Technology

The kindest thing I can say about the new $299 Gen 6 iteration of Fossil’s long-running smartwatch series is this: it’s not entirely Fossil’s fault that it’s bad. The company reportedly learned that Google and Samsung had teamed up to finally revitalize the Wear OS software Fossil’s been using at the same time we did: this past May at Google IO. And so Fossil’s 2021 smartwatch lineup is running software that hasn’t been meaningfully improved since at least 2019 and it won’t receive the latest software until late 2022. Samsung has smartwatches that run on Wear OS 3 and do so competently, Fossil is stuck on Wear OS 2. Running old software is not inherently a bad thing — old software is often battle tested, reliable, and fast. Sadly, none of those adjectives apply here and Fossil compounded W...

If you’re a longtime listener of The Vergecast, then you know that USB-C comes up a lot. Anytime our colleague Chaim Gartenberg joins the show, there is going to be a brief aside about the complications of USB-C and the many varieties of USB-C cables. The reason USB-C can be complicated is that we have one plug that does multiple things — from low power to ridiculously high 240-watt power. From basic data to super high-speed data. Thunderbolt. Display monitors. Audio. The dream of a single cable and plug is great, but it’s also confusing. For today’s Vergecast, we wanted to take a step back and focus an entire episode on what USB-C is, where it’s at today, and what’s in store for its future. How do we know what cable to buy? Why is there no USB-C on the iPhone? How future proof is USB-C? O...

Today let’s talk about a concept that we can all agree is well defined and no one is yet sick of talking about: the metaverse. OK, maybe you are a little tired of hearing about it. For a company often accused of being unable to do anything but copy, Facebook-now-Meta’s announcement this summer that it would pivot to the metaverse has already inspired a remarkable number of clones. As David Pierce notes at Protocol today, the tech world has recently announced “a fashion metaverse, an industrial metaverse, an entertainment metaverse, a gaming metaverse, [and] a shark metaverse.” (He forgot Match Group’s forthcoming dating metaverse, though in fairness I’m trying to forget it too.) But as oppressive as this wave of announcements can feel, they also tell us something important: this trend — a ...

This week, Netflix’s iOS app is starting a test of a new feed for kids that’s designed to show short clips taken from its library of children’s content, Bloomberg News reports. The “Kids Clips” feature uses a similar interface to TikTok or Instagram Reels in an attempt to surface child-friendly content. But while competing services are primarily formatted for viewing in portrait, Kids Clips’ videos are designed to be viewed in landscape. Kids Clips joins a similar feature Netflix launched to promote its comedy content earlier this year called “Fast Laughs.” Both features have a similar aim: to promote Netflix’s content using short clips similar to what users are already watching on social media. A screenshot of the Kids Clips interface shared by Bloomberg shows a shortcut for adding a titl...

Yelp is joining almost every other site on the internet by giving you a feed to scroll through until you can’t scroll no more. Yelp says this feature will be showing up on its users’ homepages in almost 150 US metro areas starting today, and that the feed will feature “visual content from local restaurants,” including photos from other Yelpers, posts from restaurant owners, and some popular dishes being served in your area. Yelp says in its press release that a few things could happen when you tap on one of the posts in the feed. If the post is a picture of a popular dish (which are meals that pop up a lot in the restaurant’s reviews), you’ll see more photos of it, along with some reviews so you can tell if it’s really as good as it looks. If the photo you tapped on is a picture of the res...

In August, Google announced its iOS Maps app would soon be getting a dark mode. But although the feature fully launched at the beginning of September, it arrived quietly enough that several Verge staffers hadn’t even noticed its appearance until we started receiving in-app notices. If you’ve also been in the dark, rather than the dark mode (sorry), here’s how to enable the feature. From the main Google Maps interface on iOS, tap your profile picture in the top right of the screen. Pick “Settings” from the menu, then select “Dark Mode” from the Using Maps section. Here you have three options: On, Off, and “Same as device setting” (which automatically turns dark mode on or off depending on what you have enabled at the OS level). Grid View If you’re on Android, a similar feature launched earl...

