Technology

Two California residents have been indicted for allegedly planning to firebomb the offices of California’s Democratic governor in Sacramento after the 2020 election, and had also discussed bombing Facebook and Twitter, federal court records show. The pair, who were indicted on conspiracy charges as well as illegal possession of firearms and explosives, were part of an anti-government militia with a strong pro-Trump agenda called the Three Percenters. The conspirators’ texts alluded that their planned actions would send a message to tech companies like Facebook and Twitter days after they banned Trump from their platforms. Texts recovered by the FBI indicated that the two men believed President Trump won the 2020 election, and that they wanted to go to “war” to keep him in office. The first...

The White House escalated its fight against vaccine misinformation on Friday, with President Biden directly criticizing Facebook and other platforms for allowing vaccine misinformation to spread — and consequently raising the ongoing death toll from the deadly pandemic. Asked for a message to platforms like Facebook, Biden replied, “They’re killing people … the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and they’re killing people.” The White House did not immediately respond to a request for clarification of the president’s comments. The full exchange is embedded below: The statements come after a coordinated campaign from the White House pressuring Facebook and other platforms to act more aggressively to counter misinformation about coronavirus vaccines. On Thursday, a report ...

Fakespot, known for its web browser extensions that try to weed out fake product reviews, suddenly no longer has an iPhone or iPad app — because Amazon sent Apple a takedown request, both Amazon and Fakespot confirm, and Apple decided to remove the app. The giant retailer says it was concerned about how a new update to the Fakespot app was “wrapping” its website without permission, and how that could be theoretically exploited to steal Amazon customer data. But Fakespot founder Saoud Khalifah tells The Verge that Apple abruptly removed the app today without any explanation. Apple didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. The new Fakespot app launched just over a month ago on June 3rd, and I can confirm it let you log in to Amazon, browse, and buy items with Fakespot’s overlay on top...

NASA has released a series of new images showcasing the devastating effects of a drought plaguing much of the western United States, as California endures dry conditions not seen since the 1970s. Images taken by Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Terra satellite depict the progression of melting snow in the Sierra Nevada, where snow has completely melted almost a month ahead of schedule after a below-average snowfall season. The rapid melt, which the space agency photographed on March 31, May 18, and July 7 when the snow had fully vanished, has left reservoirs without their necessary water supply for the drier months in summer and fall. An additional series of images, taken by the Operational Land Imager on the Landsat 8 satellite, show Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville’s ...

Rivian has delayed the first deliveries of its long-awaited electric pickup truck again, this time until September. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe broke the news to buyers in an email sent Friday morning. The Amazon and Ford-backed EV startup originally planned to start delivering its electric pickup, the R1T, and its SUV, the R1S, in 2020. But it scuttled those plans at the beginning of the pandemic and said at the time that it would start deliveries in 2021 instead. Rivian eventually settled on starting deliveries of the R1T in June of this year, only to push that back to July, and now to September. “We know you can’t wait to get behind the wheel of your vehicle,” Scaringe wrote in the email. “Earlier this summer, we announced that deliveries would begin in July; however, the timing for the firs...

The headline feature for Apple’s fall updates (including iOS 15, iPadOS 15, tvOS 15, and macOS Monterey) is SharePlay. It’s a new software feature on top of FaceTime that allows you to watch and listen to movies, TV shows, music, podcasts, and more with friends and family while video chatting. Right now, the number of SharePlay-compatible apps is a pretty small list: the Apple TV app for movies and TV shows, the Apple Music app for music, and Apple’s Podcasts app for podcasts. The company is promising some bigger third-party partners when iOS 15 launches this fall, including HBO Max, Disney Plus, Paramount Plus, TikTok, and Twitch. Some big names seem to be skipping out for now, though: most notably, Netflix and YouTube. For now, if you want to try it, here’s how. SharePlay with iOS Starti...

Google is tweaking 992 of its emoji designs to make them more “universal, accessible, and authentic,” the company announced today. The new designs will arrive this fall alongside Android 12, but Google says they’ll also be available on older versions with apps that use its Appcompat compatibility layer. They’re also coming to other Google platforms like Gmail, Chrome OS, Google Chat, and YouTube Live Chat this month. None of the changes are particularly drastic. Instead, they’re mostly the kinds of tweaks that make the meaning of each emoji easier to understand at a glance by a wider range of people. The pie emoji, for example, currently looks like a classic American pumpkin pie. That’s fine for Americans, but it means that, in the UK, the design looked closer to a tart than a traditional ...

Valve officially revealed its handheld PC gaming machine only a day ago, but that was apparently enough to spread the word — when the Steam Deck went up for preorder today at 1PM ET, the demand from gamers knocked Steam for a loop as the store produced error after error. Seemingly every step produced another pitfall: two-factor authentication if you weren’t signed in, some signed-in accounts had to sign in once again, credit card checks, even a wonky response from a system that pegged long-established Steam accounts as being “too new” to participate. Other parts of Steam got flaky during the crush of preorder interest, too. The entire Steam store, Steam’s community pages, and the age gate that lets you view mature-rated titles didn’t always work this morning. Two Verge editors managed to g...

An ancient language and one of the most popular video games of the past year have collided with the launch of the official Irish localization of Among Us. The hugely popular sci-fi whodunnit game is now available to play in the Irish language as of this month. The project was spearheaded by Úna-Minh Kavanagh, a fluent Irish speaker, writer, content creator, and Twitch streamer from Kerry in the southwest of Ireland. After her Twitter callout for an official version was met with an enthusiastic response, she was approached by Callum Underwood from Robot Teddy, the consulting firm supporting Innersloth developer Among Us. Kavanagh and a team of translators from across the globe got to work to turn their Irish modded version into an official localization. “During the pandemic, naturally, many...

Pocket Casts has a new owner. Automattic, which runs WordPress.com and recently purchased Tumblr, announced today that it’s acquired Pocket Casts, the well-regarded podcast app. The blog post announcing the purchase didn’t offer much in the way of a preview, but it did tease potential future integrations. “As part of Automattic, Pocket Casts will continue to provide you with the features needed to enjoy your favorite podcasts (or find something new),” the post states. “We will explore building deep integrations with WordPress.com and Pocket Casts, making it easier to distribute and listen to podcasts.” Pocket Casts launched in 2010 and sold to NPR and a group of other public media groups eight years later. It’s been well-received, particularly from sites like The Verge, because it’s availa...

Uber has agreed to pay $9 million to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) after refusing to hand over data about riders and drivers who were sexually assaulted, and pay a separate $150,000 fine, according to a settlement agreement reached Thursday. The CPUC will give $5 million of that money to the California Victim Compensation Fund, and the remaining $4 million will “go to address physical and sexual violence in the passenger carrier industry,” according to The San Francisco Chronicle, which reported on the agreement Thursday. Uber will also now provide data about the assaults to the CPUC, though it will remove any potentially identifying information. The CPUC originally fined Uber $59 million in December 2020 and threatened to suspend its license to operate in the state aft...

In order to keep her roles straight, Fear Street star Kiana Madeira kept a big Five Star binder with her on set at most times. As part of the experimental slasher trilogy from Netflix, Madeira played two different roles across three movies, each set in a different time period. To make matters even more challenging, the schedule was incredibly compact: all three films were shot together over just a few months. So her binder served a crucial role. Inside were all three scripts, and she would write in it constantly. “Every time we finished a scene, I would make notes about how it went, how my character was feeling, how I was feeling, what I think we ended with in terms of the tone and the trajectory of the story,” she says. “My binder really helped keep me organized and on that path.” The bin...