Technology

Twitch has paused its Boost Train feature, which launched last month and let people pay to promote streams, after porn ended up on users’ homepages with the label “promoted by the streamer’s community” slapped onto the NSFW thumbnails (via Kotaku). Several Twitter and Reddit users (NSFW links, by the way) shared screenshots of pornographic thumbnails that showed up at the front of their “Live channels we think you’ll like” sections. The thumbnails indicate that the streams showed up there thanks to an experimental feature that Twitch first announced last year. The feature has changed since it was first introduced, but the basic concept remains the same — users can spend money to get a stream in front of people’s eyes. In this case, it just happened to be content not allowed on Twitch. Twit...

One of the best deals of the week is on a product that isn’t even out yet. If you preorder Samsung’s 32-inch M8 4K smart monitor, starting at $699.99, before April 17th, you’ll get a $100 Samsung credit to use on future purchases. Just a heads-up, though, that the white-colored model that costs $699.99 is currently set to deliver in early May. Other colors, like green and pink (which cost $30 more) will ship by April 18th. There’s a blue option, but it’s not available for preorder yet. The M8 monitor has some features that many others don’t. I wrote about them all here, but if you want the skinny, here goes: it can run smart TV apps, like Apple TV Plus, Netflix, and more, even if you don’t have a computer or streaming device to connect to it. If you connect a mouse and keyboard to it, you ...

Building has returned. This morning, Fortnite has re-enabled queues for its signature building feature; it was temporarily removed as part of the game’s latest season, which launched on March 20th. However, while building is back, the combat-focused spirit lives on in the previously-introduced Zero Build mode. For now, the two versions of the game live side-by-side with queues for both regular and Zero Build available for Solo, Duos, Trios, or Squad battle royale combat. Image: Epic Games Building Is Back – Play Your Way! Sprint, climb, and smash your way to a Victory Royale whether you choose to build up in Fortnite Battle Royale or go no-builds in the new Fortnite Zero Build. pic.twitter.com/4qay0vm17x — Fortnite (@FortniteGame) April 2, 2022 The ability to harvest materials and bu...

Russia says it will end cooperation with other nations on the International Space Station until the sanctions put on the country are lifted. Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, announced in a thread on Twitter that the “restoration of normal relations between partners” on the ISS and other projects is only possible with the “complete and unconditional lifting of illegal sanctions.” In translated versions of his tweets, Rogozin says he appealed the sanctions in letters to NASA, the European Space Agency, as well as the Canadian Space Agency. Rogozin also posted images of what appears to be each country’s response — The Verge reached out to NASA, the ESA, and the CSA to confirm their authenticity but didn’t immediately hear back. “The U.S. continues to support interna...

We may never know why Apple doggedly insists on you charging its mouse upside down, like a beetle with its legs in the air, year after year after year. But I do know this: if you want a mouse that actually feels magical, price be damned, Logitech has the gadget for you. When I want to charge my wireless mouse now, I don’t need to plug in a cord or place it on a dock. In fact, I don’t think about charging at all. It just… does. Because this past Christmas, a very generous brother-in-law effectively bought me a wireless mouse that charges itself. Logitech Powerplay, with G502 Lightspeed mouse.Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge What you’re looking at here is the Logitech Powerplay Wireless Charging System, effectively a mousepad with a wireless charger that magnetically beams electrici...

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform has launched an investigation into Amazon’s labor practices around severe weather events, focusing on the company’s Illinois warehouse where six people died in a tornado strike last winter. The committee is seeking documents and communication records from Amazon within the next two weeks, according to a letter signed by Reps. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Cori Bush (D-MO) and sent Thursday to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. The letter cites reports that Amazon threatened to fire employees if they left work as the tornado bore down on the area and that delivery dispatchers weren’t allowed to call drivers back without Amazon’s approval, even when there was an active tornado warning. The storm ended up hitting an Amazon ware...

Starting next week, users of Barnes & Noble’s Android app will no longer be able to buy digital books in the app, and it seems to be due to a Google Play policy deadline that’s been more than a year and a half in the works. And it’s not just Barnes & Noble that’s affected; you aren’t able to buy Amazon’s Audible titles with a debit or credit card in the latest version of its Android app, either. The changes appear to stem from Google’s insistence that apps use Google Play’s billing systems. Developers have long criticized Apple and Google for requiring the use of their own billing systems, in large part because of the so-called “app store tax” on many transactions. Google updated its policies in September 2020 to clarify which types of in-app transactions required the use of the Go...

Activision Blizzard is officially lifting its vaccine mandate for US corporate employees, and workers have announced they plan to walk out in protest. The company confirmed to The Verge that it has already ended the mandate, and A Better ABK, an organization of Activision Blizzard employees advocating for better working conditions, announced Friday that employees will walk out of work on April 4th at 1PM ET in protest. Jessica Gonzalez, a former Activision Blizzard employee and a founder of A Better ABK, originally revealed that the company was changing its vaccine policy on Twitter Thursday evening. In a series of screenshots, she shared the text of an email sent by Brian Bulatao, the company’s chief administrative officer. “Effective immediately, we are lifting our vaccine mandate for al...

The US House of Representatives voted Friday to approve a bill that would decriminalize cannabis at the federal level. It’s a first step toward making the drug legal and attempting to undo some of the damage caused by punitive drug laws, particularly among communities of color. The voting happened along party lines, with 220 votes in favor and 204 opposed. The bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate, but advocates say with Democrats controlling both houses of Congress, they’re more hopeful that the legislation will finally become law. The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (or MORE Act) would remove marijuana from the federal list of controlled substances and add a federal tax on cannabis products. It would also establish a process to expunge convictions and review sen...

Workers at an Amazon warehouse in New York City have voted to unionize, an historic first for workers at the e-commerce company. The final tally was 2,654 yes votes, and 2,131, with 67 challenges. The workers at the JFK8 fulfillment center in Staten Island will join the Amazon Labor Union, as the number of challenges is not sufficient to affect the outcome. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) determined in January that unionization efforts at the facility had “reached a sufficient showing of interest” to hold an election. The facility employs roughly 5,000 people. In a statement posted to its website Friday, Amazon said it was “disappointed with the outcome of the election because we believe having a direct relationship with the company is best for our employees.” The company is eval...

For the next three days, NASA is staging an elaborate dress rehearsal with its massive new rocket, the Space Launch System — practicing all of the major steps the agency will have to perform when the vehicle launches for the very first time. It’s a major milestone for the rocket’s development and one of the last major tests it must undergo before the vehicle can be cleared to fly sometime this summer. The Space Launch System, or SLS, is the agency’s new flagship rocket, designed to carry people and cargo into deep space. It’s meant to play a lead role in NASA’s Artemis program, the agency’s initiative to send the first woman and the first person of color to the Moon by the mid-2020s. Capable of lifting nearly 60,000 pounds of cargo to orbits beyond the Moon, SLS is designed to launch NASA’...