Latest Technology

The US will continue to work with other countries’ space programs on the International Space Station through 2030, NASA announced today . That will allow for an uninterrupted transition to a planned commercial space station (or stations!) in the late 2020s. Funds for the ISS have already been approved through 2024. NASA administrator Bill Nelson told The Verge in May that he wants to continue work on the ISS through 2030. The ISS’s future was called into question in 2018 The ISS’s future was called into question in 2018, when a draft budget proposal from President Donald Trump’s administration had scheduled ending support for the space station in 2025. More recently, escalating tensions between the US and Russia have threatened the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3Ho9gqO

Fires continue to burn into the evening in neighborhoods on December 30, 2021 in Louisville, Colorado. | Photo by Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images Devastating fires in Colorado cap off a year of awful drought across the US. Dry conditions helped set the stage for blazes that scorched hundreds of homes and forced tens of thousands to evacuate just ahead of New Year’s Eve. The fires have been raging through suburbs near Denver since December 30th. Strong winds fanned the flames and knocked out power. About 6,000 acres and at least 500 homes had burned by Friday morning. But there were no casualties, which Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle called “miraculous” given the severity of the fire in a press briefing . Families had “minutes” to evacuate their homes, Governor Jared Polis said. More than two-thirds of Colorado’s land is experiencing “severe” drought, according to the US Drought... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.t

U.S. President Joe Biden participates in a virtual meeting on Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act at South Court Auditorium at Eisenhower Executive Office Building August 11, 2021 in Washington, DC.  | Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images Starting today, eligible US residents can apply for help with their internet bills under the new Affordable Connectivity Program . The program launched today with $14.2 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law passed in November. Households can apply to take up to $30 a month off their internet service bill. For households on qualifying Tribal lands, the discount is up to $75 per month. The program could help to connect millions of people to the internet who haven’t had access to it at home, especially in communities that have historically faced more barriers to getting online. Almost a third of people living on Tribal lands lacked high-speed internet at home in 2017, according to a report by the Federal Communications Commission... Conti

Photo by Jacob Moscovitch/Getty Images Mike Parson, Governor of Missouri, does not understand how websites work. He held a press conference earlier this week in St. Louis to once more reiterate his desire to prosecute a St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalist for looking at the source code of a state-run website. In October 2021 reporter Josh Renaud reported that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website source code had exposed the social security numbers of over 100,000 school teachers, administrators, and counselors . He published the story only after he’d reported the problem to the state and the vulnerability had been resolved. Parson and the DESE were apparently not grateful for the alert and immediately accused Renaud of “hacking” the DESE website. Missouri... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3eFRK4Y

This year’s entry-level iPad is currently on sale at Amazon for $299. | Image: Apple It’s New Year’s Eve, and while that means we are very soon waving goodbye (and good riddance) to the year 2021, it just wouldn’t be special enough day without a selection of great tech deals from your friends at Verge Deals. This has certainly been a jam-packed year full of, well, chaos, but also some great gadgets and worthwhile savings that help you save some coin along the way. While we can’t wait to bring you even more in 2022, let’s not get ahead of ourselves too quickly. Below, we’ll highlight some of the best deals for you in the world of tech. Starting us off, there is no better bang-for-the-buck tablet on the market for most people than Apple’s latest base-model iPad. The 10.2-inch model mostly stands alone in terms of the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3sRbhYv

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge The best games you can play on the Vive, Rift, or Quest 2 Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/34cuZUo

As we near the end of 2021, The Verge ’s art team looked back on the past year to reflect on some of our favorite pieces. Our team produced a wide range of original art: from captivating photography of the future of energy, to illustrations representing the last 10 years of The Verge for our anniversary issue, to dozens of stunning shots for our reviews, to a photo shoot of a lot of chicken wings. Below is a selection of our best photography and illustration from our reviews, special issues, gift guides, features, and more. Verge 10 Illustration by Micha Huigen To mark ten years of publishing at The Verge , we looked back on a decade of tech coverage and examined what might come next. Micha Huigen’s art distills this... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3FMhAQJ

