Technology

If you made an Nvidia GeForce Now server spit out a confidential list of thousands of games, some never-before-seen, would you think they were legit? Fake? Somewhere in between? That’s not a rhetorical question, because developer Ighor July has found such a list — including games like the PlayStation exclusive God of War seemingly coming to Windows PC via Steam. If you’d like to scan it yourself, SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik published a version to GitHub, too. Here’s a screenshot of what that looks like in the GeForce Now client, according to the developer: There are reasons to believe some of what the list contains might be legit. Nvidia confirmed to The Verge that it’s a real list, although the company claims it’s “used only for internal tracking and testing” and includes “speculative t...

It has been a contentious year for WhatsApp. In January, a simple effort to update its terms of service to enable some commerce features triggered a massive backlash in India, helping its rival Signal to double its user base in a month. In May, the Facebook-owned messaging app sued India over new rules issued by the country’s IT ministry that could break end-to-end encryption around the globe. And just last week, a widely read report in ProPublica drew attention to the service’s use of human reviewers to investigate potential violations of WhatsApp’s terms of service, in part by reading the five most recent messages in any reported exchange. Writing about ProPublica’s story, I took exception to the idea that allowing users to report bad actors is necessarily bad for privacy. (After publica...

Samsung has announced that it’s rolling out a public beta of Android 12 for Galaxy S21 devices, just a few weeks ahead of when we expect the final OS to be officially available for the first time on Pixel phones. Samsung is touting that it is managing to get these betas out earlier every year, though this year it’s only by a week or two compared to 2020. Registration for the beta program will begin on September 14th, the same day the iPhone 13 is announced. Users will need to register in the Samsung Members app to try it — and if Samsung repeats the past, the number of open slots will be limited. It’s only available in the U.S. as of now. The beta is actually for Samsung’s One UI 4, its version of Android. That distinction is important because one of the major changes in Android 12 is how ...

Twitter has committed to labeling tweets containing misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines, but the company says a recent Nicki Minaj tweet which claimed that “the vaccine” made her cousin’s friend impotent does not violate its rules. There is no known scientific evidence that the COVID-19 vaccine could cause a fertility problem in men or women; the CDC dedicates an entire page to debunking those fears. “My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent,” Minaj tweeted to her 22.6 million followers. “His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied.” Tweet by Nicki Minaj While Minaj clearly sugges...

Four people are set to launch to space Wednesday night aboard a SpaceX capsule, and none of them are professional astronauts. Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist, booked the Crew Dragon capsule last year and picked three normal folks to ride with him. It will be the first completely private mission to orbit. Dubbed Inspiration 4, the mission is a multimillion-dollar fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Hospital and — like a lot of recent flights to space these days — an effort to convince those watching from the ground that space won’t be always be exclusive to government officials and the ultra-wealthy. Isaacman’s crew includes Hayley Arceneaux, a cancer survivor and St. Jude physician assistant; Sian Proctor, a geology professor and former NASA astronaut candidate...

Sennheiser’s CX Plus true wireless earbuds aren’t its first pair to offer noise cancellation, but it’s the first time the feature has appeared on its more affordable CX range. At $179, the CX Plus are more expensive than the $129 CX True Wireless announced earlier this year, but they’re affordable compared to the flagship $300 Momentum True Wireless 2. Beyond noise cancellation, the CX Plus also include a transparent hearing mode, which uses their microphones to pass through audio from the outside world when you need to be aware of your surroundings. It’s got an IPX4 resistance to splashing water, two microphones on each earbud, and battery life that stands at a total of 24 hours when the buds are topped up from the charging case (compared to 27 hours for the cheaper CX, and 28 for the Mom...

Apple has released a suite of new updates for iOS, macOS, and watchOS to fix a bug that security researchers at Citizen Lab say was very likely exploited to allow government agencies to install spyware into the phones of journalists, lawyers, and activists. The researchers say the bug allowed for a “zero-click” install (meaning the target didn’t have to do anything to be infected) of the Pegasus spyware, which is reportedly capable of stealing data, passwords, and activating a phone’s microphone or camera. You can read our explainer of Pegusus here for more details. Given the severity of the exploit, you should update to iOS 14.8, macOS Big Sur 11.6, and watchOS 7.6.2 as soon as you can. Apple’s update page says it’s “aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited.” We ...

Sony has permanently shut down the servers for the original three LittleBigPlanet games on Playstation 3 and the handheld LittleBigPlanet on the Playstation Vita, according to a tweet posted by the official LittleBigPlanet account on Monday (via IGN). The new status quo leaves the originally PS3 trilogy of LittleBigPlanet games and the Vita version playable as offline single-player or co-op experiences only, with purchased and already downloaded DLC also usable. Any user-created content — the most intriguing aspect of Sony and original developer Media Molecule’s famous action-platforming series — will only be accessible on the newly updated Playstation 4 version of LittleBigPlanet 3. The server shutdown also means that anyone stuck with older PS3 versions of the games is also unable to upl...

Android 12 may be released on October 4th, according to an internal document shared by XDA Developers. The next version of Google’s mobile operating system features the new Material You visual design and has been in public beta since May. The document is used by Google to inform OEM partners when it will stop approving software builds for the various versions of Android (which it does for every software update to maintain compatibility with Google Mobile Services), according to XDA Developers. October 4th is the date Google lists as the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) release of Android 12 in the document. XDA editor-in-chief Mishaal Rahman notes that these AOSP release dates typically fall on the same day as the launch of a stable release of Android 12 for customers. You can see Rahman...

The medical world needs more emoji, according to Shuhan He, an emergency medicine physician who helped propose the anatomical heart and lungs emoji. Now, He and others have laid out the case for an even larger variety of health-related emoji, which they argue could improve communication between doctors and patients. In recent years, emoji related to medicine and health — like stethoscopes, hearing aids, bones, and microbes — have made their way into the Unicode Standard. In commentary published last week in JAMA, He and his co-authors hope Unicode will approve more emoji that could be used in medical contexts, including emoji for more organs, like the stomach, liver, and intestines, and equipment like an IV bag, CT scan, and pill pack. He also wants more medical professionals to push for s...

There’s usually a clear line that divides any manufacturer’s lineup of gaming and business laptops, but the new ZBook Studio G8 blurs HP’s lines a bit. It aims to be multiple machines at once, including a gaming laptop. And for the most part, it pulls the juggling act off, if you can stomach the cost. The G8 looks like a high-end Windows machine, and it’s easy to see where it fits in HP’s catalog next to the dashing Spectre X360. This one borrows the glossy trim going around all of its edges, and its blend of aluminum and magnesium build materials looks and feels great. It has a generously sized Windows Precision trackpad, and its keyboard is just as delightful to type on as some of HP’s other recent models we’ve reviewed. It’s a simple but gorgeous laptop, yet I wouldn’t recommend this $4...

Amazon has announced that most recent Kindles will be getting a new simpler UI through a software update (via Ars Technica). The update mainly focuses on navigation, adding a bar to the bottom of the screen that lets you jump between the Home screen, the book you’re currently reading, and the Library screen. Some have had the update for a few weeks, but Amazon has announced that the update will be rolling out widely over the next few weeks. The way you access the Kindle’s quick settings (which let you turn on airplane mode, adjust brightness, and more) has also changed. You now get access to the menu by swiping down from the top of the screen, instead of tapping a button. Amazon says more changes will be coming later this year, with an update that will let you see more recently read books ...