Technology

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, more commonly known as PUBG (or Game for Peace in China) is already one of the most successful and influential games ever made just four years after release. Its director Brendan Greene, a former DJ and web designer from Ireland, is credited with launching the entire battle royale genre, directly inspiring what you now know as Fortnite, CoD: Warzone, Apex Legends and more. But this past week, he announced that he’d left the Korean company whose work on his battle royale vision propelled him to fame to build a studio all his own — and late Thursday, he revealed what to expect from his next project. It’s called Prologue, and it will be a pay-what-you-want tech demo designed to illustrate the kinds of games that Greene wants to build next: “We want to create rea...

A new peer-reviewed study from researchers at New York University and the Université Grenoble Alpes in France will show that misinformation got six times as much engagement on Facebook as real news, The Washington Post reports. The study looked at posts from the Facebook pages of more than 2,500 news publishers between August 2020 and January 2021. Researchers found that the pages that post more misinformation regularly got more likes, shares, and comments. This increased engagement was seen across the political spectrum, but the study found that “publishers on the right have a much higher propensity to share misleading information than publishers in other political categories,” according to The Washington Post. The researchers will share the study as part of the 2021 Internet Measurement ...

Should an artificially intelligent machine be able to patent its own inventions? For a US federal judge, the larger implications of that question were irrelevant. In April 2020, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) ruled that only “natural persons” could be credited as the inventor of a patent, and a US court decided Thursday that yes, that’s what the law technically says (via Bloomberg). Not every country agrees with that direction. South Africa and Australia decided to go the other direction, granting one patent and reinstating a second patent application filed by AI researcher Steven Thaler, whose AI system DABUS reportedly came up with a flashing light and a new type of food container. Thaler is the one who sued the US in this case as well — he’s part of a group called The Artifi...

In case you haven’t heard, Texas now has a law that makes it illegal for anyone to help women get an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy — and to take advantage of that, the anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life is encouraging citizens to report those people at a dedicated “whistleblower” website, promising to “ensure that these lawbreakers are held accountable for their actions.” However, it now looks like Texas Right to Life may have trouble keeping a home on the web, because hosting provider GoDaddy has given the group 24 hours to find a different place to park its website. “We have informed prolifewhistleblower.com they have 24 hours to move to another provider for violating our terms of service,” a spokesperson told The New York Times and The Verge. GoDaddy didn’t answer a questio...

Nintendo may be finally ready to bring its storied handheld gaming library to the Nintendo Switch — Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles will soon join the 100-plus NES and SNES games that it offers via its Switch Online subscription service, according to rumors from the “Nate the Hate” podcast, corroborated by Nintendo Life on Tuesday and now again on Friday by Eurogamer. It’s not every day we see a Nintendo rumor that strong. There’s no word on which titles might arrive, and I wouldn’t necessarily expect your favorites to be among them, particularly to start. Nintendo has curated its NES and SNES libraries for Switch very slowly, some of them are pretty deep cuts, and many titles like Earthbound, Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG are still MIA two years later. But it makes a lot of sense ...

A brief new promo for Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty features Christopher Lloyd playing the titular Rick Sanchez, scratching an itch that has persisted for many fans since the show’s genesis as a Back to the Future spoof. In the 14-second clip, we see Lloyd hop out of a portal and into his garage alongside Jaeden Martell (Knives Out, It), playing a pretty convincing Morty. Lloyd then does his best riff on Han Solo’s famous line from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, with a signature Rick Sanchez belch added for good measure: “Morty, we’re home.” Aside from an “aw, jeez” from Martell, that’s it. There’s no explicit mention of whether this is an allusion to a potential Lloyd cameo in Sunday’s season five finale, or if it’s just another quick one-off clip — which the showrunners have made a number o...

The Apple Watch Series 7 may arrive as soon as this month, but if you’re looking for a sizable discount on what is currently the latest model, you’ll love today’s deal. The red 40mm, cellular Apple Watch Series 6 is filled with slick features and is on sale at Amazon today for $359 instead of $499, an all-time low for this particular model. Apple’s newest wearable boasts built-in sleep tracking and an always-on display, as well as sensors that can quickly measure blood oxygen levels. There is also an abundance of third-party apps designed to attract a variety of activities — even biking. The Series 6 is powered by Apple’s new in-house A13 chip and S6 processor; it also charges faster than other models — gaining a full charge takes about 1.5 hours — while battery life remains at 18 hours. T...

The US Commerce Department said Friday that it will eliminate an internal security division after an investigation found it had overstepped its authority when it launched criminal investigations into Commerce employees and US citizens. The Investigations and Threat Management Service division had no “adequate legal authority” to conduct criminal investigations, according to an internal investigation by the Commerce Department’s Office of General Counsel. The investigators recommended that the ITMS unit be eliminated within 90 days, and that its security duties be folded into other Commerce divisions. The Commerce Department said in a statement it would accept the report’s recommendations. “Our most important priority is creating an environment at the Department of Commerce where employees ...

If you don’t already have a laptop with a built-in webcam — or the one on your laptop isn’t very good — you might need a standalone webcam. Maybe it’s to be able to show your face during work or school. Maybe it’s for chatting with friends, or for side projects, like live streaming or recording yourself. If you don’t want to actually purchase a webcam, there are several routes to take. You can get crafty with your phone (and spend hardly anything or nothing at all) by using an app that’ll fool your computer into thinking it’s a webcam. Or you can go in the total opposite direction and connect a pricey DSLR or mirrorless camera to your computer to use as a webcam — a very good one, at that. But assuming you simply want to purchase a webcam, our goal is to make it easier for you to find the ...

Signify, owner of the Philips Hue brand, today announced the global launch of its Philips Smart LED bulbs. The new lineup originates from Signify’s 2019 acquisition of Wiz, and carries the “Wiz Connected” logo on its blue packaging to differentiate it from Hue products. A similar collection of bulbs launched in the US at Home Depot stores at this time last year, only under a slightly tweaked “Philips WiFi LED” name. Signify assured The Verge during a press briefing that they’ve tested the multitude of Philips smart LED brands with consumers and they weren’t confused. That’s good, because Zigbee-based Philips Hue smart LED bulbs and Wi-Fi-based Philips Smart LED bulbs are not compatible. Some of the many new Philips Smart LED bulbs now available.Image: Signify At launch there are 36 product...

When you spend money in Apple’s App Store, the company generally takes a 30 percent cut — one that adds up to an estimated $19 billion per year. Apple’s currently in the fight of its life to prove to judges, government regulators, and its own developers that it deserves those dollars, but not everyone’s buying it anymore. Over the past seven days alone, South Korea declared its disbelief on the global stage, passing a landmark bill that could keep Apple and Google from directly collecting their 30 percent cut, and may inspire other governments to do the same. Developers also expressed their rage at an Apple press release, where the company spun its agreement to settle a lawsuit for $100 million as a $100 million fund for developers — while quietly promising 30 million of those dollars to t...

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is an important film for Marvel for lots of reasons. It’s the studio’s first return to theatrical exclusive release after over a year and a half of delays due to COVID-19 (which included shifting Black Widow to Disney Plus as well as theaters). It’s the studio’s first film with an Asian lead, a long-awaited milestone that took over a decade for the company to actually accomplish. And it marks the “real” start of its Phase 4 films, advancing the future of the MCU with fresh stories post-Endgame. But Shang-Chi — and its less-than-ideal release timing, coming as theaters are seeing smaller turnouts as the delta variant continues to spike in the US — also highlights the MCU’s biggest problem: its films and shows are too interconnected for Marvel to shi...