Technology

Electronic Arts is removing former Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden from Madden NFL 22 following reports that he had used racist, homophobic, and misogynistic language in emails. Gruden resigned as the Raiders’ coach soon after the emails came to light. “EA Sports is committed to taking action in maintaining a culture of inclusion and equity,” EA said on in a statement posted to the Madden NFL Twitter account. “Due to the circumstances of Jon Gruden’s resignation, we are taking steps to remove him from Madden NFL 22. We will replace him with a generic likeness via a title update in the coming weeks.” This isn’t the first time EA has made changes to its hit football series in response to real-world events. In 2020, the company changed all references to the Washington Redskins in Madden NF...

Months after HBO Max original docuseries Generation Hustle debuted on the service, a team representing WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann says the streamer has changed some language in an episode that mapped the startup’s rise and spectacular demise. In a press release sent to a staffer at The Verge earlier this week, defamation attorney Thomas A. Clare — who now represents the known tequila enthusiast and reported aspiring immortal — announced that HBO Max had altered parts of a Generation Hustle episode, titled “Cult of WeWork,” as well as its description on the HBO Max site. Previously, the show’s description said it combined “true-crime capers with fresh, glossy stories of charismatic fakes” and “colorful imposters,” according to a version of the site archived on Wayback Machine. Both the ...

In 2012, fed up with the sorry state of small-form-factor (SFF) computer cases, two users on the HardOCP community forum decided to create their own. Wahaha360 and Necere came up with the $200+ Ncase M1, a 12.7-liter marvel designed to put every cubic centimeter of that space to good use. Amazingly, they managed to attract the attention of renowned PC manufacturer Lian-Li to manufacture small batches of their crowdfunded case out of high-quality aluminum, and the result was greeted with rave reviews. Nine years later, though, Ncase has announced that it’s discontinuing the M1 for good. It’s a weird situation. Yesterday, the company posted that it had discontinued the M1 entirely — but overnight, the post was updated to read that it’s just the current “classic” design that’s gone for good. ...

Apple is reportedly looking into ways to expand the health features on AirPods, including offering body temperature readings and hearing checks. People familiar with the plans told The Wall Street Journal that the proposed features aren’t expected by next year or may never be rolled out to consumers. Documents reviewed by the WSJ show that Apple is already developing AirPods prototypes that can take a user’s temperature from inside the ear, similar to a thermometer. Documents also showed that Apple could use the buds to sense motion changes in the wearer to monitor posture. The device may also be used to amplify certain sounds or improve hearing, similar to a hearing aid, the WSJ added. Apple currently has several AirPods on the market, including the AirPods, AirPods Pro, and the...

Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook virtual reality lead and soon-to-be CTO Andrew Bosworth (or “Boz”) are playing around with prototype VR (or AR) tech and want to show it off. Both executives have posted pictures of themselves wearing prototype headsets and linking the concepts to Facebook’s work on the metaverse. While the headsets the two are wearing are in no way guaranteed to become actual retail products, it’s an interesting look at what’s going on in Facebook’s virtual reality lab. The headset Zuckerberg is wearing looks similar to the company’s Oculus headsets. However, he identifies it as “retina resolution,” borrowing Apple’s phrase for screens with such high pixel density that you can’t discern individual points at a normal operating distance. The headset Boz is wearing has a more int...

Astropad’s Luna Display is a handy way to turn an iPad or another Mac into a wireless external monitor for Apple’s computers. Now the company has updated its wireless dongles to include support for Windows PCs, a solid step forward for the company after Apple’s Sidecar made its functionality a built-in part of iPadOS and MacOS. Windows support is included in Luna Display 5.0 and requires “Windows 10 64-bit, Build 1809 or later” and at least iPadOS 12.1, according to Astropad. That means modern Windows devices and iPads can work together in a variety of configurations, including using the Apple Pencil along with an iPad as a very expensive drawing tablet for your Windows machine. The iPad’s touch controls, gestures, and Pencil support all translate over to Windows.Gif: Astropad The company ...

