Technology

Twenty-year-old Kyell Bryan of Pennsylvania has pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft for a SIM swapping and cryptocurrency theft scheme, according to the United States Attorney’s Office of the District of Maryland. According to the initial indictment statement, in June 2019, Bryan, who was 19, conspired with Jordan K. Milleson, then 21, and others. The group engaged in phishing and vishing (voice phishing) to trick employees at an unnamed wireless operator into coughing up their login credentials. As Brian Krebs reported when Bryan and Milleson were indicted, they were active participants of the OGUsers trading forum, which has spawned similar phishing attacks against Twitter and others, usually with the intent of stealing and trading social media handles. Leaked messages from OGUse...

After numerous delays — and considerable vitriol from director Denis Villeneuve himself — Dune is finally about to stream on HBO Max. In fact, it’s arriving a day early: October 21st at 6PM ET / 3PM PT, a rep confirms to The Verge. Hope you’re hearing soon enough to schedule your watch party! Note that you’ll need to be paying for HBO Max’s $15-a-month ad-free plan, since the $10 plan doesn’t come with day-and-date Warner Bros. movie releases. We’ve had multiple Dune trailers at this point if you want to know what you’re in for, and you can find two of them embedded below. The Verge’s staff weighed in on the first trailer, and we’ll have a review soon as well. [embedded content] [embedded content] And if you’d rather watch a 4K restoration of the original cult-classic 1984 David Lynch vers...

NASA has shared a video imagining the whimsical future of human space travel. Created by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the brief visual envisions what the planets would look like as faraway vacation destinations arranged through the fictional Exoplanet Travel Bureau. On Mars, a parent and their child watch as a rocket takes off from the dusty red ground. Meanwhile, on Venus, people gather enclosed with a clear dome. Beyond merely the immediate planets, NASA depicts what it would be like to hang out on Enceladus or kayak through the waters of Titan, both of which are moons of Saturn. The video’s description explained that it was inspired by a series of travel posters produced by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Goddard Center’s Chris Smith used green screens and computer graphics...

After Activision Blizzard requested a stay in the discrimination case brought against it by the state of California, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) has filed its response. Activision Blizzard’s request for a stay asserts that lawyers with the DFEH engaged in misconduct arising from a conflict of interest. According to the filing, some of the lawyers working on the case had previously worked on a separate case against the company when they were employed by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (or EEOC). Such an arrangement, Activision Blizzard argues, is in violation of a California state bar conflict of interest rule. As a result, the discrimination case should be put on hold until the conflict is settled. Today in the superior court of Calif...

Amazon has announced a tool that will give sellers access to information about what shoppers are currently looking for and help make it easier to choose which products to create next. Amazon calls it the Product Opportunity Explorer and says that it’ll give sellers access to data and trends that will help them “identify opportunities to launch new, high-potential products to serve unmet customer demand.” With Amazon’s track record of copying popular products and selling them under its Amazon Basics brand, an obvious concern with this tool is where the data is coming from and how granular it is. While Amazon quotes a seller saying that they’re excited to get “recommendations specifically relevant” to their business, it’s easy to imagine other sellers being nervous that Amazon’s suggestions ...

The Food and Drug Administration authorized booster doses for the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines, following its authorization of a third Pfizer / BioNTech shot in September. The agency also said today that it will allow “mix-and-match” boosters — eligible people who are already fully vaccinated can get a booster dose of any of the three vaccines, regardless of which they started with. As with the Pfizer / BioNTech booster, the FDA cleared third Moderna shots for vulnerable groups, including people 65 years of age and older, those who are at high risk of severe disease, and people at high risk of exposure to COVID-19 at work. The booster for the Moderna vaccine, though, will be a half-dose. Both vaccines are mRNA vaccines that contain tiny snippets of the coronavirus’ g...

Elon Musk’s Boring Company just won approval from local officials to move forward with building a network of vehicle tunnels underneath Las Vegas. Dubbed the “Vegas Loop,” the system will allow passengers to hitch rides in Teslas to and from places like the hotel casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, the city’s new football stadium, the Las Vegas Convention Center, and McCarran International Airport. The Boring Company already operates a small version of this “Teslas in Tunnels” system underneath the Las Vegas Convention Center, which opened earlier this year and involves two 0.8-mile tunnels. But Musk’s startup proposed a massive city-wide expansion in December 2020 that largely lines up with what Clark County officials approved Wednesday. The system that was approved involves 29 miles of tunne...

Activision Blizzard has fired 20 employees as part of its investigation into allegations of gender-based discrimination and harassment at the company, the Financial Times reported. The gaming company has recently faced accusations of enabling sexual harassment for years. In their efforts to urge Activision Blizzard to take action, over 800 employees penned an open letter to the company this summer and many participated in a series of protests. Company president J. Allen Brack also resigned in August. The Financial Times obtained a letter sent to Activision Blizzard staff on Tuesday, in which the company announced the firings and wrote that it will expand its ethics and compliance team to create a “more accountable workplace.” The company’s chief compliance officer, Frances Townsend, d...

Microsoft and Adidas revealed a slick-looking pair of limited-edition Xbox sneakers earlier this month to celebrate Xbox’s 20th anniversary, and now, we know what you need to do to actually try to win a pair for yourself. From October 21st at 12PM ET through October 23rd at 11:59AM ET, you can donate $10 on StockX, an online collectibles marketplace, to be entered to win one of 20 pairs. Donations will benefit Gamers Outreach, a charity that helps children in hospitals by bringing them video games. A closer look at the Xbox-themed shoes.Image: Microsoft The cool shoes are just one piece of Microsoft’s 20th anniversary celebration for Xbox. The company is releasing a translucent controller and headset that you can preorder now ahead of availability on November 15th, the actual day of the an...

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine is adding Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to a lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica data-mining scandal. Racine announced the addition on Twitter this morning, saying his investigation had revealed that Zuckerberg was “personally involved in decisions related to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s failure to protect user data.” The 2018 lawsuit accuses Facebook (and now Zuckerberg) of misrepresenting its policies around third-party data access and compromising user privacy with lax protections. The attorney general’s office alleges that Facebook violated the Consumer Protection Procedures Act and seeks civil damages for the offense. A judge allowed the case to proceed despite Facebook’s efforts to halt it in 2019. BREAKING: I just added Mark Zu...

Google’s Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are the company’s most interesting devices in years. They might actually succeed at the Pixel’s ultimate goal of being the shining example of what Android phones can and should be capable of. It’s high time that Google followed that example with a Pixel Watch that does the same thing for Wear OS. It’s pretty likely that Google is already working on something along those lines: When we asked, Rick Osterloh told The Verge’s Dieter Bohn that its own Wear OS wearable is just a matter of time. He noted that Google’s acquisition of Fitbit is still “pretty early in the integration” since the purchase only went through a few months ago — it takes time to develop a product, after all, especially one with a new operating system that Fitbit has never used before. But ...

Epic Games launched its battle royale hit Fortnite on Android devices in 2018 with a big catch: it was exclusive to Samsung-made phones for a few days as a way to help market the then-new Samsung Galaxy Note 9. At the time, would-be players had to deal with a waiting list and / or a restrictive list of qualified Android phones. These days, it’s a lot easier — but you still need to download it directly from Epic. (Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said this is basically to avoid paying Google’s 30 percent cut on in-app purchases.) Epic is using its own website and a Fortnite Installer program to distribute the game more widely on all compatible Android devices. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown to make sure you’re prepared and understand the best way to start playing Fortnite on Android. But before we get...