Trading platform Robinhood said Monday that personal information for more than 7 million customers was accessed during a data breach on November 3rd. The company said in a news release that it does not appear that Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, or debit card numbers were exposed, and no customers have had “financial loss” due to the incident. An unauthorized third party “socially engineered a customer support employee by phone,” Robinhood said, and was able to access its customer support systems. The attacker was able to get a list of email addresses for approximately 5 million people and full names for a separate group of 2 million people. For a smaller group of about 310 people, additional personal information, including names, dates of birth, and zip codes, was exposed, ...

More than a year after AMD first announced its Zen 4 architecture, the tech company has finally unveiled some of its first processors to use that technology, although both series will focus on corporate customers for now. Over at AMD’s latest keynote, CEO Dr. Lisa Su unveiled the new Bergamo: a high-performance processor designed specifically for cloud computing. Placing an emphasis on core density through optimizing cache and power consumption, the new CPU carries a staggering 128 cores, allowing for exceptionally fast computing at cloud data centers. The processor itself uses a modified version of AMD’s Zen 4 architecture, named Zen 4c to highlight its cloud affiliation. Su says the chip will be available in the first half of 2023. Aside from Bergamo, the tech giant also announced a seco...

AMC boss Adam Aron said today that the theater chain is exploring how it can accept Shiba Inu in addition to other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Dogecoin. In addition, AMC is evidently exploring its own cryptocurrency, which would truly cement the company as king of the memestocks. That AMC appears to be flirting with the idea of accepting (another) meme currency in exchange for actual goods and services isn’t entirely surprising. AMC was effectively rescued midway through the pandemic by meme stock Reddit traders, and Aron has been leaning heavily into the company’s relationship with these shareholders ever since. Hearing about AMC’s crypto ambitions has not only come to be expected during the company’s meetings with shareholders, it’s practically ensured. Aron shared a Twitter poll l...

Google has announced an exciting new feature for its Arts and Culture app: the ability to search through thousands of paintings to find a look-alike for your pet. The company says its “Pet Portraits” feature will let you take a picture of a dog, cat, fish, bird, reptile, horse, or rabbit, and have a machine learning algorithm find pieces of art that feature a similar-looking animal. The process only takes a few seconds, and as a bonus you’ll be able to tap on the pieces of artwork to learn more about them. You can even save a video slideshow of your results. I tried out Pet Portraits on my cat, Aslan, and the results were mixed — while the app was able to generate a beautiful (okay, mostly tan) color palette based on his fur, most of the art doppelgängers (as Google puts it) didn’t end up ...

We knew from the beginning that Valve’s upcoming $400 Steam Deck handheld wouldn’t play every Steam game perfectly out of the box. It runs Windows games on Linux using the Proton compatibility layer, and some of the biggest games on Steam use anti-cheat software that, historically, hasn’t worked with Proton. But on Friday, Valve revealed that this should no longer be a problem for BattlEye, one of the biggest anti-cheat vendors out there. “BattlEye on Proton integration has reached a point where all a developer needs to do is reach out BattlEye to enable it for their title. No additional work is required by the developer besides that communication,” writes Valve, adding that Mount & Blade II Bannerlord and Ark: Survival Evolved are already up and running. In other words, a single email...

A crew of four astronauts successfully returned to Earth this evening, splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Pensacola inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. Their arrival back on the planet brings an end to a more than six-month-long stay aboard the International Space Station, and it paves the way for another crew of four to launch to the ISS in the coming week. The crew includes two NASA astronauts, Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, and French astronaut Thomas Pesquet from the European Space Agency. The group launched to the space station on April 23rd atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, part of a mission called Crew-2. Their flight marks the third time that SpaceX has brought people home from ...