Foxconn’s Indian operation began assembling iPhones for Apple outside of China for the first time in 2021. Apple is sending independent auditors to investigate an iPhone assembly facility in India, after poor working and living conditions at the plant prompted workers to go on strike. The facility in southern India is operated by longtime Apple partner Foxconn. An investigation by Reuters found that women working at the plant were laboring in extremely difficult conditions, forced to sleep on the floor in crowded dorms and sharing toilets without running water. Recently, an outbreak of food poisoning left 150 individuals hospitalized, prompting workers to strike and shut down the plant on December 18th. In response, Apple says it’s put the plant on “probation” (though the company hasn’t said what this means for Foxconn or the workers who... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3EIWhhu

QWERTY and quirky — Blackberry’s later Android incarnations retained the famous keyboard. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Dear friends, we’re gathered here today to mourn the death of that once-beloved monarch of the mobile world: BlackBerry. And, yes, I realize that this is not the first time we’ve announced the death of the company or its devices (and, for reasons I’ll explain below, it likely won’t be the last) but this is a very definite ending for legacy BlackBerry hardware. As of January 4th, any phones or tablets running BlackBerry’s own software — that’s BlackBerry 7.1 or earlier, BlackBerry 10, or its tablet operating system BlackBerry PlayBook — will “no longer reliably function,” says the company . Whether on Wi-Fi or cellular, there’ll be no guarantee you can make phone calls, send text messages, use data, establish an SMS connection, or even... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3EBQY3y

The test is simple. Remove your hand from the box and you die. | Image: Bauhütte Here’s something for the gamer that has everything: a tabletop hand massager that can be used to remove fatigue from your aching mitts and keep you on top form. Created by Japanese makers of gaming hardware and peripherals, Bauhütte, the device uses 15 heated air cushions to supposedly simulate the feeling of a real massage and, well, why the hell not. Bauhütte recommends you use the massager before gaming to warm up your hands; during breaks to improve circulation; and after you’ve finished to rub the stiffness out of your tired little fingers. Because you deserve it. A shiatsu mode will apparently rub your palms with firm pressure, while a “thimble” mode will pull and stretch each finger one by one. The only thing missing is a... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3EHqs90

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge On Wednesday, New York City announced it has ordered 184 fully electric Ford Mustang Mach-Es for use by law enforcement and emergency response workers. The vehicles are set to be delivered by June 2022, as part of an $11.5 million contract that will remain in place for five years. The city said the Mach-Es would be used by the New York Police Department, New York City’s Sheriff’s Office, the Department of Correction, the Department of Parks and Recreation, the Department of Environmental Protection, and other emergency management and response departments. New York City plans to buy over 1,250 electric vehicles in 2022, transitioning all law enforcement vehicles to electric ones by 2035. “Law enforcement vehicles are the largest and most... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3FTbNc0

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Update December 30th, 11:48AM ET: And it appears that due to an astounding lack of defenses against bots, Amazon is already sold out, again. Sony’s latest gaming console, the PlayStation 5, is one of many gaming gadgets that are hard to find in stock right now due to mostly online-only sales. If you are trying to get your hands on one, Amazon has PS5 consoles in stock right now , while supplies last. The consoles are only available for Amazon Prime subscribers, continuing a trend of retailers restricting access to consoles for paying subscribers only . If you can’t add it to your cart, keep trying — occasionally the sites restock over a period of a few minutes. We will update this post once Amazon confirms it’s out of stock. We are... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3FT3L2Q

I will not do this. | Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge I am the very person who should care about my appearance on Zoom calls. I don’t mean the state of my hair or appearance of hormonal acne on my face. I’m talking image quality. Focal length. Bokeh. I have written about and reviewed cameras and smartphones for over a decade. I use videoconferencing platforms throughout my work day. I own a nice camera that I could connect to my laptop and use for Zoom meetings. But I won’t, and I simply do not care. I know how much more flattering a longer focal length would be than my MacBook Air’s built-in wide-angle lens. I have the tools, the knowledge, and the power to employ a softly blurred background behind me. If I did, maybe I’d command more respect in meetings. My colleagues might scroll through... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3FFSOle

