file recovery tool, you’ll need to use it as soon as possible on deleted files to ensure they haven’t been overwritten. You’ll be able to use Microsoft’s new tool to recover MP3 files, MP4 videos, PDF documents, JPEG images, and typical Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. Microsoft’s Windows File Recovery app. Microsoft’s file recovery tool has a... Continue reading…

GitHub is down for thousands of software developers this morning. The Microsoft-owned service, which provides version control via Git and hosting for software development, has been down for more than an hour. GitHub users have experienced errors logging into the service, and some are even unable to use their integrated development environment (IDE) due to how closely linked software development is to the service. GitHub says it’s investigating the outage , and has “identified the source of elevated errors and are working on recovery.” GitHub is a large code repository that has become very popular with developers and companies hosting entire projects and code on the service. Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and many other big tech... Continue reading…

American Airlines will soon remove the booking limits it placed on flights back in April. | Photo by Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images American Airlines will resume booking its flights to capacity starting July 1st, the company has announced . The policy is similar to that of United Airlines, which ABC News reports has never blocked out seats or put a cap on the capacity of its flights. However, the approach contrasts sharply with other airlines, who are continuing to enforce capacity caps in order to allow for in-plane social distancing as the number of coronavirus cases in the United States is on the rise . The airline industry has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, with passenger numbers plummeting. The Chicago Sun Times reports that at its lowest point in April, American Airlines’ passenger numbers were down by around 95 percent. Although passenger bookings... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge This year’s new iPhones might not have as much in the box as you’re used to. According to well-connected analyst Ming-chi Kuo, Apple is planning to stop including a power adapter and EarPods in the box with 2020 models, and will even remove the power adapter from the new iPhone SE’s packaging later this year. Kuo’s research note was reported on by AppleInsider , MacRumors , and 9to5Mac . Apple is attempting to offset the cost increases that come with upgrading the iPhone range to 5G, according to Kuo. Smaller packaging would be more eco-friendly and also reduce shipping costs, since more phones could fit into a single shipment. (Encouraging more sales of AirPods can’t hurt, either.) Right now Apple includes EarPods with all iPhones, a 5W... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon workers at six sites across Germany plan to strike Monday because dozens of staff members at its logistics centers have been infected with the coronavirus, union officials told Reuters . The union says the company is prioritizing profits over workers’ safety. Labor union Verdi says “at least 30 to 40 colleagues were infected” with the virus, according to Reuters . The strike will last 48 hours and be conducted with the motto “good and healthy work.” Amazon warehouse workers in Germany have struck several times in recent years, over worker pay and conditions . In recent months, Amazon warehouse workers in the US have staged protests over what they say are unsafe working conditions, and walked off the job in several cities. Workers... Continue reading…

Photo by Yuriko Nakao/Getty Images Starbucks will join the growing list of corporate entities pausing advertising on social media platforms, the company said in a blog post Sunday. The coffee giant says that it stands “against hate speech” and believes “both business leaders and policy makers need to come together to affect real change.” “We will pause advertising on all social media platforms while we continue discussions internally, with our media partners and with civil rights organizations in the effort to stop the spread of hate speech,” the blog post, titled “Creating Welcoming and Inclusive Online Communities” states. A Starbucks spokesperson told The Verge Sunday that the company’s social media advertising pause will not include YouTube, and while Starbucks will... Continue reading…

WireImage As I put together this latest list of what’s new on streaming this week, I realized a theme running through the selections: bad-ass women. There’s a documentary about crime-solving writer Michelle McNamara, a series based on a manga comic about a warrior nun (yes, really!), and of course the Schuyler sisters, Angelica and Eliza, from Hamilton . I’ll Be Gone in the Dark (HBO, June 28th) This six-part documentary series follows the remarkable story of the late writer Michelle McNamara and her investigation into The Golden State Killer, who terrorized California for years in the mid- 1970s and 1980s. Vulture calls it “a tough, ultimately inspirational work about how life kicks the shit out of you and you just have to get through it... Continue reading…