Technology

The shift to remote work has sent millions scrambling to improve their home office. There are many ways to do this, but the most important upgrade is the most obvious: the monitor. A monitor is key. You’ll use it hour after hour, day after day, year after year. Monitors even have the audacity to resist obsolescence, so the monitor you buy today might be the one you’re still using in a decade. (My editor and I both have decade-old Dell U2412 monitors that are still going strong.) It’s an important decision, but not a difficult one, as there are dozens of great monitors to choose from. This guide will help you pick the best for your home office. The sweet spot I’ve reviewed monitors and laptop displays for over a decade. While different monitors suit different owners, I believe the ideal hom...

Life these days can be very complicated, and many of us — I’d guess that most of us — are constantly looking for the best method to keep our lives in order. What do you need on your grocery list? When is that work project due, and who is working on it with you? A friend wants to do a movie-watching session, but is that the same day you promised your parents to help clean the garage? Which bills are due, and can you afford to pay them all? Where is that article about which masks to wear? And on and on. So we decided to start off 2022 by asking the staff of The Verge what they use to keep track of all their appointments / tasks / projects / workflows. And it turned out that they use a variety of different apps or some fairly old-fashioned paper-and-pen solutions — or both. If you’re finding ...

37 Activision Blizzard employees have reportedly “exited” the company since July of last year as part of the company’s attempt to crack down on issues surrounding sexual harassment, according to internal documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Activision Blizzard spokesperson Helaine Klasky also told the WSJ that 44 individuals were disciplined in connection with workplace misconduct allegations. Kotick reportedly didn’t want to release this information for fear of making the situation seem worse These numbers likely include the more than 20 workers that exited the company in October, along with around 20 workers who the company reprimanded at the time. The WSJ also notes that Activision Blizzard collected around 700 employee complaints describing concerns about workplace misc...

Last year, a collective of cryptocurrency fans pooled millions of dollars to buy a copy of the story bible for director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s legendary never-made adaptation of the novel Dune. After winning a November auction, the group voted last week on a direction for the project and got promptly roasted online for allegedly not understanding what they’d bought. Their plans included an animated series inspired by Jodorowsky’s Dune, and as any good collector likely knows, buying a commemorative copy of a script or storyboard doesn’t give you the right to shoot your own version. The actual situation seems more ambiguous than some critics are suggesting. The Dune story bible’s owners, known as Spice DAO (short for “decentralized autonomous organization”), appear perfectly aware they don’t...

Robot vacuums have come a long way since the days I used to babysit my original Roomba (circa 2006), following it around to make sure it didn’t thrash around on a threshold or ignore the miniature lighthouses and trundle unseeingly into a no-go zone. Back then, my biggest issue was coming home to a robot vacuum that had gone about 10 minutes into its cleanup route and been derailed by a shoe, sock, or dress-up wig. Fast forward a decade or so, and robot vacuum manufacturers claim they’ve cracked it. Using improved sensors combined with artificial intelligence, the latest crop of bots can now see and recognize everyday household objects and nimbly navigate around them to carry on their merry way. But is this feature worth splashing out on a top-of-the-line bot for? I put two of the newest t...

Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker signifies the end of an era. One story, started nine years ago, has ended with a stunning and heartwarming conclusion, while the promise of a new adventure awaits on the horizon. But Endwalker doesn’t merely mark the end of the Hydaelyn / Zodiark saga. For a few diehard players, Endwalker also provides a final coda for the game Final Fantasy XIV was before it was rebooted into A Realm Reborn. The original Final Fantasy XIV Online — colloquially known as “1.0” — had a rough release. Reviews at the time said the game “lacked character, cohesion, and joy” and lamented its every feature from the UI to the storytelling. The one thing Tatjana Vejnovic remembers of 1.0 was “[h]ow un-fucking-playable it was.” “Everything loaded in super slow, and it was laggy as all he...

Spain has announced new rules for how social media influencers and others can advertise cryptocurrency assets, Reuters reports. Starting next month, the Spanish National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) will require people and companies to notify it at least 10 days before running campaigns for crypto assets. The rules apply to influencers with more than 100,000 subscribers who are paid to promote cryptocurrency — a practice that’s drawn criticism and even lawsuits worldwide. According to Reuters, crypto advertisers will need to release the content of their upcoming campaigns to the CNMV, and they must include warnings about the risks of what they’re selling. The rules are designed to let the CNMV monitor the marketing ecosystem around crypto assets and make sure audiences are aware of ...

Games Done Quick has raised $3.4 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation at its annual video game speedrunning event, Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ), the most money ever raised at a single Games Done Quick event (via IGN). The organization, which holds two speedrunning events for charity every year, announced its success on Twitter. It’s the most money Games Done Quick has ever raised, and also the fastest the organization has ever reached $1 million in donations. As noted on AGDQ’s tracker, the event showcased a total of 149 speedruns and received 49,482 donations from 28,073 different people. AGDQ 2022 was livestreamed on Twitch from January 9th to January 16th and featured some of the world’s most talented speedrunners who broke some records of their own. InsertLogic completed Kena: ...

Details on Oppo’s upcoming flagship phone are starting to come together. Multiple leaks are suggesting it’ll be called the Find X5 Pro, with a similar design to last year’s Find X3 Pro and specs broadly in line with the new OnePlus 10 Pro, which is already available in China. (OnePlus, of course, is now treated as a sub-brand of Oppo.) The Find X3 Pro wasn’t sold in the US, but it did make its way to Europe and was one of the best phones of 2021. Renders recently released by OnLeaks show a device with a camera bump that flows into the rest of the back panel in a similar fashion to the Find X3 Pro, although the camera configuration has changed and doesn’t appear to include the previous phone’s unique ring light-equipped “microscope” camera. Alleged real-world photos that corroborate the OnL...

Hyundai and its Genesis brand are reportedly close to adding support for Apple’s digital car key feature, which lets you unlock and start compatible vehicles using the iPhone’s Wallet app, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. According to Gurman, the so-called “CarKey” feature is set to come to Hyundai’s Genesis lineup this summer. Hyundai already offers proprietary iOS apps, including MyHyundai with Bluelink and the Genesis Intelligent Assistant, which include the ability to remotely start, or unlock the doors of compatible vehicles. But adding support for Apple’s implementation of the digital key feature should make the functionality more seamless, and benefit from system-level Apple Wallet shortcuts. Hyundai’s site notes that its NFC-based digital key feature is currently only availabl...

Microsoft has started testing some deeper YouTube integration in its Edge browser. The latest Canary developer builds of Edge include a new “followable web” feature that lets you easily follow your favorite content creators on YouTube. Reddit user Leopeva64 spotted a new YouTube follow button that appears in the address bar of YouTube pages. Following creators will add them to a feed that’s part of the Collections feature in Edge. The feature is clearly in the early preview stages, and it doesn’t support all YouTube content creators just yet. The feed that’s created in Collections lets you see recent posts from creators that you follow. The new web following feature in Edge.Image: Reddit (Leopeva64) This deeper integration with YouTube will likely extend to other parts of the web, too. Mic...