Technology

Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories. In today’s episode, Nilay and Dieter, along with managing editor Alex Cranz and reviewer Monica Chin, discuss all the phones, laptops, and GPUs announced and reviewed this week — including Monica’s review of the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 and some previews of Mobile World Congress 2022. In the second half of the show, senior reporter Ashley Carman updates the crew with the latest podcast industry news, including Spotify reportedly paying $200 million for Joe Rogan’s podcast and buying two of the most prominent podcast marketing and ad attribution companies. It’s not a coincidence that all podc...

Picking a fitness tracker is a deeply personal choice. Unlike most gadgets, you’re meant to wear these all the time. And while many of us share similar health goals, our bodies and needs are highly individualized. The fitness tracker that everyone else raves about may not work for you and vice versa. That’s what makes buying a fitness tracker tricky. But don’t worry. Here are a few things to consider when you’re deciding which tracker to buy. Find your “why” and go from there Fitness instructors love to bang on about “finding your why,” but it’s also the first thing you should ask yourself when buying a tracker. Why do you want a fitness tracker to begin with? To lose weight? Train for a marathon? Improve your sleeping habits? Fitness trackers are a motivational tool, but they can’t help i...

Microsoft says it’s planning to update Windows 11 Pro so it will require an internet connection and a Microsoft Account during the initial setup phase. The changes will mirror the same requirements Microsoft originally added to Windows 11 Home last year, meaning you won’t be able to avoid Microsoft Accounts by creating a local user account during setup. Microsoft has been increasingly pushing Windows users to use a Microsoft Account since Windows 10, and this new change to Windows 11 Pro won’t sit well with many hoping to avoid Microsoft’s data and telemetry gathering in Windows. This new requirement is coming to Windows 11 Pro soon “Similar to Windows 11 Home edition, Windows 11 Pro edition now requires internet connectivity during the initial device setup (OOBE) only,” says an updated Wi...

A massive, abandoned cargo ship is burning in the Atlantic with 3,965 Volkswagen Group vehicles on board, about a quarter of them from Porsche, according to Bloomberg. Porsche estimates that 1,100 of its vehicles are on board the Felicity Ace, a cargo ship about the size of three football fields. Volkswagen Group is also home to brands like Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, and VW. The Felicity Ace was heading from Germany to a port in Rhode Island when it issued distress signals Wednesday morning, reporting a fire in one of its cargo decks. All 22 crew members were successfully evacuated and did not need medical attention, according to a statement by the Portuguese Navy. The owner of the vessel is now developing a plan to recover the abandoned ship. All 22 crew members were safely resc...

FX’s upcoming TV series based on the Alien films will be set on Earth “70-odd years from now” which is before Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley character in the franchise’s timeline, FX chairman John Landgraf tells The Hollywood Reporter. The show is being headed up by Noah Hawley, who previously won acclaim for his Fargo TV series inspired by the Coen brothers movie of the same name. Filming for the Alien TV show is due to take place after season five of Fargo, which will be filmed “this winter.” Landgraf previously confirmed that the Alien TV show would be set on Earth when the project was announced in late 2020. But knowing the show’s time period means we can have some fun speculating about how it might tie into the rest of the franchise. Being set in the 2090s means the that show could o...

As Storm Eunice batters the walls of my flat in South London, I’m taking solace in the fact that I don’t have to do anything difficult like land a plane on a day like today. So naturally I, along with roughly 180,000 other people, have been gripped by a live stream from London’s Heathrow airport, where Big Jet TV is using a Panasonic HC-VX1 with 24x zoom to show the difficulties pilots are facing as they come in to land against gale-force winds. Each landing is genuinely hair raising, with aircraft routinely approaching the runway sideways as they’re buffeted by the wind measuring in excess of 60mph. But what would already be an interesting live stream is made fascinating by Big Jet TV’s host, who pivots between knowledgeable explanations of each plane and enthusiastic encouragement of the...

