Technology

Don’t Look Up is Netflix’s second most popular film debut to date, coming in around 4 million viewing hours short of Netflix’s crown jewel Red Notice. The new film racked up nearly 360 million hours of viewing during its first 28 days on the service, per Netflix’s Top 10 portal for tracking its most successful titles. Red Notice, meanwhile, tallied 364 million hours during its first four weeks on Netflix, while Bird Box holds third place with 282 million hours viewed. While it narrowly missed its opportunity to overthrow Netflix’s biggest film success to date — it looked like it still had a chance last week — Don’t Look Up is still a monumental win for the streamer. It’s the second major film release in a matter of months to topple previously held records for hours viewed. Prior to Red Not...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday urged El Salvador to drop Bitcoin as a legal tender, citing its volatility. The country was the first in the world to adopt Bitcoin as a currency in September, with President Nayib Bukele saying that it would provide the country with new investment incentives and a boost to economic activity. The Washington D.C.-headquartered financial institution wrote in a statement that officially adopting a cryptocurrency “entails large risks for financial and market integrity, financial stability, and consumer protection.” The IMF praised El Salvador’s handling of the pandemic, resulting in a limited economic toll on the country. “The economy is rebounding strongly, and El Salvador has one of the lowest rates of COVID-19 infection and mortality in the r...

Last week, workers at Raven Software, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, announced they had created the Game Workers Alliance or GWA, a union of Raven’s QA developers. The union formed after news of layoffs at the Call of Duty support studio touched off five weeks of strikes. Now that the union has formed, the GWA has ended its strike, but there are still many steps between organization and formal unionization. The Verge spoke with the CWA and a former QA tester at Raven Software involved in the unionization efforts to understand what’s next for the fledgling union and how Microsoft’s pending acquisition and Raven’s new restructuring program will affect these developments. Right now, the GWA is composed of Raven Software QA workers. This was the department primarily affected by the layof...

Sony is making it a lot easier to share your PS5 screenshots outside of your PS5. The company appears to finally be rolling out a way to have screenshots and videos captured on your PS5 auto-upload to the PlayStation app, where you can save them to your camera roll for whatever you might need. This feature was first tested in Canada and Japan in October, but it became available for me in the US on Tuesday. To get the new feature to work, I had to do a couple things. First, I had to open up the Media Gallery on my PS5, which you can find by going to the Games menu, scrolling all the way to Game Library icon, clicking that, and navigating to the Media Gallery. When I did, a prompt appeared that gave me the option to “Enable Auto-Upload,” which I selected. Here’s the prompt you’ll see that le...

More than two years after it was first announced, the Facebook-sponsored cryptocurrency formerly known as Libra appears to be coming to an end. The Diem Association set up by Facebook to manage the digital token is exploring a sale of its assets after meeting resistance by regulators who opposed the initiative, according to a new report by Bloomberg. The U.S. Federal Reserve “dealt the effort a final blow” by putting pressure on Silvergate, the banking partner that Diem said it was partnering with last year to launch the token, Bloomberg reports. I’ve also heard from someone involved that the Fed threatened Silvergate, putting the launch on ice. A Diem Association spokesperson, Michael Crittenden, told The Verge that Bloomberg’s story contained “some factual errors” but declined to comment...

Microsoft seems to have had a lot of success getting people to try out its games. During the company’s earnings call on Tuesday, CEO Satya Nadella said that 20 million people had played Halo Infinite and 18 million people had played Forza Horizon 5. While it’s worth noting that those numbers will include people who played for a few minutes and didn’t stick around, it speaks to the pull of the just-download-it-and-give-it-a-whirl model. Both games can be played without any direct cost; Horizon 5 is available on the Xbox Game Pass subscription service, which has around 25 million subscribers according to Microsoft, and Halo Infinite’s multiplayer uses a free-to-play model (though non-Game Pass subscribers will have to buy the campaign separately). While both games have been hotly anticipated...

