Technology

Adobe’s social network Behance is adding support for the Polygon cryptocurrency platform, letting users more easily showcase Polygon-based non-fungible tokens or NFTs. The company is touting Polygon integration as a more environmentally conscious way for artists to create NFTs, which Behance began supporting late last year. While that eco-friendliness is debatable, it’s part of Adobe’s ongoing expansion into crypto — as well as an attempt to placate artists that are worried about its potential negative effects. Polygon works on top of the popular Ethereum blockchain, and it’s got a smaller energy footprint for individual crypto transactions; it also avoids the massive transaction costs associated with Ethereum. (On the other hand, popularizing Polygon still adds more total traffic to the e...

Robot vacuums are great for getting the dirty work done for you (admit it, you never cleaned under the couch before you got one, right?). And while these busy little bots can be set on a schedule in their accompanying smartphone apps, or sent on a run with a push of their button, connecting them to Google Home gives you more ways to command them to do your bidding, including just with your voice. The majority of robot vacuums with smartphone apps will work with Google Home for voice control through the Google Assistant, although some have more capabilities than others. All of them can be ordered to start and stop, some can be sent home to their dock, and others can be commanded to clean a specific room. You can also use your voice assistant to find your robot vacuum if it’s disappeared und...

Apple is listing a new 3-meter Thunderbolt 4 Pro cable on its store for $159, which is arguably far too much for a cable. But given the scarcity of other Thunderbolt 4 cable options over 2 meters in length, it might be your only option. The listing coincides with the announcement of Apple’s new Mac Studio, which includes four Thunderbolt 4 ports on its back to connect to displays and other devices. Apple’s also selling a 1.8-meter cable for $129 that ships in two to three weeks. Apple’s 3-meter Thunderbolt 4 Pro cable says it’s “coming soon.” Apple’s 3-meter Thunderbolt 4 cable won’t have much, if any, competition when it arrives. Whether it’s Belkin, Caldigit, CableMatters, or Plugable, no major cable manufacturer (that I’ve found) sells a Thunderbolt 4 cable over 2-meters in length. For ...

Disney Plus’ big ad experiment will arrive on the service later this year, meaning that users will have the option of sitting through advertisements in exchange for a slightly cheaper plan. On the one hand, that’s great news for streamers on a budget. Ad-supported plans give consumers a lot of flexibility to sign up for pricey services they may otherwise pass over. But it’s also a nice little workaround for boosting subscribers fast — something services are keenly aware of as they fight for our attention and our money. “We’re seeing an evolution of the market away from the monolithic business models of old,” Paul Erickson of research firm Parks Associates tells The Verge. “A lot of the players in the market, they’re not going to just operate on SVOD basis. They’re going to mix a little bit...

Lining up with many of the last-minute rumors, Apple’s Peek Performance event revealed that we’ll have a new compact Mac machine to look forward to. As you might expect, the new Mac Studio can be equipped with either the M1 Max or the new M1 Ultra CPU. In addition to a new processor, the Mac Studio boasts an impressive number of connectivity options. The Mac Studio bears a striking resemblance to the 2020 version of the Mac Mini. According to our review by Chris Welch, this model of the Mac Mini offered an “appealing price for the power it offers.” And thanks in part to the M1 CPU, provided “blazing performance.” On the other end of the spectrum is the Apple Mac Pro, which debuted in 2019 and was reviewed by The Verge’s own Nilay Patel. That incredibly expensive desktop brought a curious, ...

F-Zero X is coming to the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack library on Friday March 11th. The futuristic racing game now comes complete with online multiplayer, which of course was not included with the original version on the Nintendo 64. The sequel to popular SNES racer F-Zero, F-Zero X was released in 1998. It wasn’t the most visually lavish game even by N64 standards, but that was by design. Nintendo’s focus was making sure that the fast-paced game could run at 60 frames per second with 30 racers on the track, which was a technical achievement at the time. F-Zero X will be the thirteenth N64 game to be added to the $49.99-a-year Expansion Pack tier of Nintendo Switch Online. Last month saw the release of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, while future confirmed titles include Poké...

TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo “strongly believes” that the upcoming MacBook Air redesign will feature an M1 chip, instead of the widely expected “M2” upgrade. Kuo made the comment to 9to5Mac following a tweet where he predicted an “all-new” design for the laptop with more color options and no Mini LED display. The redesigned MacBook Air had previously been reported to have an M2 chip by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Apple can of course decide its own nomenclature for its chips based on marketing reasons, but if the M1 naming scheme follows the A-series chips in iPhones and iPads, the next number up would denote an upgrade in the CPU design. The M1 chips, including the M1 Pro, Max, and the just-announced Ultra, all use various configurations of CPU cores based on what’s found ...

Taiwanese electric bike company Tern announced a more affordable version of its popular line of cargo bikes. The Tern Quick Haul is as slim and approachable as the company’s other bikes, but with a slightly discounted sticker price. For years, Tern’s GSD and HSD models have delighted customers looking for powerful, high-performance e-bikes with plenty of cargo space. Now, the company is introducing a slightly smaller model for city-dwelling customers who care as much about parking and storage as they do about hauling kids or groceries. Another major selling point is the starting price. The Quick Haul lineup comes in two models: the D8, a Class 1 e-bike with a top speed of 20mph, which starts at $2,999; and the P9, a Class 3 bike with a top speed of 28mph, starting at $3,999. A third model,...

Google is working on a tool that should let you “archive” certain apps to help free up space on your device. In a blog post, Google explains any app with the feature will let you partially uninstall it, shrinking the app down by about 60 percent without removing it completely. Archived APKs are much smaller and “preserve user data until the app is restored” It does this by creating a new type of APK (Android Package) — otherwise known as the guts that make an app functional on your device — that it calls archived APKs. As Google points out, archived APKs are much smaller and save all your data until you restore it, bringing it back to its original size. The feature will become available to developers with the Bundletool 1.10 release, but it won’t be functional until Google launches the fea...

If you can’t connect to Spotify or Discord, then no, it’s not just you or your internet connection. Both services acknowledged problems on Tuesday afternoon. However, this time, the culprit doesn’t appear to be any kind of massive DNS or Amazon Web Services (AWS) problem. Sure, Apple’s event servers are still operational, and we haven’t lost access to security cameras or robot vacuums, but the coincidence is still unusual. According to Discord, after restarting its streaming service to fix one problem, a new issue caused a failure of its API, and as of about 30 minutes ago, they were still investigating. The Spotify Status account tweeted at 1:22PM ET that “we’re looking into it” but didn’t offer any other details about what’s going on. As of 2:39PM ET, Spotify Status tweeted that things a...