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Samsung wants you to know its foldables haven’t flopped. In a recent blog post , the company said it sold four times more foldable devices in 2021 than 2020. It attributes this success to the arrival of the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3, which, in our own reviews, we hailed as a step toward mainstream usability thanks to their refined designs and lower prices. Samsung says sales for these two devices in their first month alone exceeded “total accumulative sales of Samsung foldable devices in 2020.” These are promising metrics for the slow ascension of foldable phones, though you should bear in mind that Samsung isn’t sharing hard sales data. Instead, it pointed to the fact that its increases were greater than predictions made by... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3Hr4zfI

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Make your Mac more useful and easier to use Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3zaxSAz

Jurors are still deliberating over the fate of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of defunct biotech company Theranos. They’re deciding if she intentionally misled investors, patients, and doctors about what her company’s blood testing technology could do. Because despite big promises, the tech the company claimed to have invented... didn’t actually exist. And the technology might never be a reality — at least not in the way Holmes described it. In this episode of our three-part series on Theranos, we look at what researchers actually think is possible in the field of blood testing and what the future could look like. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3eEtdNE

Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images We have bad news if you’re on winter break and hope to play some Fortnite , as Epic Games has confirmed its battle royale shooter is down — and this time it’s not to help expand the game’s lore . According to a tweet from its own status page , “ Fortnite is currently unavailable and players are unable to log-in while we investigate an issue. We’ll provide more info when we have a solution to bring services back online.” Fortnite is currently unavailable and players are unable to log-in while we investigate an issue. We'll provide more info when we have a solution to bring services back online. pic.twitter.com/B3wXvu5SL6 — Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) December 29, 2021 pic.twitter.com/233nt73aDw — andrew webster (@A_Webster) December... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3mId3XZ

A drill rig at Controlled Thermal Resources’ (CTR) Hells Kitchen Lithium and Power project in Calipatria, California, U.S., on Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021. Demand for electric vehicles has shifted investments into high gear to extract lithium from geothermal wastewater around the Salton Sea in California’s Imperial Valley. | Bing Guan/Bloomberg via Getty Images This year, the clean energy sector finally started grappling in earnest with one of its biggest challenges: how to get enough minerals to build solar panels, wind turbines, and big batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage. Figuring that out will be critical for escaping fossil-fueled ecological disaster. It’ll also be crucial for policymakers and industry to move forward without throwing certain communities under the bus in the transition to clean energy. Instead of cutting through landscapes with oil and gas wells and pipelines, clean energy industries and their suppliers will open up the Earth to hunt for critical m

The 45mm GPS version of the Apple Watch Series 7 is down to $379, an all-time low. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge If getting fit is one of your New Year’s resolutions, or if you, like me, are ending the holiday season feeling so bloated you can barely carry your own weight from all of that food (true story), today’s Apple Watch Series 7 discount couldn’t have arrived at a better time. Both sizes of the Series 7, Apple’s latest model that boasts a larger display than its predecessor, are discounted at Amazon. At the moment, the retailer is selling the 45mm, GPS-equipped model with a blue aluminum case and a blue Sport Band for $379 instead of $429. Have a smaller wrist or prefer a smaller watchface? The 41mm, GPS-only version is currently selling for $349 in select styles (normally $399), meaning there’s a way to save no matter the size you’re... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3sDX29v

Bryozoans found in the habitat | Image: British Antarctic Survey A team of researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany has discovered a whopping 77 seafloor-dwelling species beneath an Antarctica ice shelf — a hint that this mysterious realm may be far more biologically rich than scientists realized. Little is known about the environment beneath Antarctica’s floating ice shelves, the seaward extensions of the continent’s glaciers that span 1.6 million square kilometers. It’s a harsh, cold environment shrouded in continuous darkness, and previous studies of life beneath the ice have only documented a few dozen hardy life forms. The new research, published earlier this month in Current Biology , identified more species in a single spot than had previously been documented across all the ice... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3FGFInP

