Technology

Apple’s iPhone 13 lineup launched Friday, and one of the key features of the 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max are their ProMotion displays with variable refresh rates that can top out at 120Hz. But as spotted by 9to5Mac, some app animations in third-party apps are currently only running at 60Hz. That might be frustrating if you were expecting to see buttery-smooth animations across all of your apps with the new phones, but when we asked Apple what was going on, the company shared two reasons why this might be happening. One reason is that developers will need to update their apps to declare that they use the higher refresh rate. This can be done by adding an entry to the app’s plist, Apple tells The Verge, and the company says it plans to share documentation about the entry you need to add soon. But ...

Former Theranos lab director Adam Rosendorff was the second employee who testified in Elizabeth Holmes’ trial who kept his work emails. Forwarding work emails to a personal account can violate a non-disclosure agreement, which Rosendorff signed when he joined the company. But, like Surekha Gangakhedkar before him, he was worried he’d be blamed for the company’s problems. He was right to worry: he’s one of the people Elizabeth Holmes’ defense is trying to blame. “The company was more about PR and fundraising than patient care.” In opening arguments of US v Elizabeth Holmes, the defense agreed there were problems in Theranos’ lab. But Lance Wade, Homes’ attorney, said that problems in the clinical lab were ultimately the responsibility of the lab director. And besides, that lab director repo...

Internet accessibility and speeds vary significantly around the world, with some countries and territories boasting faster connections than others. Earlier this month, web analytics service Speedtest by Ookla released their annual roundup of global internet speeds, noting improvements to both mobile and fixed broadband speeds around the world. According to their data, the global mean of download speeds was 55.07 Mbps for mobile — a 59.5% increase — and 107.50 Mbps for fixed broadband — a 31.9% increase. Compared to July 2019, mean download speed over mobile was 98.9% faster in July 2021. On fixed broadband, mean download speed was 68.2% faster in July 2021 compared to the same period two years ago. Countries with the fastest internet speeds have remained relatively consistent over the last...

If you’ve updated your computer from Windows 10 to Windows 11, you may find that your taskbar isn’t quite as configurable — and perhaps not quite as useful — as it was before. For example, the old, familiar Start menu with its configurable Live Tiles is now gone. The search box is no longer within the taskbar but is accessed by first clicking on the Start menu — an extra step. (Although the fact that Cortana is no longer automatically part of that search box can be considered, by many at least, as a plus.) Another thing: the taskbar is now permanently affixed to the bottom of the screen — so if you were more comfortable having it on top of the screen, or on either side, you’re out of luck. As you might imagine, Windows users are already posting fixes for at least some of these issues — as ...

Twitter is looking for input on two new potential features that could give users more control over the tone and quality of replies to their tweets. Filter and Limit, as shared by Twitter designer Paula Barcante, would intelligently hide offensive or harmful replies or prevent repeat offenders from replying at all. Based on the concept images Barcante shared, Twitter would detect whether or not you’ve received harmful replies and then prompt you to turn on Filter or Limit. “If you have Filter on, potentially harmful replies to your Tweet wouldn’t be shown to you or anyone else,” Barcante writes. With Limit enabled, accounts with a history of offensive or “repetitive, uninvited tweets” would be prevented from replying at all. In Twitter’s concept, filtered replies are still visible to the pe...

Twitter’s poor video quality has been a long-running frustration for users on the platform, but on Friday, the company shared some potentially promising news: videos uploaded to the service will now “appear less pixelated for a better watching experience,” Twitter said in a tweet from its support account. Twitter removed a pre-processing step in its video pipeline when you upload, the company tells The Verge. After we published this article, the company clarified that this removed step split videos into smaller chunks for ingestion, which could reduce quality because of the additional processing. App researcher Jane Manchun Wong uploaded a video intended to put the supposed improvements to the test. (The sound on this video is a little loud, so you might want to turn down your volume befor...

Kate: Collateral Damage isn’t the first gaming tie-in we’ve seen for a Netflix original, but now that it’s seriously entering the space, each title feels a little different. Developed by Ludic Studios, the new game is a “time-attack action roguelike” that relates to the movie Kate, a Netflix movie starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead about an assassin who has 24 hours to find the antidote to a poison that is killing her. The plot of the movie makes the game’s time attack approach easy to understand as players take over the central character on her quest. As its Steam description reveals, players extend the length of each run by killing enemies to slow down the constantly depleting timer, and earning stimulant syringes that reset it entirely. The movie’s plot also comes into play through your h...

Twitter is bringing Topics to Spaces so that hosts can tag their Spaces with up to three relevant Topics, according to the Spaces Twitter account. It’s a small addition to start: there are only 10 Topics to choose from, limited to English, for some people on the Android app. Twitter says it will expand to iOS and add more Topics and languages soon. The initial 10 Topics — including Entertainment, Gaming, and World News — align with the ones that currently exist across Twitter, which people can choose to follow to get related content on their timelines. Adding Topics to Spaces brings it even closer to how Clubhouse works, with different topics to explore and clubs to join based around those topics. new in Spaces: Topics! when creating or scheduling a Space, some of you on Android can choose...

Disney-owned Marvel is suing relatives of Steve Ditko and other Marvel comics creators to retain control of classic characters, including Iron Man, Daredevil, Spider-Man, and Black Widow. The lawsuits, covered earlier today by The Hollywood Reporter, were filed in New York and California against the heirs of Steve Ditko, Don Rico, Don Heck, and Gene Colan, as well as Stan Lee’s brother and Marvel collaborator Lawrence Lieber. They ask courts to declare that Disney has sole ownership of comics like The Avengers, Iron Man, Amazing Spider-Man, Strange Tales, and Tales of Suspense — including the characters and story elements that have formed the basis for Disney’s lucrative Marvel Cinematic Universe. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, the suits follow Lieber and others sending termination notic...

Razer’s latest keyboard, the Huntsman V2, is all about speed. It’s equipped with optical mechanical switches that can theoretically register key presses far faster than their traditional mechanical counterparts. Then, its 8,000Hz polling rate means it can report that key press to your PC nearly instantaneously. So yes, it’s theoretically very fast, arguably faster than most people will notice. But this speed doesn’t come at the expense of any other important elements of a modern mechanical keyboard. There’s RGB lighting support, software to customize the keyboard’s key maps and lighting effects, and — in the case of the full-size model — a volume wheel and dedicated media controls. But Razer has also made some choices with the linear switches in particular, that means that the Huntsman V2 ...

It’s Friday, it’s fall, there’s a breeze in the air (hopefully), and there’s fresh, I’d argue ridiculous, renders of Samsung’s expected Galaxy S22 Ultra to show you. The renders come courtesy of @OnLeaks and Digit, and they feature a new Samsung flagship with what looks like a Galaxy Note 20-inspired body and back that… well you should see for yourself. Since deciding to skip the Galaxy Note in 2021 — apparently much to the chagrin of T-Mobile — Samsung’s been seeding Note features across its popular phones. Both the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra and the Galaxy Z Fold 3 offer stylus support. If these new renders are to be believed, the Galaxy S22 Ultra will go even further. According to OnLeaks and Digit, the new phone will come with the hole-punch selfie camera and candy bar shape of las...