Technology

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...

One of the new features in Android 12 is the ability to automatically fit your phone’s color palette to that of your wallpaper. If you’ve been able to upgrade to Android 12, you may want to give it a try, especially if you’re into styling and colors. I tried it out on a Pixel 3 using Android 12 beta, and the results were interesting. When I used the sample wallpapers supplied by Google and enabled the “themed icons” feature (which is supposed to let your icons match the style of your wallpaper), I was treated to a new background color which appeared on the search field at the bottom of the screen, the Quick Tiles (the buttons you get when you swipe down from the top), and other elements. I was not all that impressed by the “themed icons” feature — it basically changed some, but not all, of...

Today, let’s talk about the latest project from a co-founder of Vine and what it tells us about how the tech industry is evolving. This is a rare tech story where basically every fact of it has surprised me on some level. And while some of the ideas here are way out there — to the point that I’m imagining many of you slamming your laptops closed to avoid hearing any more — the far frontier they represent appears to be inching closer to the mainstream every day. The road to Loot When I wrote in March about non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, I tried to dazzle you by rattling off some of the more impressive sales numbers from the time: $600,000 for the Nyan Cat meme, $5.8 million for artwork by Grimes, $230 million in lifetime sales for NBA Top Shot. What has happened since then has been enough to...

Bose is updating its QuietComfort series with the QC45 headphones, maintaining the series’ signature performance with the introduction of subtle design updates and new features. Bose decided to keep the classic design found on the QC35 and QC35 II, closing gaps and removing earpad pleats for a slightly cleaner aesthetic. The big changes are hidden within, featuring improved noise cancellation, an addition of a fourth external microphone that improves voice pickup, and a new Aware Mode —similar to the transparency mode on the Apple Airpods Pro— which picks up external sounds and broadcasts them naturally through the headphones. Battery life is extended to 24 hours of listening time on a full charge. four more hours compared to the QC35 II, and quick charge gives three extra hours of listeni...

Many of us have written a tweet once in our life that we wish didn’t exist, and now Twitter is looking into helping out its users with an updated range of social privacy updates. The new privacy settings offer more control over your Twitter account and who gets to interact with it, and also how they interact with it too. This is much more than just setting your profile to private, as the new tools will allow users to edit your follower list, as opposed to the tactic that Twitter employees have noticed happening that involves blocking and unblocking people to remove them. Additionally, the new features will include an “Archive Tweet” function that will hide your tweets after or from a certain period. According to Bloomberg, posts may be hidden after “30, 60, and 90 days, or hiding tweets af...

Roblox is taking its first steps to introduce voice chat by opening up a feature it’s calling “Spatial Voice” to select developers in an invitation-only beta, the company announced Thursday. “With Spatial Voice, Roblox creators will begin to test developing experiences where conversations can happen in a realistic way, mirroring how we listen and respond to the world around us each day,” Roblox’s chief product officer Manuel Bronstein said in a blog post. Based on this limited description, it sounds like Spatial Voice will attempt to reflect the way voices carry in the real world and require you to be close proximity to another player to speak to them. Adding voice chat raises concerns about moderation Adding voice chat of any kind into Roblox immediately raises concerns about how the comp...

Apple’s rumored AR/VR headset is designed to rely on another device, and may have to offload more processor-heavy tasks to a connected iPhone or Mac, according to a report from The Information. Apple is reportedly working on a custom chip for the headset, an SoC that’s intentionally missing capabilities found in Apple’s other processors. While the new chip reportedly doesn’t have Apple’s neural engine, which handles AI and machine learning, it’s reportedly designed to be better at wirelessly sending and receiving data, and compressing/decompressing video than traditional chips, which makes sense if the headset is designed to stream data from another device rather than doing the heavy processing itself. A stripped-down SoC for augmented battery The Information’s sources say it’s designed to...