Technology

AMD has a new entry-level RX 6000-series GPU: the $379 RX 6600 XT, which is still based on the same RDNA 2 architecture as its beefier cousins, but it offers a more wallet-friendly price point. The new card promises the “ultimate 1080p gaming experience,” for customers who don’t necessarily need a next-gen 4K gaming setup. At a suggested retail price of $379 (AMD isn’t selling its own version of the card), the RX 6600 XT slots at an even cheaper price point than the $479 RX 6700 XT that the company released earlier this year, which targeted 1440p gaming. The RX 6600 XT features 32 compute units, 8GB of GDDR6 RAM, a 2359 MHz base clock, 2589 MHz boosted clock, and draws 160W of power. For comparison, the top-of-the-line RX 6900 XT 80 compute units, while the RX 6700 XT offers 40 compute uni...

Snapchat is experiencing a massive issue as of Thursday evening, with more than 125,000 users reporting problems on Downdetector. I tried logging into the app on my iPhone 12 Mini, and now the app just crashes every time I try and open the app. Two other Verge staffers aren’t able to open the app, either. Snap acknowledged that there’s a problem in a tweet at 6:51PM ET. “We’re aware of an issue preventing some Snapchatters from logging in,” the company said from Snapchat’s support account. “Hang tight, we are looking into it and working on a fix!” The outage follows a nasty bug from June where a version of the iOS Snapchat app would crash at launch. That bug was eventually fixed in an update released soon after. As always, I highly recommend following the memes people are posting on Twitte...

Destiny 2 developer Bungie revealed a whole lot of information about the game’s upcoming crossplay support in a blog post on Thursday afternoon. Let’s get this out of the way first: Bungie still doesn’t have an exact date for when you’ll be able to play with your friends on other platforms, but the studio promises the feature will launch “early” in Season 15, which is expected to kick off on August 24th. Season 15 will also bring an important change to ensure you have a persistent identity across platforms for crossplay: a new Bungie Name system. Your Bungie Name will be generated based on the name associated with the platform you play Season 15 on first, and will look something like PlayerName#1234. You can get a better idea of how it will look in-game in this screenshot: A preview of Bun...

Verizon has introduced new mobile hotspot plans, with four options to choose from starting at 15GB for $20 per month up to 150GB for $80 per month. They offer standalone and unlimited plan add-on mobile hotspot data that’s ready to be taken on the road. Maybe in a Class B Winnebago Solis with a pop-up sleeping compartment, as featured on Wheel of Fortune, south through the redwoods and along the coast and then on through the painted deserts of the Southwest. What? I said that out loud? I mean, hypothetically. Anyway, the most basic plan, Essential, offers low-band Nationwide 5G and 4G LTE connectivity. The three more expensive plans — creatively named Plus, Pro, and Premium — include Ultra Wideband 5G, which encompasses the very fast, limited-range mmWave flavor of 5G as well as upcoming m...

Following a prolonged standoff between Dish Network and AT&T over licensing terms to carry HBO channels, Dish has reached an agreement with WarnerMedia to offer HBO, HBO Max, and Cinemax. Dish TV customers nationwide will be able to access both the HBO and Cinemax networks today, though they’ll need to subscribe to HBO Max to get linear HBO. To promote the deal, Dish will run a free 10-day preview of the premium networks for existing customers right around the time the Olympics Games will be wrapping up, from August 6 to August 15. Customers don’t have to do anything to take advantage of the preview; the networks will appear automatically. Users interested in subscribing to HBO Max can score a discounted subscription to the service’s ad-free plan at $12 per month for up to a year if th...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that the company is working on the long-awaited Ray-Ban smart glasses. The glasses were previously teased by the former VP of VR at Facebook Reality Labs, Hugo Barra, who tweeted that the glasses would be launching sometime in 2021. Beyond thrilled to finally share a sneak peek of our Facebook partnership with Ray-Ban! Our first smart glasses will launch next year, and that’s just the beginning… The future will be a classic and it’s coming in 2021 ? pic.twitter.com/l9992ZQGoy — Hugo Barra (@hbarra) September 16, 2020 The company has been quiet about the project ever since, but on Wednesday, Zuckerberg said during an earnings call with investors that the platform was “continuing to invest heavily in building technology and products to deliver a ful...

Apple updated GarageBand on Thursday, adding in new Sound and Producer Packs that allow users to remix popular music tracks right from the app. Two new Remix Sessions featuring chart-topping songs from Dua Lipa and Lady Gaga have been added, alongside seven new Producer Packs that give users more room to experiment with beats, loops, and instruments created for GarageBand by some of the world’s top producers. An additional Producer Pack from Mark Ronson will debut on July 30 alongside his Apple Original docuseries “Watch the Sound With Mark Ronson.” “GarageBand is my idea bank and where I start my songwriting,” said Lady Gaga in a press release. “I want musicians and music lovers to be able to see how a song is produced and be able to hear all the individual parts, and then put their own c...

Amazon has updated the Alexa app on iOS so that you can access the voice assistant right from your home screen via a new widget. Everyone can use the assistant to remind specific members of your household to do tasks through a new “assign reminders” skill. Due to the somewhat restrictive nature of the widgets on iOS, the new Ask Alexa widget isn’t so much Alexa itself as it is a link directly to the iOS app. But if you have the Alexa widget placed on any of your screens and you’ve already given the Alexa app permission to use your iPhone’s mic, you’ll be able to start making requests with a tap. The Ask Alexa widget in iOS. And now those requests can get a bit more granular. Amazon’s given Alexa the ability to assign reminders to specific members of your household if they have a Voice Prof...

The first major system update for Sony’s PlayStation 5 is arriving in beta form today, finally letting you expand the console’s 667GB of usable storage by adding your own PCIe Gen 4 SSD as well as testing new UI options and expanding 3D Audio support. But the full changelog also includes a few features that Sony didn’t highlight to press — including a way to easily update your DualSense controller if you press the wrong button! You see, the PS5 currently has a very silly flaw: the only time you can update your controller is when you boot the console. And if you say no or accidentally press the O button instead of X, you can’t trigger that update until 24 hours have passed (or you tweak your PS5’s internal clock to cheat it). But in Beta 2.0, there’s now a dedicated menu for that under Sett...

Robinhood started trading at $38, dropped about 10 percent, recovered, but still closed down 8 percent at $34.90 on its first day of trading. It’s the worst first day among 51 firms that raised as much as Robinhood or more, according to Bloomberg. It’s also bad news for Robinhood’s experiment at offering retail investors a chunk of the IPO. Robinhood’s shares priced at the bottom of the targeted price range of $38 to $42 a share, perhaps because of concerns about volatility or perhaps because Robinhood wanted to ensure a pop for its retail investors. And though Robinhood had said it would allocate up to 35 percent of its shares to retail, only 20 percent actually went to retail, which “indicated less interest than expected,” according to The New York Times. Robinhood is synonymous with the...

Forza Motorsport 7 will no longer be available to purchase from the Microsoft Store or play on Xbox Game Pass after September 15th, 2021, as it’s reaching “end of life” status. The game won’t be completely going away — if you own it you’ll still be able to download and play it, and the multiplayer will still be accessible, but anyone without the game won’t be able to buy the digital version. According to the Forza Twitter account, this is happening because the game’s licenses to use real-world cars and tracks are starting to expire. If you’re a long-time Forza fan, you may have seen this happen before. Games in the series have historically been delisted around four years after their release. Horizon 3 was delisted in September 2020 after being launched in September 2016, and Motorsport 6 w...