Technology

According to an engineer at Microsoft, Windows 11 users will have the ability to sideload Android apps onto the operating system, which looks like an answer to one of the biggest questions we had when Microsoft announced it was bringing Android apps to Windows 11 via the Amazon Appstore (via Android Police). This means that once Windows 11 launches, you won’t just have to stick to the apps that Amazon makes available, but it does raise some new questions about how running Android apps on Windows will work. For example, it’s unclear what the process for running or installing a sideloaded app will be. Chrome OS technically has the ability to run sideloaded apps, too, but the process isn’t exactly easy, as it involves enabling Linux and doing some command line work. We asked Microsoft for det...

An unclassified version of the Pentagon’s report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs, aka UFOs) was sent to Congress on Friday, showing that more than 140 instances of strange sightings by military aircraft remain a mystery. This is the public’s first glance at the 9-page report. Last year, Congress gave the Defense Department a six-month deadline to share classified and unclassified versions of a report on UAPs cataloged by the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force. The task force’s existence was announced in August 2020 and its mission is “to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security.” Today marks the deadline. Senate committees received the classified version of the report on June 2nd. And leaks earlier this month to The New York Times, citin...

On Thursday, we saw the official reveal of Windows 11 at Microsoft’s event, which showed off a redesign of the Microsoft operating system — including a replaced Start menu, updated app store, and lots more. This week on The Verge’s flagship podcast, The Vergecast, we dedicate a majority of the show to talk about Windows 11. Co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn and Verge senior editor Tom Warren discuss the biggest changes from Windows 10 to 11, the complications of bringing Android apps to Windows with Amazon’s app store, and how Microsoft’s stance on being an open platform has evolved among the other tech giants. We also have a sort of companion piece to this week’s show: Nilay spoke with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on our other podcast, Decoder with Nilay Patel, to chat about Windows as ...

A highly anticipated report on the Pentagon’s research into Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), aka UFOs, will be released as early as today. There’s going to be a book-load of background on the Pentagon’s new UAP task force, which examines unknown objects through a national security lens. The Defense Department said last year it takes “any incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace very seriously…” The government’s UAP program and the upcoming report have spawned a news cycle that has shot UFO conspiracies back into the mainstream. Despite the hype, the report will almost certainly not contain proof of aliens. Here’s what we know so far. When will this Pentagon UFO report come out? The Senate Intelligence Committee squeezed in a comment with...

Google will now tell users when search results are rapidly changing around a breaking story. Some searches will now bring up a warning that “it looks like these results are changing quickly,” and a subheading will explain that “if this topic is new, it can sometimes take time for results to be added by reliable sources.” In a blog post, the company suggests that users might want to check back later when it’s found more results. The notice is initially appearing on US-based English-language results “when a topic is rapidly evolving and a range of sources hasn’t yet weighed in.” Google will expand the tool’s presence to other markets in the coming months. “While Google Search will always be there with the most useful results we can provide, sometimes the reliable information you’re searching...

Microsoft announced yesterday that Windows 11 will require TPM (Trusted Platform Module) chips on existing and new devices. It’s a significant hardware change that has been years in the making, but Microsoft’s messy way of communicating this has left many confused about whether their hardware is compatible. What is a TPM, and why do you need one for Windows 11 anyway? “The Trusted Platform Modules (TPM) is a chip that is either integrated into your PC’s motherboard or added separately into the CPU,” explains David Weston, director of enterprise and OS security at Microsoft. “Its purpose is to protect encryption keys, user credentials, and other sensitive data behind a hardware barrier so that malware and attackers can’t access or tamper with that data.” So it’s all about security. TPMs wor...

Xgimi’s latest all-in-one smart projector not only looks good, but it supports native 4K and HDR content. Better yet, the Xgimi Horizon Pro boots straight into Android TV and features a pair of 8W Harman Kardon speakers that sound great despite the projector’s compact size. Couple that with a bright LED light source, built-in Wi-Fi, and the ability to automatically avoid obstacles when determining where to project the image, and you’ve got a 300-inch display that can go anywhere there’s a power outlet and a flat surface. Hell, it’ll even double as a Bluetooth speaker in a pinch. I’ve never been a fan of smart televisions when it’s so easy to offload those smarts to a more capable streaming box or stick, which can be neatly hidden out of sight. But it’s much harder to do the same thing with...

The answer to whether you should buy the $239 OnePlus Nord N200 5G depends a lot on who your wireless carrier is. If you’re on T-Mobile — and thanks to a generous trade-in offer and a carrier exclusive, you probably are if you’re considering the N200 — then this is a fine, basic device that will allow you to take advantage of the company’s good 5G network at a very low price. The N200 5G will only work on Verizon and AT&T’s 4G networks, however, so if you’re with either of those carriers, it’s not your best option. Why does your carrier make such a difference? Verizon and AT&T’s 5G networks aren’t great at the moment, so using the N200 as a 4G-only device isn’t actually a big deal right now. But they’ll start getting much better over the next couple of years thanks to some newly ac...

The Lucid Air has been in the works for a very long time, nearly a decade by some accounts. The first time I rode in the 1,000-horsepower electric sedan was in Las Vegas in 2017, when Lucid Motors had an engineering prototype on hand at the Consumer Electronics Show. I rode in the Air again just this past Monday, in a near-final version of the massive, roomy vehicle. Suffice to say, it was better the second time around. In the four years between then and now, the EV startup struggled to raise money and very nearly went out of business. But thanks to a timely investment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, in which it put up its own intellectual property as collateral, and a recent SPAC deal that will leave the company with $4.4 billion in cash, Lucid Motors is now on track to startin...

How much is it worth to be shareable? BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti is hoping for about $1.5 billion. BuzzFeed has agreed to go public through an acquisition by 890 Fifth Avenue Partners, a publicly traded company with no purpose except to buy another company. (890 Fifth Avenue Partners is part of a recent wave of special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, which some startups are using to go public.) As part of the deal, BuzzFeed is also acquiring Complex Networks, another media company, for $300 million. BuzzFeed was an experiment to discover what content people would share on social networks Cast your mind back, if you are able, to the antediluvian era, before the 2008 crash. Peretti, who had graduated from the MIT Media Lab, had taken his expertise in online popularity — which, i...

As part of its Windows 11 announcements on Thursday, Microsoft revealed a major policy change to incentivize developers to make apps for the Microsoft Store: starting on July 28th, if a developer uses their own or a third-party payment system in their app, Microsoft will let them keep 100 percent of the revenue. But the deal has one important caveat: it doesn’t apply to games, Microsoft confirmed to The Verge. That omission further muddies the ongoing debate about the differences between an app and a game and app store policies around each — a distinction that is one of the core issues in the ongoing legal battle between Fortnite-maker Epic Games and Apple. Microsoft is largely on the side of apps and games being different because its bottom line depends on it. During the Epic trial, the c...