Francois Duhamel / Lucasfilm Ltd The Book of Boba Fett finally is giving its titular character the spotlight. The fan-favorite bounty hunter has long lurked in the margins of Star Wars ’ history: his brief introduction in an animated short during the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special ; and his rocketing to popularity thanks to his iconic armor (practically designed to sell action figures) despite his brief appearances in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi , his shoehorned backstory in Attack of the Clones , and a half-baked arc in The Clone Wars . For all that, Fett himself has been an enigma, a blank slate of badassery that’s never been filled in. Fett has spend decades as a blank slate of badassery But after years of rumors of a solo film , an aborted history... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/346wJhX

Tang Dehong / Costfoto/Future Publishing via Getty Images A new Department of Energy-funded research project seeks to solve one of the biggest challenges with solar power — what to do with solar panels after they die. Solar energy is key to solving climate change, but for the technology itself to be sustainable it needs to be recyclable. Unfortunately, when a solar panel dies today, it’s likely to meet one of two fates: a shredder or a landfill. Arizona State University (ASU) researchers are hoping to change that through a new recycling process that uses chemicals to recover high-value metals and materials, like silver and silicon, making recycling more economically attractive. Earlier this month, the team received a two-year, $485,000 grant from the DOE’s Advanced Manufacturing Office to... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3ev6h3w

The HDMI standards are a mess. HDMI 2.1 , in particular, is a uniquely frustrating mess, with haphazard support among TV manufacturers, cable makers, and devices that make setting up, say 120Hz gaming on a PS5 or Xbox Series X a uniquely harrowing experience. Fortunately, the HDMI Forum is swooping in ahead of CES with its latest revision to the HDMI specification stack, HDMI 2.1a, which is here to make everything better and simpler. ... I’m kidding, of course. It’s gonna make things more complicated. It’s a new HDMI standard, what on earth did you expect? What on earth did you expect? Let’s start with the good: HDMI 2.1a is an upcoming revision to the HDMI 2.1 stack and adds a major new feature, Source-Based Tone Mapping, or SBTM. SBTM... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3z8duzP

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge There’s a lot to play on Apple’s game subscription service Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3Jrgxrx

TCL’s Roku Wireless Soundbar with Roku TV Ready certification from this past October. | Image: Roku / TCL Roku today announced the expansion of its “Roku TV Ready” certification program, bringing in newcomer brands Polk Audio and Westinghouse early next year (and joining recent manufacturers Philips, JVC, and Element). First launched in 2020, Roku TV Ready lets audio products (like soundbars) easily link up with a Roku TV set. Customers with supported soundbars get full integration of the audio settings and volume control within the Roku TV’s interface — all while using a single remote. Owners of some early Roku TV Ready audio devices (like the Bose TV Speaker ) needed only to connect the speaker hardware to a Roku TV via HDMI — but more recent devices like the TCL Roku TV wireless soundbar can simply work without the cable . Roku reiterates... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3ex0jim

Illustrations by Alex Castro / The Verge Riot Games has struck a $100 million settlement deal in a discrimination and harassment lawsuit brought by female employees. The League of Legends and Valorant publisher will pay at least $80 million to members of the settlement class and around $20 million in legal fees, and it will agree to workplace changes that include greater pay transparency and three years of third-party monitoring. The settlement covers a 2018 class action lawsuit filed by current and former Riot employees in the wake of a Kotaku report detailing systemic sexism and unfair treatment. The suit described an environment where male employees made derogatory sexual comments about female colleagues and passed them over for promotion, creating a company-wide “unwritten... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3HcF0Pw

A telescope in disguise Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3qs8PoF

