Technology

Over a year after it was unveiled, Lenovo’s category-defining Chromebook Duet is getting a sequel. The Chromebook Duet 5 (branded as the IdeaPad Duet 5 Chromebook outside of North America) is a head-to-toe reimagining of the detachable budget-oriented Duet, with a higher price, a new processor, and — most interestingly — a 13.3-inch OLED screen. Lenovo says the Duet 5 is likely the first of multiple additions to the Duet line, in an ambitious effort to bring the detachable form factor to multiple price points. The company will continue selling the 10.1-inch Duet (for the time being). A 2-in-1 Chrome OS tablet with a detachable keyboard The new OLED display covers 100 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut, Lenovo says, and will emit “70 percent less blue light” than an LCD panel would, with the...

Environmental activists, including Greenpeace and the Climate Action Network, around the world are calling on the United Nations to further delay a pivotal climate conference scheduled for this fall. The uneven rollout of COVID-19 vaccines around the world could prevent many delegates and advocates from attending, they say, especially representatives of countries hardest hit by both COVID-19 and the climate crisis. The UK is preparing to host the climate talks in Glasgow in November, a year after they were supposed to take place. But the virus that delayed the talks in the first place is still killing thousands of people across the world daily, many of whom are living in countries where it’s hard to get a vaccine. “Not only unfair but prohibitive” “Expecting already disadvantaged people to...

Hulu’s streaming plans cost $1 more starting on October 8th, with its ad-supported tier going up to $6.99 each month and its ad-free tier going up to $12.99 monthly. According to Variety, the price of Hulu’s live TV service, which also includes access to its streaming content, isn’t increasing. Disney, the majority owner of Hulu, has increased the prices of its other streaming services over the past year, making its bundle that includes all of them look more and more attractive. The price of the Disney bundle, which includes Hulu, Disney Plus, and ESPN Plus, doesn’t appear to be going up along with Hulu’s prices — however, it already went up by a dollar earlier this year when Disney Plus got a $1 per month price hike. It currently costs $13.99 per month for a version with ad-supported Hulu...

John Gibson, CEO of Tripwire Interactive — the studio known for making horror games like Killing Floor and Maneater — was made to step down a blisteringly quick 53 hours after he tweeted in favor of the controversial Texas abortion law. In the tweet, Gibson says, “Proud of #USSupremeCourt affirming the Texas law banning abortion for babies with a heartbeat. As an entertainer I don’t get political often. Yet with so many vocal peers on the other side of this issue, I felt it was important to go on the record as a pro-life game developer.” The tweet drew sharp criticisms from across the gaming industry with many consumers stating they would no longer buy Tripwire games and sharing how to block the developer from showing up in Steam recommendations. Detractors also noted that Gibson’s pro-lif...

Twitter has begun testing the first of its proposed suite of new privacy tools: the ability to remove a follower without blocking them. The remove follower feature is currently being tested on the web and seems to canonize the “soft block” concept as an official Twitter tool. According to the tweet announcing the test, you can remove followers from the follower list on your profile page. You just click the three-dot menu next to a follower’s name, click “Remove follower,” and your tweets will no longer automatically show up in their timeline. The remove follower option.Image: Twitter This is different than blocking someone, which keeps them from viewing your tweets and direct messaging you (and keeps you from doing the same with them). Twitter’s new remove follower feature is more of a rem...

NASA’s Perseverance rover captured its first sampling of rocky Mars material last week after its first attempt in August mysteriously turned up empty. The new rock sample, about the size of a small cigar, checks off a crucial first step in a broader decade-long effort to bring humanity’s first Martian samples back to Earth in pristine condition. The rover’s successful sample grab happened last Wednesday at 5:36PM ET, digging into a rock scientists nicknamed “Rochette.” Using a hollow, tube-like drill bit that traps rocky material inside, Perseverance drilled a hole a few inches deep using a rotary-percussive drill installed at the end of its seven-foot sampling arm. A twisting mechanism inside the drill bit snapped the rock core off of Rochette and kept it snug inside a sample tube. To con...

