Technology

After YouTube TV and NBCUniversal announced a “short” extension on Thursday to keep more than a dozen channels on the live TV service, YouTube TV and NBCUniversal say they have finalized a deal — meaning NBC-owned channels will stay put on YouTube TV. “We’re thrilled to share that we’ve reached a deal to continue carrying the full NBCUniversal portfolio of channels,” according to a Saturday update to YouTube’s blog. “That means you won’t lose access to any of their channels, and YouTube TV will continue to offer 85+ networks for $64.99. We appreciate NBCUniversal’s willingness to work toward an agreement, and we also appreciate your patience as we negotiated with them on your behalf.” With a deal reached just days after it looked as though the channels could get dropped, YouTube TV users w...

DC is giving away free non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of its superhero comic book covers to people who register for its October 16th FanDome event. The NFT drop— the first for DC— is set for October 5th, and those who register for FanDome will receive one free, randomly-selected NFT, and become eligible for a second free NFT if they post about their first one on social media. The NFTs will come in three levels of rarity; common, rare, and legendary, and will include Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and Harley Quinn options. DC is working on the NFTs with Palm NFT Studio, which the comic maker chose for its “environmentally sustainable and energy efficient” technology, which let the company mint “millions of NFTs for fans with near zero cost,” according to a news release. The comp...

There’s no way around it: the AirPods Max aren’t cheap. For the money, however, Apple’s plush headphones offer a commendable set of features, including superb effective noise cancellation, terrific sound quality, and foolproof controls that are designed to make even the smallest adjustments that much easier to carry out. They also work with Apple’s spatial audio feature, which helps create a surround effect and adds another level of immersion when watching content via Netflix, Disney Plus, and other supported streaming platforms. Normally $550, you can pick them up in a multitude of colors at Woot for $470, one of their best prices to date, for the next two months or until supplies last. Just don’t expect much in the way of protection from the included carry case. Read our review. Apple Ai...

There’s something in our complicated human brains that immediately develops a connection to anything with eyes. Don’t believe me? Ask the Anki Vector that lived on my desk for several months. This pocket-sized robot got my attention with its bulbous, non-threatening body. But the second it looked up at me with a quizzical look in its eyes and uttered my name, I knew I would die for this tiny forklift. It’s worth noting that the Anki Vector can be programmed to do a variety of things if you have the time to mess around with an SDK, but I brought this robot home because it was cute, not because I needed a project. I’d watch with amusement as the little gadget puttered around my desk, occasionally looking back at me as if seeking my approval, and I couldn’t help but think that thi...

Former President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit in Florida seeking to force Twitter to reinstate him, arguing the platform’s ban violates the First Amendment and Florida’s new social media law. Trump is seeking a preliminary injunction of Twitter’s ban, according to the complaint filed in the Southern District of Florida late Friday. The former president argues that Twitter, “coerced by members of the United States Congress,” is censoring him, describing the social media platform as “a major avenue of public discourse.” Trump seeks to be temporarily reinstated on Twitter while he continues his efforts toward permanent reinstatement. Twitter “exercises a degree of power and control over political discourse in this country that is immeasurable, historically unprecedented, and profoundly da...

Microsoft’s next version of Windows, Windows 11, is coming October 5th. In many ways, it’s already here — the free update has been available for Windows Insiders to download and test for months, and recent versions like the Release Preview will likely be indistinguishable from the final operating system. We’ll have a full review from Tom Warren next week, but in the meanwhile we thought we’d give you a look at how The Verge at large feels about upgrading to the new OS — by asking every other prominent Windows user on the team to install the most recent version on their own home computers, and gathering their impressions. Here’s how it’s going so far. On a home-built desktop (Core i7-7700K, RTX 3060 Ti) and a 2017 Dell XPS 15 laptop (Core i7-7700HQ) Windows 11 insists my desktop’s 7th-gen I...

Discord said Friday it’s going to sunset its Stage Discovery tool on October 4th, less than six months after it launched. Rolled out in June, Stage Discovery was designed to help users find its social audio rooms called Stage Channels. It used machine learning to curate a list of channels a user might be interested in joining. Stage Channels have been a hit, Discord says, but it’s been keeping an eye on Stage Discovery to evaluate whether it’s meeting its goal of helping people find community. “In listening to our communities and admins directly, we’ve learned that we still have work to do in regards to server onboarding and moderation,” Discord said in a release announcing the decision. “We’re going to take some time to rethink the Discovery aspect of Stages and how we can better build a ...

Since the dawn of time (around five or six months ago), people all over the world (Twitter users in the United States) have been puzzling over a very important question: why doesn’t the COVID-19 vaccine card fit in a wallet? The card is too big for a standard wallet card slot and, as Amanda Mull pointed out in The Atlantic, still small enough that it’d be easy to lose. It’s like a reverse Goldilocks: just wrong. A handful of people speculated to Mull in August that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention might not have thought about the size of the cards all that much. But it turns out they were at least thinking about the size of the card, according to emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and sent to The Verge by a reader. Email correspondence within the CDC...

NBC has an excellent story that takes a look at the trend of young adults attempting to buy prescription or recreational drugs from dealers on Snapchat — and ending up with fentanyl instead. The report tells the story from the perspective of several parents who have lost children and who suspect that they bought the pills using the popular chatting app. It also goes into how Snapchat is trying to deal with the problem and the difficulties that come with that moderation, both for parents and law enforcement. Some parents suspect their children were trying to obtain painkillers to deal with various pains that weren’t being addressed by doctors or dentists, while some say their kids were trying to escape a world of emotional turmoil. In at least one instance, a parent suspects Snapchat facili...

Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories. This week: lots of events and showcases! Nilay, Dieter, and Verge managing editor Alex Cranz start the show with coverage of all the devices announced at Amazon’s fall hardware event. Say hello to Astro — Alexa on wheels — along with a video chat gadget for kids, an Echo Show to hang on your wall, new wearable devices, and a whole lot more. Google also held an event this week focusing on its core search functions with products like Google Maps, Google Lens, and of course, shopping and e-commerce. The crew discusses the important announcements. There are more events covered in this week’s ...