Technology

Hackers ambushed Twitch this morning and replaced game directory images with photos of Jeff Bezos. Redditors were among the first to notice the switch around 5 a.m. ET. “The banner for GTA 5 is Jeff Bezos’ face now,” one user wrote on the Twitch subreddit. Other users reported seeing Bezos in the header photos for the games Dota 2, Minecraft and Apex Legends. More Twitch shenanigans are afoot. All game directory header pictures on the Web version of Twitch are now showing a closeup picture of Jeff Bezos. It’s been like this for the last 2 hours. pic.twitter.com/LcKP9jGMCC — AnEternalEnigma (@AnEternalEnigma) October 8, 2021 In 2014, Twitch was acquired by Amazon, which is likely why the hackers used a photo of Bezos to troll gamers. And while the stunt would typically appear to be a r...

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. This week, Nilay and Dieter bring in Verge policy editor Russell Brandom and managing editor Alex Cranz to cover the series of unfortunate events for Facebook: the 60 Minutes whistleblower interview on Sunday, the massive Facebook outage on Monday, the whistleblower Senate hearing on Tuesday, and the fallout and response the following days. The Vergecast crew discusses whistleblower Frances Haugen’s testimony, how these events stood out amongst the various Facebook scandals of the past, and what could happen next with tech regulation. Later in the show, the team shift gears into the light...

If you’ve updated your PC from Windows 10 to Windows 11, you may have noticed that when you click on a link for a website, a PDF document, or a variety of other file types, you will now be sent to Microsoft’s Edge browser. In its new version of Windows, Microsoft seems to have become especially aggressive in pushing its own apps over the apps that had been installed as defaults before the upgrade. In other words, Edge suddenly became your default browser. Normally, the first time you go into another browser that is not Edge — say, Google Chrome — the not-Edge browser will ask if you’d like to make it the default instead. However, the process for changing your defaults in Windows 11 has become more complicated than it was in Windows 10. So you may not get that handy request. Switch default ...

After several rumors, Rockstar Games has confirmed that Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, and San Andreas are each getting HD remasters. They’ll be released in a package called Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition. The collection is coming to PC (via the Rockstar Games Launcher), PlayStation, Xbox, and, more surprisingly, the Nintendo Switch will host them, too. It will come to iOS and Android in the first half of 2022. Pricing and release date info hasn’t been shared. The company hasn’t explicitly mentioned what kind of technical improvements were made, nor has it shared any footage yet. But it says that each of the games has gotten “across-the-board upgrades including graphical improvements and modern gameplay enhancements.” The company chose to take the faithful r...

The newest version of the immensely popular Nintendo Switch, the Nintendo Switch OLED model, is now available online. So far, they’ve popped up at GameStop, but they quickly went out of stock. Though, a few Verge staffers have found success buying one through Nintendo’s online shop. The key to their success was persistence and patience (and a lot of refreshing that seems hopeless, until it’s not), and of course, you’ll need to login to your Nintendo account to make the purchase there. We’ll add more retailers throughout the day as they appear online. Best Buy is one of the few retailers so far that hasn’t released its launch day stock of Switch OLED consoles, so maybe keep that page open and ready. The Switch OLED model is the top end of Nintendo’s current console lineup, coming in at $350...

The new Nintendo Switch OLED Model doesn’t have a Pentile screen. That might not mean much to you, and it wasn’t something we were able to confirm definitively during our review process — other than to say that the screen is a huge improvement. Which it is. But there’s been speculation ever since the OLED Switch was announced that its panel might use Pentile technology, which could have had big implications for image quality. Nintendo devices don’t tend to have the best screens, after all. Pentile is a trademark owned by Samsung that refers to various subpixel matrix layouts most commonly used in OLED display panels. In casual conversation, or as casual as conversations about OLED subpixel layouts can really be, Pentile is now essentially shorthand for “not full RGB,” meaning that red, gre...

Google Search now has a handy built-in tuner, letting you use the microphone on your phone or computer to tune a guitar, Android Police reports. To access the feature, which was added this week, just search for “Google tuner.” The interface is similar to the dozens of guitar tuning apps that are already available. You play a string on the guitar, and Google will detect the note you’re aiming for, and tell you to “tune up” or “tune down” as required. Like other guitar tuning apps, the effectiveness of Google’s tuner seems to depend a lot on the hardware you’re using it with. My iPhone 12 Pro (via Safari) or Windows desktop with a Blue Snowball USB microphone (via Edge) had no trouble hearing and helping me tune an unamplified electric guitar, but a more affordable Android device I’m current...

TikTok has launched an app for LG’s 2020 and 2021 smart TVs, the TV manufacturer has announced. The app arrived on these recent webOS 5.0 and webOS 6.0 models with a firmware update that started rolling out on October 7th, but will also be coming to older 2019 TVs “in the coming months.” The app is launching in the UK, France, and Germany, a TikTok representative confirmed to The Verge. That’s notable since TikTok’s smart TV apps for Samsung TVs, Android TV, and Fire TV have all focused on those same European countries so far. Meanwhile in the US, TikTok released a more limited “More on TikTok” app on Fire TV devices last year. We have followed up with both LG and TikTok to ask which regions the new smart TV app will be available in. Considering how optimized TikTok is for portrait-orienta...

A developer who made a tool that let people automatically unfollow friends and groups on Facebook says he’s been banned permanently from the social networking site. Louis Barclay was the creator of “Unfollow Everything,” a browser extension that allowed Facebook users to essentially delete their News Feed by unfollowing all their connections at once. Facebook allows users to individually unfollow friends, groups, and pages, which removes their content from the News Feed, the algorithmically-controlled heart of Facebook. Barclay’s tool automated this process, instantly wiping users’ News Feed. As Barclay wrote of his experience using the tool in a recent article for Slate: I still remember the feeling of unfollowing everything for the first time. It was near-miraculous. I had lost nothing, ...

Japan’s first curved LED digital billboard Cross Shinjuku Vision was introduced earlier in July outside Shinjuku station. Since then, the billboard has been used to display a variety of ads and creative visuals including the recent YEEZY Gap drop. A new ultra-realistic visual emerged on the three-story-high 4K display featuring the Dragon Ball antagonist Frieza shouting down at passing pedestrians. The next-gen ad promotes Bandai Namco‘s Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle free-to-play mobile game. While Frieza’s runtime has now expired, the screen now features new visuals of a jaw-dropping gigantic cat. For those currently in Tokyo, Cross Shinjuku Vision screens every 15 minutes from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. JST. Find the Frieda ad video above and the giant cat billboard below. Cross Shinjuku Vision / ク...

Mozilla introduced a new suggested search result feature in the Firefox address bar as part of the 93.0 release of its browser. That’s not too surprising — Firefox Suggest, Mozilla’s feature for “surfacing relevant information and sites to help you accomplish your goals,” is similar to suggestions offered by most browsers. But as How-To Geek spotted in the company’s support pages, it also includes content from paid advertisers. “When contextual suggestions are enabled, Firefox Suggest uses your city location and search keywords to make contextual suggestions from Firefox and our partners, while keeping your privacy in mind,” the support post reads. The “relevant suggestions” from “trusted partners” appear at the bottom of the usual search suggestions pulled from your bookmarks, browser his...