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Many Alexa-powered Amazon Echo speakers and displays are still enjoying Black Friday discounts. One of the most appealing deals is on the Amazon Echo Show 5 display, which is normally $84.99 but can be found at Amazon and Best Buy for $44.99. This smart display could be the perfect companion for your nightstand or kitchen counter, since it can handle alarm, recipe, and entertainment duties. While it shares a lot of functionality with Echo speakers, the Echo Show display is capable of more, like streaming video from Prime Video and Netflix, showing you the forecast, or displaying your agenda for the day. Additionally, the built-in camera lets you video chat with family and friends. Read our review . You can also find the latest version... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/343qFqu

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Hello, hello. I hope you all had a nice holiday and are ready for another one. Last week we looked back on 2021, and this week, we’re looking forward to 2022. We have a couple quick news hits from last week to get through first, but then Aria and I will offer our predictions for the year to come. Off we go. Project Brazen and Audiation ordered to release audio recorded for Fat Leonard In a troubling precedent for journalism, a judge in San Diego ruled the podcast companies behind Fat Leonard , Project Brazen and Audiation, must share all recorded audio from their lead character, Leonard Glenn Francis — even audio that wasn’t included in the show’s final cut. The San Diego Union-Tribune has all the details , but essentially, the podcast... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/33XdQxH

Image: Lego After months of waiting, Lego’s official Sonic the Hedgehog set is finally here: a $69.99, 1,125-piece recreation of the iconic Green Hill Zone stage, complete with Lego-ized versions of the titular heroic hedgehog, a handful of classic Sonic villains, Dr. Eggman, and — of course — the Chaos Emeralds. Officially called the Lego Ideas Sonic the Hedgehog Green Hill Zone set, the new kit’s origins are in a crowdsourced Lego Ideas set that was suggested by Lego and Sonic fan Viv Grannell in early 2019. After the set reached 10,000 votes through the Ideas program, Lego conducted an official review of the project in March 2020, and in February 2021, greenlit the proposal for development into a real set. Image: Lego “... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3JrFjI7

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Load your phone with these recommendations, many of which are free Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3et6K6n

Not pictured: a beloved phone. | Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge Motorola is working on a new version of its Razr foldable smartphones, according to a Weibo post spotted by Android Police . The post is from Chen Jin, the general manager of the Lenovo Mobile Business Group in China (Lenovo is currently in charge of Motorola’s smartphone business), and describes how the company has been quietly working on a new addition to its lineup of foldable phones. It doesn’t have big shoes to fill — Motorola’s first two modern foldables were mediocre phones with hefty price tags. We ran Jin’s post through a few translation sites, and while some parts didn’t make the jump to English, there are consistent details that show up in all the translations. The post mentions that the phone will have a better processor,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3EE2xaE

Walmart store Last week, the California attorney general and 12 state officials filed a lawsuit against Walmart, saying it allegedly illegally disposed of electronic and hazardous waste, compromising local landfills. California Attorney General Rob Bonta alleges in a statement the company violated state environmental laws with their practices, and the waste included materials like lithium and alkaline batteries, insect killer sprays, aerosol cans, LED lightbulbs, and more. State investigators conducted 58 inspections across 13 counties from 2015 to 2021 and said they found classified hazardous and medical waste in each store’s trash compactors, as well as customer information that should have been rendered indecipherable. The California DOJ... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3z0q8kq

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Zoom has acquired the Zoom-based broadcast tools created by the startup Liminal, along with two of the company's co-founders, the videoconferencing platform announced in a post on its blog . Liminal’s add-ons, ZoomOSC and ZoomISO , are built for creating professional virtual events, which Zoom will likely natively integrate into its software as part of the acquisition. The acquisition will help “bridge” the gap between “emerging” and “traditional” forms of event control tools As noted on Liminal’s site, ZoomOSC is designed to enhance professional meetings and events using the Open Sound Control (OSC) protocol, enabling you to integrate Zoom with third-party software, hardware controllers, and media servers. Meanwhile, ZoomISO allows you to... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3Jy1Ymr