Bendable glass was supposed to unlock a future straight out of science fiction: phones that fold. But the actual glass we got wound up relying on factory-installed plastic screen protectors to avoid shattering when you fold it. Now, LG wants to cut out the middleman by improving the plastic instead: the company just announced its “Real Folding Window,” a cover material it claims will be as hard as glass but without the whole cracking issue. More PET, less glass What’s the secret? Well, LG doesn’t quite say in its press release, only that it’s a “new material” that it uses to coat both sides of a sheet of plastic film — PET film, to be precise. (PET is probably best known as the plastic in your soda bottle.) The idea is that if you apply that coating to the plastic and then apply that cover...

Ford has hired away Apple’s car chief, Doug Field, to become its chief advanced technology and embedded systems officer. “Field will lead Ford’s efforts to develop the next-gen Blue Oval Intelligence tech stack to deliver smart, connected vehicles and services that improve over time through constant updates,” according to Ford’s press release. He’ll report to Ford’s president and CEO, Jim Farley. Field was a VP of special projects at Apple, where he was the de facto head of the company’s confused efforts to make an autonomous electric car — known as Project Titan. He had a previous stint at Apple where he was once the VP of Mac hardware engineering, but he left the company in 2013 to become Tesla’s chief vehicle engineer, where he helped oversee troublesome development of the Model 3 sedan...

Twitter has announced that it’s testing edge-to-edge media in tweets on iOS, creating a more full-screen, almost Instagram-like experience for the photos and videos in your timeline. In an email to The Verge, Twitter writes that it’s testing the change because it wants to better support conversations that are both visual and text-based. You can get a sense of what that looks like in a video posted to Twitter’s support account: Now testing on iOS: Edge to edge Tweets that span the width of the timeline so your photos, GIFs, and videos can have more room to shine. pic.twitter.com/luAHoPjjlY — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) September 7, 2021 This change, if it rolls out beyond a select group of iOS users, also helps Twitter address concerns over image cropping that it’s been dealing with o...

People are spending more time watching videos on TikTok than they are on YouTube, according to a study published by app analytics firm App Annie. The report indicates that as of June, TikTok streaming in the U.S. has surpassed that of YouTube. Viewers on TikTok clocked in an average stream of over 24 hours of content per month on the app, exceeding YouTube’s average monthly watch time of 22 hours and 40 minutes, according to the report. The expanding gap between the two platforms is even greater in the U.K., where TikTok users are watching almost 26 hours of the bite-size videos each month, but spending less than 16 hours on YouTube. In addition to its increased popularity during the pandemic, TikTok viewership is likely boosted by the ability to livestream on the app. App Annie referred t...

Apple has had a lot going on lately: we did a whole episode about the controversial child protection photo-scanning features, which have now been delayed. A law in South Korea might force the company to change how App Store payments work; the company settled a Japanese case about the App Store recently, as well as a class-action lawsuit in this country. The verdict in the Epic trial will arrive and there are renewed questions about Apple’s relationship with the Chinese government. And, of course, it is September — the month when new iPhones usually come out. But in the background, Verge senior reporter Zoë Schiffer has spent the past few months publishing story after story about unhappy Apple employees, who are starting to talk to the press more and more about what working at Apple is like...

Vox Media today announced it’s entering an agreement to acquire Hot Pod, the preeminent publication covering the podcasting industry, founded by Nicholas Quah in 2014. At Vox Media, Hot Pod will become part of The Verge, with Quah deepening his long-running relationship with New York and Vulture as a full-time podcast critic. Senior reporter Ashley Carman will take over as lead writer of Hot Pod for The Verge, expanding Carman’s must-read coverage of podcasting and audio. The acquisition also marks The Verge’s first paid product as it will continue to publish Hot Pod’s weekly subscriber-only newsletter Hot Pod Insider, laying the groundwork for more paid Verge products in the future. “I can’t think of a better home for Hot Pod than The Verge,” says The Verge’s editor-in-chief Nilay Patel. ...