After much anticipation from enthusiasts, AMD has finally offered a closer look at its upcoming Ryzen 6000 mobile chip series. Built on the tech firm’s Zen 3+ core technology, the new line of mobile processors comes with a significantly upgraded performance over AMD’s previous generation of chips. According to the company, it managed to push base clock speeds up roughly 40% for its 15-watt U-series chips, translating to a 17% increase in overall performance. Equipped with an integrated Radeon 680M GPU, its graphics speeds have also increased by a staggering 81% while extending battery life by three hours. As compared to Intel’s tech, AMD also says that the 15-watt U-series processors can outperform its competitor’s 11th-gen 28-watt options easily. A test by the company indicates that the R...

Blue Origin is now looking to produce more New Shephard rockets in order to meet the “robust demand” in commercial space travel and tourism. Speaking at the FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington on Thursday, the Jeff Bezos-owned company’s CEO Bob Smith says that more rockets will be needed if they were to capitalize on the increasing demand within the industry. “I think the challenge for Blue at this point is that we’re actually supply limited,” he said, noting that the company had launched three crewed missions in 2021 and it can “easily double that” this year. The company currently holds two operation New Shephard rocket boosters, and while the price of its tickets isn’t made public, Smith notes that there were “thousands of people in the auction process.” Last Oct...

It’s official: you can mark off February 25th in your calendar as a day to spend hours battling enemies and solving puzzles in a twisted fantasy world. What? Elden Ring? No, I’m talking about The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. Nintendo has confirmed that the cult classic Zelda game will be added to Nintendo Switch Online’s N64 library next week. Majora’s Mask was released in 2000 and visually looks similar to its predecessor, the seminal Ocarina of Time. It’s a darker and very different game, however, built around a repeating three-day cycle where Link has to figure out how to save the world from imminent destruction by the moon. A remake for the 3DS, called The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D, was released in 2015. Nintendo 64 games are available to subscribers of Nintendo Switch Onlin...

YouTube may soon be disabling links to videos that border on spreading misinformation. In a new blog post by the company’s chief product officer Neal Mohan detailing some of YouTube’s efforts in fighting misinformation, the platform explained that on many occasions videos uploaded to its platform fall into a borderline category “that don’t quite cross the line of our policies for removal but that we don’t necessarily want to recommend to people.” While YouTube won’t take down these videos, it’s now considering disabling links that bring people to the content or disabling the share button, limiting its reach to a wider audience. The company also suggested possibly implementing interstitials, which it says would act as a “speed bump” for viewers to pause and consider what they’re watching. “...

In the lead-up to Destiny 2’s The Witch Queen expansion, players got the chance to interact with Savathûn, the game’s newest villain. In a PR stunt cleverly disguised as Savathûn hijacking the Destiny 2 Twitter account, the titular Witch Queen shot off some fire tweets, excoriating anyone foolish enough to wander into her mentions. Savathûn started her social media takeover with the tweet, “I am unburdened—hollow, filled only with potential. Weightless. Pure,” which, honestly, is a mood. When the official Xbox account replied somewhat snarkily, Savathûn unleashed all four barrels of The Fourth Horseman, kicking off her short but brilliant Twitter career. Being flawless is only difficult when you are flawed. — Destiny 2 (@DestinyTheGame) February 16, 2022 Savathûn was no respecter of person...

The volcanic eruption that rocked the Pacific island nation of Tonga in January was so powerful it blasted ash all the way up to the mesosphere, the third and coldest layer of Earth’s atmosphere. Rising 58 kilometers (36 miles) above Earth, the volcanic plume was likely the tallest ever measured by satellite, according to NASA. NASA was able to measure the plume because two weather satellites happened to be in the right place at the right time. Those satellites took still images and infrared observations that give a play-by-play of the eruption from above. In just 30 minutes or so following the eruption, ash, steam, and gas from the underwater volcano rose from the surface of the ocean all the way up to the mesosphere. A second blast rose nearly as high, reaching 50 kilometers (31 miles) —...