Final Fantasy XVI is the latest game to be hit by COVID-related development delays, with the game’s producer Naoki Yoshida announcing in a letter posted to Twitter that work on the upcoming PlayStation 5 RPG has been set back by about six months. Furthermore, Yoshida announced that the next major reveal for the upcoming title — originally promised for sometime in 2021 — is now being pushed out to sometime in spring 2022. A message from Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida. #FF16 #FFXVI pic.twitter.com/qtfJUUp6LA — FINAL FANTASY XVI (@finalfantasyxvi) December 27, 2021 It’s not too surprising that Final Fantasy XVI has been hit by delays. As the first flagship Final Fantasy game for a next-generation console, the development... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3exJWC8

“The Vault” is an appropriate name. | Image: XPG XPG has announced the XPG Vault, a “concept” mouse that has a built-in SSD to let you carry around your mouse and storage in one package ( via Engadget ). While lots of gaming mice have some built-in storage to let you easily carry macros and preferences from computer to computer, and the concept of a mouse doubling as a flash drive has been around for over a decade , XPG is aiming a little higher. It’s promising “to make your gaming libraries conveniently portable,” right from your mouse. There aren’t many details for the Vault in XPG’s press release, but XPG says the “current prototype can integrate up to 1TB of Solid State memory running at 985MB/s” and connects with USB-C. Given that it’s a wired mouse, that performance seems possible —... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3ptzKRI

Polish opposition leader Krzysztof Brejza | Photo by Mateusz Wlodarczyk/NurPhoto via Getty Images Several members of political opposition groups in Poland have produced evidence that they were hacked by Pegasus spyware, raising alarming questions about the Polish government’s use of the software. The most alarming case involved the leader of Poland’s Civic Platform party, Senator Krzysztof Brejza, whose phone was compromised a total of 33 times in the six months leading up to the 2019 election, as reported by the Associated Press . During the campaign, Polish state media published damaging text messages obtained from Brejza’s phone, leading to concerns that spyware had been used. a threat to “the rules-based international order” The compromises were discovered by Citizen Lab, a spyware research group based at the University of... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3HcxGUb

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge During the Christmas holiday, it was easy to pick up on the theme on Twitter that many of you either bought or received an Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality headset . Well, in perfect timing, Oculus has discounted many of its official accessories for the Quest 2, which can help to protect your headset, as well as make it more comfortable to wear. We’ve seen promotions that discount these add-ons when you purchase a headset, but never by themselves, so that’s why they’re prominently featured today. Best Buy has the best deal on the Elite Strap that replaces the fabric strap that comes with your Quest 2. It distributes the weight of the headset more evenly on your head, with adjusters on the top and rear of the Elite Strap. Normally $49, it’s... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3HiuDtM

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Armies, aliens, automobiles, the legendary mascot of the Xbox, and more Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3EqgUiw

The Epic Games Store is offering Control for free as part of its 15 days of free games promotion — the game is only available for free until December 27th at 11AM. To get the game, simply log in to the Epic Games Store (or create an account), navigate to Control ’s game page , and then hit “Get” to add the game to your library for free. The Federal Bureau of Control has granted us authorization to disperse free copies of @ControlRemedy for one day only. Claim yours while you can, Director. https://t.co/1bzgT8zKH0 pic.twitter.com/ZkJp5yh9VX — Epic Games Store (@EpicGames) December 26, 2021 Control was a freebie on the Epic Games Store this past June, so if you missed picking it up then, now you have another chance to grab it for free.... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3swry53

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has reportedly hired Andrea Schubert, Meta’s communications and public relations lead for its augmented reality (AR) products, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman in his Power On newsletter. Schubert’s LinkedIn page indicates that she’s been working for Meta for nearly six years. “Meta, with Oculus, has been the market leader in headsets, so such a hire makes sense as Apple nears its launch” “Meta, with Oculus, has been the market leader in headsets, so such a hire makes sense as Apple nears its launch,” Gurman explains. On both Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year, Meta’s Oculus Quest 2 was one of the top-selling products. Not to mention that Meta’s Oculus app topped the App Store in the US on Christmas Day, and became... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3sBaMBY

