Technology

Noted hub-maker Satechi has come out with a new dongle that combines extra ports and a slot for an M.2 SATA SSD for expanding both your computer’s IO and storage while only taking up one of your precious ports. It doesn’t come with an SSD, but it does have a catchy name: the Satechi USB-C Hybrid Multiport Adapter. The concept has been done before by lesser-known brands, but if you’re considering it now that Satechi is making one, maybe hold off for just a moment while we break down the caveats and the potentially better options. As a hub, it’s pretty standard and unobjectionable: it has 100W USB-C PD passthrough (that will supply your computer with around 85W after it takes the energy it needs to operate), two USB-A 3.0 ports, and an HDMI port capable of driving a 4K screen at 60Hz. Then, ...

Google Meet hosts will soon be able to turn off participants’ microphones or cameras and prevent them from turning them back on, the company announced in a Workspace blog. The feature could be a useful way for hosts to keep noisy or rowdy attendees from continually interrupting meetings even after they have already been muted. The microphone and camera lock feature will be off by default; hosts will have to turn it on during meetings if they want to use it. If your meeting has breakout rooms, any audio and / or video locks made in the main will apply in those, too. The opposite isn’t true, though, meaning that locks applied in individual breakout rooms won’t apply to other breakout rooms or the main room. The host controls screen in Google Meet.Image: Google If you’re using older versions ...

Mobile spam calls have been a nuisance for years. I get between four and six robocalls daily, and a quick survey of friends shows that I’m not alone. Every waking day brings with it a new barrage. Robocallers have upped their game by masking their spam with local, genuine-looking phone numbers. Sometimes their nonsense is amusing — like when you get a threatening voicemail about your impending arrest over owed back taxes — but the vast majority of the time, it’s an unwelcome distraction. It’s all too easy for these scammers to wield the power of the internet and fire off countless calls with ease. And once even just a few people fall for a scam, they’ve made enough profit to cover their trivial expenses. Estimates put the number of robocalls in 2019 at over 50 billion. Both the Federal Com...

Jesse McCree, Overwatch’s cowboy hero, has been renamed Cole Cassidy. The name change is part of a number of updates Blizzard is making to its games to remove references to problematic people or themes that have come to light in the wake of several discrimination and harassment suits filed against the company. Last month, World of Warcraft removed NPCs that referenced former senior creative director Alex Afrasiabi, who was named in the harassment suit as participating in the infamous “Cosby Suite” incident. Jesse McCree — a former lead designer — was also a part of that incident and for whom Overwatch’s cowboy character was named. When these allegations were publicized, casters refused to say the character’s name during Overwatch League matches. The Overwatch team later stated they were in...

NASA is aiming to fly its massive, next-generation rocket, the Space Launch System, for the first time in February of 2022, a critical test flight on NASA’s journey to send people back to the Moon. However, plenty of tests still need to go well before the much-delayed vehicle can finally take flight. Confirmation of the new target date, which was rumored in August, comes a day after engineers fully stacked the Space Launch System, or SLS, inside NASA’s massive hangar at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Standing at 322 feet high, the SLS rises taller than the Statue of Liberty. On top of the stack is NASA’s Orion crew capsule, a new spacecraft that’s been developed to carry people into deep space. However, when the SLS flies for the first time next year, there won’t be any people on board. ...

Microsoft has spent the past 10 years embracing open-source software and, at several points, even admitting it loves Linux and the open source community. The Linux Foundation even praised Microsoft for working with the open source community after the company joined the foundation nearly five years ago. All of this goodwill could be about to come crashing down, thanks to a storm that’s brewing in the .NET community — Microsoft’s flagship development toolkit and core software framework. A controversial business decision inside Microsoft has left many questioning the company’s commitment to open source. Multiple sources at Microsoft tell The Verge that it has also angered lots of developers inside the company but that they’ve effectively been told not to complain. Microsoft has declared its l...

A post on Twitter’s blog reveals that Twitter’s algorithm promotes right-leaning content more often than left — but the reasons for that remain unclear. The findings drew from an internal study on Twitter’s algorithmic amplification of political content. During the study, Twitter looked at millions of tweets posted between April 1st and August 15th, 2020. These tweets were from news outlets and elected officials in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, the UK, and the US. In all countries studied, except Germany, Twitter found that right-leaning accounts “receive more algorithmic amplification than the political left.” It also discovered that right-leaning content from news outlets benefit from the same bias. “Negative posts about political outgroups tend to receive much more engagement o...

A second Facebook whistleblower has come forward with a new set of allegations about how the social media platform does business. First reported by the Washington Post, the person is a former member of Facebook’s integrity team and says the company puts profits before efforts to fight hate speech and misinformation on its platform. In the affidavit, copies of which were provided to The Verge, the whistleblower alleges, among other things, that a former Facebook communications official dismissed concerns about interference by Russia in the 2016 presidential election, assisted unwittingly by Facebook. Tucker Bounds said, according to the affidavit, that the situation would be “a flash in the pan. Some legislators will get pissy. And then in a few weeks they will move on to something else. Me...

The government has successfully hacked the hacking group REvil, the entity behind the ransomware that’s been linked to leaked Apple leaks, attacks on enterprise software vendors, and more, according to a report from Reuters. The outlet’s sources tell it that the FBI, Secret Service, Cyber Command, and organizations from other countries have worked together to take the group’s operations offline this month. The group’s dark web blog, which exposed information gleaned from its targets, is also reportedly offline. Reports about the group going offline started surfacing earlier this week, with TechCrunch writing that its Tor website was no longer available on Monday. There was speculation of a hack, fueled by a forum post from one of the group’s suspected leaders saying that its server was “co...

Warning: this story contains descriptions of sexual assault that some readers may find disturbing. Ten people were killed in physical altercations and over 4,000 people were assaulted during Lyft rides from 2017-2019, the company revealed in its first-ever safety report. Also during that period, 105 people died in fatal vehicle crashes involving a Lyft car. The report was long overdue, coming at least two years after Lyft originally said that it would be published. It represents the first set of publicly available data regarding the safety of Lyft’s ride-hailing platform and how it compares to national US averages. The company is currently facing multiple lawsuits from victims of sexual assault and rape. the numbers appear to paint a dark picture of the ride-hailing industry While the numb...