For weeks, Facebook has been dealing with numerous bombshell revelations resulting from a huge cache of leaked internal documents. Now, Facebook is making some groups on its internal Workplace message boards about platform safety and protecting elections private, according to The New York Times. The move is seemingly in an effort to prevent further leaks. It’s unclear exactly how many groups will be taken private, so we don’t know how broadly Facebook is locking things down. “Leaks make it harder for our teams to work together, can put employees working on sensitive subjects at risk externally and lead to complex topics being misrepresented and misunderstood,” a Facebook spokesman said to The New York Times. The company didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment from The Verge. Face...

Some TV studio was going to be the first to tie a big NFT project to a major show, and it turns out to be Fox — the company is launching the MaskVerse, an NFT collection / game / thing that ties into The Masked Singer. Fox has shown interest in doing NFT tie-ins before, but this one leans on a community aspect that we’ve seen other NFT projects use (sometimes to great success, other times to disaster). Fox also seems like it wants this project to become more of A Thing than the collectibles released by other TV shows. The company says that the first NFT for the show, which will be free and grant “special access” to the MaskVerse’s Discord, will launch on Wednesday (along with, of course, an episode of The Masked Singer). After that, people can buy packs of NFTs to build collections, and co...

Aurora, the autonomous vehicle company founded by the former lead engineer for Google’s self-driving car project, announced that its autonomous trucks and taxis will be available to customers via subscriptions. Aurora doesn’t expect to roll out its self-driving trucks and ride-hailing vehicles until 2023 and 2024, respectively, but the company is providing more detail about how it plans on putting them into commercial operation. Aurora’s trucking service will be called “Aurora Horizon,” in which the company says it will provide trucking carriers and private fleets “with a reliable and scalable driver supply powered by the Aurora Driver.” The Aurora Driver is the name the company uses to describe the hardware and software it uses to enable a vehicle to drive itself under certain conditions....

Activision is finally cracking down on cheating in Call of Duty: Warzone. A new Ricochet anti-cheat system is arriving in both Call of Duty: Warzone and Call of Duty: Vanguard. The system will use a combination of a PC kernel-level driver, machine learning algorithms to examine player behavior, and a “team of dedicated professionals” working to investigate cheaters. The PC kernel-level driver has been developed internally for the Call of Duty franchise by Activision, and will launch first for Call of Duty: Warzone with the upcoming Pacific update. PC games are increasingly using kernel-level drivers to detect sophisticated cheating, but since they run at such a high level in Windows, there are always privacy concerns surrounding such an approach. The kernel-level driver will be part of the...

Cell service provider Visible has confirmed customer reports of attackers accessing and changing user accounts, and it has said that the breaches were carried out using usernames and passwords from “outside sources.” In a statement to The Verge (which you can read in full below), the Verizon-owned carrier said that it’s worked to “mitigate the issue” since it became aware of it, though it doesn’t mention exactly what measures it’s put in place to protect customers. Starting earlier this week, customers of Verizon’s lower-cost service were reporting unauthorized charges from Visible on their PayPals or credit card statements, as well as emails telling them that their accounts’ passwords or addresses had been changed. Some customers have been frustrated with a lack of response from the compa...

Facebook announced Wednesday that it would start removing “severe sexualizing content” targeting public figures as part of a new update to its bullying and harassment policies. The policy changes also include coordinated harassment attacks against users. As part of this new policy update, Facebook said that it would remove any profiles, pages, groups, or events dedicated to sexualizing public figures, including celebrities, politicians, and content creators. The new policy bans sexualized photoshops and drawings and any degrading content “in the process of bodily functions,” Antigone Davis, global head of safety at Facebook, said in a blog post on Wednesday. Facebook also said that it would remove “unwanted sexualized commentary” and repetitive attacks harassing an individual sexually. “We...