Alexander Skarsgård is out for revenge in The Northman | Focus Features Hello and welcome to the final trailers roundup for 2021, I hope you have enjoyed reading (and watching) these roundups as much as I have enjoyed writing them. There were a lot of really good streaming shows and movies this year despite the persistence of the coronavirus that disrupted so much of our lives. Among my personal favorites were Loki, Succession, Ted Lasso, The Beatles: Get Back, King Richard, and Y: The Last Man (pls someone pick up this show it was just getting started!). This week’s list has Vikings, Hercule Poirot, and a look at the upcoming Showtime series about the early days of Uber. The Northman Director Robert Eggers ( The Witch , The Lighthouse ), said in an interview with EW that The Northman was “by far the hardest... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3sA5bvr

A Tesla Model S strapped with dynamite. | Screenshot from Pommijätkät via YouTube When faced with a repair bill that costs half of what you paid for your car, do you go through with the expensive repair, bring it to the junkyard, or sell it for parts? Finnish Tesla owner Tuomas Katainen decided to do something a little more extreme — but arguably a lot more satisfying — when faced with such a situation: he watched his car go up in flames, as noted in a report from Gizmodo . Katainen handed his 2013 Tesla Model S over to Pommijätkät , a group of explosion experts on YouTube who loves to make things go “boom,” after he was quoted $22,600 for a battery replacement. “Well when I bought that Tesla, the first 1,500km [932 miles] were nice,” Katainen recounted. “Then, error codes hit.” After Katainen brought his Tesla to a... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3z39VLw

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge New phone, new start Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3Jj5NeX

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge A privacy-minded roundup of apps, including a self-care penguin Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3Eyr4NX

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge As kids and adults alike flock to the Nintendo eShop, eager to spend the gift cards they found in their stockings, that excitement was quickly spoiled by an eShop error screen. The annual holiday surge has brought down the Nintendo Switch eShop for some yet again, according to a report from Kotaku . We are aware that players are experiencing errors accessing Nintendo eShop, and are working to address the issue as soon as possible. Thank you for your understanding, and please see our Network Status page for the latest updates. https://t.co/KnM0g7z7jn — Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) December 25, 2021 Nintendo sent out a tweet, noting that the company is “working to address the issue as soon as possible.” It also includes a link... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3Fx7V0u

Death Star for scale. | Image: Park My Spaceship Park My Spaceship is the simple, extremely amusing app I didn’t know I needed. It allows you to superimpose to-scale images of notable spacecraft from sci-fi shows and movies over Google Maps. That’s it. It’s great. You can check to see if Serenity would fit in your backyard or if the Millennium Falcon could land in your neighborhood park. It’s been around since 2018, but I first encountered it this week when @CincinnatiPhil TILearned about it and shared his discoveries on Twitter. I set about placing ships around the greater Seattle area and found that the Millennium Falcon fits nicely in the fountain plaza in front of the Space Needle, which would look cool as hell. You can almost fit a Star Destroyer in Lake Union or park it on... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/30WgUci

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Many of these games play well on Series S, too Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3qnI2tE

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge If you’re lucky enough to have one, that is Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3ptl1X2

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Steam Global seems to have been banned in China, according to a report from TheGamer . Only the Chinese version of Steam remains accessible in the country, which currently offers a limited library of just 103 games — a very small fraction of the over 110,000 games that Steam Global has at this time of writing. Reliable Fortnite leaker and data miner Ricky Owens (aka iFireMonkey) first noticed the ban and tweeted out a screenshot of what appears to be Steam on a list of blocked websites in China. We tried to verify this for ourselves using Comparitech’s tool that checks whether a site is blocked in China. Upon entering “store.steampowered.com,” into the site, the tool indicates that Steam has been blocked in all parts of the country — as... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/32hV581