Technology

Death Stranding Director’s Cut will be launching on PC on March 30th, publisher 505 Games announced Thursday, and people who already own the original version of the game will be able to upgrade for $9.99. The game will be available both on Steam and on the Epic Games Store, and to take advantage of the upgrade offer, you’ll have to have the original Death Stranding already installed on your PC. Director’s Cut will also be available for a $39.99 standalone purchase. If you want a cheaper way to get Director’s Cut, though, you might want to consider picking up the base version of Death Stranding during 505 Games’ current sale on Steam and the Epic Games Store and upgrading when Director’s Cut is available. Previously, the release timeline for the PC version of Death Stranding Director’s Cut ...

This story originally ran in Hot Pod, The Verge’s preeminent audio industry newsletter. You can subscribe here for more scoops, analysis, and reporting. You’ve probably seen this by now, but to catch you up if not: On Monday, Neil Young issued an ultimatum to Spotify: keep Joe Rogan or me. It can’t have both on the service. “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them,” he wrote in a now-deleted letter, according to Rolling Stone. The chief issue, he said, is Joe Rogan, Spotify’s star podcaster to whom it reportedly paid up to $100 million for an exclusive license to his show. Yesterday, Young made good on his word and, along with his record label, removed his music fro...

Early on in All of Us Are Dead, student Lee Cheong-san exclaims to his peers as they fend off a wave of zombies swarming their suburban Hyosan High School, “It’s Train to Busan!” Another replies, “Why are they at school? They should be in movies.” With this tongue-in-cheek meta-reference to its notable film predecessor, it is a sign that the Korean zombie subgenre has well and truly sunk its grisly teeth into the popular cultural imagination. First rising to global acclaim with the commercial and critical hit Train to Busan in 2016, the Korean zombie lineage also includes Netflix’s groundbreaking historical series Kingdom (2019), as well as films like Peninsula (Train to Busan sequel) and #Alive (2020). Through the grotesque figure of the zombie and its transitions between the human and th...

Messenger added end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) chatting in 2016 when it was still called Facebook Messenger, and Meta was still Facebook. Now many things have changed, but the optional feature is fully rolled out to everyone, with toggles to encrypt text messages as well as group chats and calls. Meta has discussed switching to E2EE as a default, but that may not happen until next year at the earliest, as some regulators claim this would harm public safety. There are two ways Messenger users can opt in to the secure chats, either via vanish mode, by swiping up on an existing chat to enter one where messages automatically disappear when the window is closed or the original version that was introduced in 2016 as Secret Conversations. You can turn that on by toggling the lock icon when you start...

It’s nearly the end of January, which means the holidays are sadly a month behind us. If you’re understandably already starting to crave another break, channel your wanderlust by preparing for your next vacation with this GoPro Hero 10 deal. Right now, you can take great photos and video clips on your next trip while saving big now that GoPro’s latest action camera has reached an all-time low. Typically $499.99, GoPro is selling the camera — alongside a one-year GoPro annual subscription, a 32GB SanDisk Extreme microSDHC card and free express shipping — for $349.98. The service typically costs $49.99 per year and offers unlimited cloud backup as well auto uploads, GoPro.com discounts, unlimited access to premium editing tools in the Quik app, and guaranteed camera replacement. You can also...

A theme park based around the work of legendary Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli will open on November 1st in Nagakute, Japan, the company’s official Twitter account has announced. Plans for the park, which shouldn’t be confused with the existing Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, were initially announced in 2017. Ghibli Park will be located on the site of the 2005 World’s Fair in the city of Nagakute, around 90 miles east of Kyoto and 150 miles west of Tokyo. A recreation of Satsuki and Mei’s house from My Neighbor Totoro was already built on this site for the fair, but the new park will expand on this with new attractions based on other Ghibli films. The Ghibli Twitter account has shared photographs of the attractions under construction. There are antique shops modeled after those in Whisper...

Google’s ambitions for gaming-focused Chromebooks might be close to reality. After years of teasing Steam for Chrome OS and even Nvidia demoing support for DLSS and ray tracing on Arm-based Chromebooks, references to new gaming Chromebooks have now been spotted in test versions of Chrome OS. Google revealed two years ago that it was working on Steam support for Chromebooks, but we’ve heard very little ever since. 9to5Google reports that three codenames for potential gaming Chromebooks have been spotted, all with RGB keyboards. The publication speculates that both HP and Lenovo could be testing gaming Chromebooks, based on employee contributions to Chrome OS code. A third mysterious device, codenamed Ripple, appears to be a tablet with a detachable keyboard. A new flag has also been discove...

Fans of inky blacks and bright highlights rejoice: Netflix now officially lists HDR support for Google’s Pixel 6, 6 Pro, and more affordable 5A. That’s according to one of the streaming giant’s support pages, spotted by 9to5Google, which appears to have been updated some time after January 14th. The update also appears to have listed the phones as supporting HD on the service. The update should mean owners of Google’s latest smartphones won’t have any problem watching HDR or HD content on Netflix. Although the streaming service often lists new devices as compatible on the day of their release, as with the Galaxy S21 series, there are occasionally times when it doesn’t list support until much later, like with the OnePlus 8. It’s not entirely clear why Netflix hasn’t listed HDR or HD support...

When you’re in the middle of a Zoom video meeting at home and your cat suddenly decides to start bawling for its dinner, you’ll want to mute your audio in a hurry. In that case, you have a choice: you can either reach for your mouse or touchpad and start searching for the “Mute” button or you can use a quick keyboard shortcut to cut off that noise immediately. Zoom has a long list of keyboard shortcuts that you can use before or during a videoconference. By using these shortcuts, you can quickly join a meeting; mute and unmute the audio; start, pause, and stop recording; switch views from Speaker (a large image of the person speaking) to Gallery (several equally sized images, no matter who is speaking); and perform a variety of other tasks. Open each category in Keyboard Shortcuts to see a...

YouTube is announcing 135 creators who will take part in the #YouTubeBlack Voices Fund, including a slate of 40 in the US and Canada. The fund provides one year of support, including seed funding for channels, development programs, workshops, and networking opportunities. “Black creators have played an important role in shaping the culture on YouTube. From fashion and comedy to politics, learning and wellness, Black creators have propelled our platform forward,” the company said in the announcement. The grantees of the fund, now in its second year, include creators from a variety of backgrounds like lawyers, athletes, lifestyle vloggers, comedians, dermatologists, and pop culture commentators. YouTube announced the fund in 2020, promising to invest $100 million to “amplify” Black creators ...

Lamborghini is accelerating into the world of the blockchain with the release of its first NFT (non-fungible token) next month. The Italian automaker, which is in the midst of an ambitious shift to hybrid and electric sports cars, announced that it would auction off a series of NFTs that it produced in collaboration with Swiss artist Fabian Oefner, as well as NFT Pro and Sotheby’s. Oefner’s image depicts a Lamborghini breaking down into its core components as it rockets through the inky blackness of space. It’s less amateurish in its design than many of the more popular NFTs, like the Bored Ape series, which raises questions as to how it will be received by the crypto community. Lamborghini is fully embracing the astronomical theme Lamborghini is fully embracing the astronomical theme. The...