Technology

The trans employee resource group at Netflix is planning a company-wide walkout on October 20th to protest statements made by co-CEO Ted Sarandos regarding Dave Chappelle’s latest comedy special The Closer. “Trans Lives Matter. Trans Rights Matter. And as an organization, Netflix has continually failed to show deep care in our mission to Entertain the World by repeatedly releasing content that harms the Trans community and continually failing to create content that represents and uplifts Trans content. We can and must do better!” wrote a leader of the trans ERG in an internal organizing message. The event comes even as Netflix has reinstated Terra Field and two other employees who were suspended after attending a director-level meeting they were not invited to. Field had recently posted a ...

On Tuesdays for the remainder of the year, The Verge’s flagship podcast The Vergecast will be featuring additional new episodes, with each focused on a specific topic usually discussed on our regular Friday shows. Today, we start our run with a discussion on the reviews we haven’t talked too much about yet on the show: this year’s software and hardware endeavors from Microsoft. In this episode, Dieter hosts a roundtable on reviews for the Microsoft products launched this fall: Windows 11, Surface Pro 8, Surface Laptop Studio, and Surface Go 3. Dieter is joined by Verge reviewers Tom Warren, Monica Chin, and Dan Seifert, who have all reviewed the products, respectively. The show answers questions like: Why does Windows 11 feel unfinished? How do the new Surface products fit in with a new op...

The chip shortage is hitting the iPhone 13, with Apple reportedly unable to get enough parts to hit its planned manufacturing goals, according to a report from Bloomberg. Apple had originally planned to produce 90 million iPhones in the final months of 2021, but it’s reportedly slashing that number by 10 million (or around 11 percent) due to supply issues with chips from Broadcom and Texas Instruments. While the primary A15 Bionic SoC on the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro is manufactured by TSMC, there are plenty of other chip-based components inside the phone that come from other sources. As iFixit’s thorough teardown of the iPhone 13 Pro’s logic board shows, Texas Instruments and Broadcom are responsible for several key components, including chips that handle display power management, Face ...

After rejecting over one million e-cigarette related products, the Food and Drug Administration announced today that it authorized its first e-cigarette: the Vuse Solo, made by R.J. Reynolds Vapor Company. The agency is allowing the company’s tobacco-flavored e-liquid pods on the market but rejected its flavored pods. It’s been over a month since the FDA’s deadline for its review of vapes and e-cigarettes. Early September marked the end of a yearlong period where companies were allowed to keep selling their products, even though agency regulations said that any new tobacco products need authorization before they can be marketed. Now, anything sold without authorization is being marketed illegally. Companies submitted applications for 6.5 million vaping and e-cigarette products, and the age...

Vudu’s freemium streaming app is now supported on Facebook’s Oculus Quest 1 and Quest 2 VR devices, with a spokesperson telling The Verge more than a hundred 3D titles are available to buy or rent. The Fandango-owned streaming service — which was purchased from Walmart last year — supports both free, ad-supported movies and TV, as well as rentals and purchases. In addition to the 100-plus titles available on Vudu in 3D, the service additionally offers more than 200,000 titles to rent or buy to stream on other devices, as well as thousands of ad-supported titles. It’s the first time that the app is supported on VR devices, a spokesperson told The Verge. “We’re thrilled to be working with Oculus to help transport fans to new worlds in the most immersive formats available,” Fandango’s chief c...

Apple will host an event, titled Unleashed, at its Apple Park headquarters in Cupertino, California on October 18. In typical Apple style, little is known about the event beyond the space-themed invite showing the Apple logo traveling at hyperspeed. Given that Apple has already introduced the new iPhone 13 lineup, Watch Series 7, iPad mini and iPad, iMac, Airtags and Apple TV 4K at events earlier this year, updates to the MacBook lineup and AirPods are anticipated. Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of marketing, tweeted about the upcoming event, saying that the days leading up to Unleashed “are going to speed by.” Unleashed! These next six days are going to speed by. #AppleEvent pic.twitter.com/0ops2bVPvl — Greg Joswiak (@gregjoz) October 12, 2021 The event will stream live on Ap...

First announced at Apple’s WWDC earlier this year, Siri has now landed on Ecobee SmartThermostats. The Apple voice assistant arrives via a free software update allowing you to say “Hey Siri” to the thermostat to set the temperature, send an intercom message, and use all of Siri’s smart speaker features. This is the first third-party device to include Apple’s virtual assistant Siri, although the feature is not exclusive to Ecobee. Apple said that all HomeKit accessory makers will be able to integrate Siri voice control into their products starting this year. For any integration to work, you will need to have a HomePod or HomePod Mini on the same network, through which the device (in this case the SmartThermostat) will send the requests. The integration won’t work with just an Apple TV or iP...

Adobe is bringing Camera Raw to the iPad version of Photoshop, and has demonstrated how it works in a hands-on video. Ryan Dumlao, senior product manager for Photoshop on iPad, shows how Camera Raw can be used to edit RAW and DNG photos directly imported from a camera — in this case a Fujifilm — or ProRAW files from the iPhone 12 Pro and 13 Pro. Camera Raw is a long-standing plugin that allows for advanced RAW image editing within Photoshop, and it’s also the technical basis of Lightroom’s processing engine. Dumlao’s video shows how you can edit various settings and exposure parameters within Photoshop, including importing the RAW file as a smart object for non-destructive editing that can be carried over to the desktop version. In his demo, Dumlao uses Photoshop features to perform tasks ...

Apple’s next hardware event will take place on October 18th, according to invites it sent out today. The company is widely expected to use its second fall event to launch a pair of new MacBooks, a redesigned higher-end Mac Mini, and possibly a pair of third-generation AirPods. The invite video teases one word: Unleashed. As seen below in a tweet from Apple marketing exec Greg Joswiak, it appears in a dotted font that could hint at mini LED tech on the way. The “special” event will stream live on Apple.com at 1PM ET / 10AM PT. There have been reports for months that Apple is on the cusp of releasing new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models. The new MacBooks would be the latest step in Apple’s transition away from Intel chips, replacing them with an Arm-based processor called the M1X that Appl...

Just 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) of global warming stands between Cuba’s Plaza de La Catedral looking typically dry or looking like something straight out of the myth of Atlantis. The iconic plaza in Old Havana is just one of many landmarks that could face a watery grave in the future if greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels continue unabated. Images: Climate Central You can see the potential future for more than 100 coastal cities across 39 countries thanks to a new image gallery and map published today by the nonprofit advocacy group Climate Central. The visualizations compare two scenarios: future sea level rise with 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming above preindustrial levels or sea level rise with 3 degrees of warming. As the planet heats up, warm ocean...

Amsterdam-based e-bike specialist VanMoof has announced plans for its first ever hyperbike, dubbed the VanMoof V. The company — popular with everyone from Frank Ocean and Tyler, The Creator to Simon Jacquemus and Stéphane Ashpool — claimed in a statement that the new, faster e-bike will “redefine city mobility for good,” and act as a car replacement. “We believe this new type of high speed e-bike can become the default for city travel and can replace cars and scooters by 2025,” VanMoof co-founder and CEO Ties Carlier tells HYPEBEAST. “The VanMoof V is dedicated to higher speed and longer distance. We’re not making this bike because of what the category is today, we’re doing this because of what we see the category can be tomorrow. With millions recently invested in new bike lanes, cities a...