SHIB looks to further shed its meme coin connotation with the teasing of its newest project into the Metaverse. Announced on Twitter, the Shiba Inu cryptocurrency surprised its Shib Army with the news that 2022 will see a new “Shiberse.” It is described as “an immersive experience” made for its “ecosystem and the Metaverse space.” This adds to its NFT launch and its crazy 2021 where it saw prices soar. It even experienced some recognition from Elon Musk himself. SHIB is currently trading t $0.00002141 USD with a market cap of roughly $11.5 billion USD. As promised, we are so excited to announce our first special surprise for the year #ShibArmy! In 2022, we are reaching new heights and welcoming the #Shiberse ?. An immersive experience for our ecosystem and the Metaverse space! We can’...

Microsoft on Tuesday released its financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2021, reporting strong earnings. The tech giant’s revenue for the quarter was $51.7 billion USD, a 20% increase compared to the same period last fiscal year. Operating income increased by 24% to $22.2 billion USD while net income increased 21% to $18.8 billion USD. Diluted earnings per share was $2.48 USD — a 22% increase. The company saw a boost in its cloud services, driven by Azure and other cloud services revenue growth of 46%. “Solid commercial execution, represented by strong bookings growth driven by long-term Azure commitments, increased Microsoft Cloud revenue to $22.1 billion USD, up 32% year over year” said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft. ...

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has fined Fashion Nova, a California fast-fashion retailer, $4.2 million to settle allegations that it blocked negative product reviews from being posted on its website. The agency says this is its first case to challenge the practice of suppressing negative customer reviews. The FTC said in a complaint (pdf) that between 2015 and 2019, Fashion Nova used a third-party tool that allowed it to automatically post four- and five-star customer reviews but withheld “hundreds of thousands [of] lower starred, more negative reviews,” which was misleading to customers. “Suppressing a product’s negative reviews deprives consumers of potentially useful information and artificially inflates the product’s average star rating,” according to an FTC press release. “Decept...

If you’re hunting for an Xbox Series X, you might want to check your email inbox. As we noted last fall, Microsoft has occasionally been contacting Microsoft Store customers, offering a “limited supply of Xbox Series X bundles” that are available to “valued Microsoft customers” in the US. Xbox Series X bundles now availableImage: The Verge The emails are addressed to Microsoft Store customers, and bundles are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Microsoft is limiting orders to one bundle per order or two bundles per 30-day period. The links to order a bundle are unique and tied to a Microsoft Account and don’t always guarantee that stock is available for purchase. These Xbox Series X consoles are available on a first-come, first-served basis and will sell out quickly. The limit i...

Samsung has confirmed a date and time for its next Galaxy Unpacked event: Wednesday, February 9th at 10AM ET / 7AM PT. The invitation features a large letter “S” with the words “The Epic Standard,” indicating that we can expect to see the Galaxy S22 series debut on the livestream, to nobody’s surprise. Samsung itself had already hinted that a new S-series Ultra device would be coming in February — one that will likely absorb the Note series. As they tend to, the S22 leaks have been coming in strong over the past month. From the looks of it, the S22 Ultra will indeed have a silo for the S-Pen stylus, like the Note does (did?), and the S22 is rumored to have a slightly smaller 6.1-inch display compared to the S21’s 6.2-inch panel. The leaks so far don’t suggest any major feature or design sh...

Activision plans to release at least the next three Call of Duty games on both Sony and Microsoft consoles, Bloomberg reports. The new report should be a sigh of relief to fans who were worried Microsoft would immediately make new Call of Duty games Xbox exclusive if its blockbuster acquisition of Activision goes through. According to Bloomberg, Activision had already committed to bring “the next few” Call of Duty titles to PlayStation sometime before Microsoft’s acquisition was announced. Last week, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said he told Sony that Microsoft wants to “keep Call of Duty on PlayStation” and that the company intends to honor existing agreements, so it seems like Activision’s commitment with Sony will stay in place. The upcoming Call of Duty games coming to PlayStation...