Technology

Amazon is gearing up for Prime Day 2021 — which is happening on Monday, June 21st, and Tuesday, June 22nd — by releasing some teaser deals for Prime members. Today’s big deal is on the Eero 6 mesh Wi-Fi 6 router. It’s normally $129, but you can get one for $83. This is a good starting point if you have plans to build a multiroom mesh Wi-Fi system to blanket every corner of your home in reliable internet access. This router has two ethernet ports, one for a modem and another for any other device you’d prefer to have wired for the fastest speeds. The Eero 6 claims to cover 1,500 square feet with Wi-Fi signal, and you can easily add another one to your network to expand coverage. Eero 6 mesh Wi-Fi router (single unit) $83 $129 36% off Prices taken at time of publishing. The latest Eero 6 Wi-F...

Loki, the one-time Marvel villain played for over a decade now by Tom Hiddleston, is on the verge of starring in his own series. Instead of playing the scene-stealing antagonist — or, later, grudging sidekick — to Chris Hemsworth’s square-jawed Thor, the God of Mischief is finally going to get to be fully in the spotlight. It’s something that fans have been asking for since the character first made his scenery-chewing debut in 2011’s Thor — but the new show looks far more detached from the MCU than any of his previous adventures. Loki is a new kind of series for Disney Plus. It’s the first that intentionally feels like a capital-S Spinoff. The first two Marvel shows, WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, occupied very different roles in the overarching storyline that Kevin Fei...

Google is expanding the availability of its Stadia game streaming service to more TVs and streaming devices later this month. The first version of Stadia on Chromecast with Google TV is launching on June 23rd, more than eight months after the device launched without official Stadia support. Alongside Chromecast with Google TV support, Stadia will also be available on a number of Android TV devices on June 23rd. Not every Android TV device is supported, but Nvidia’s Shield TV devices have made the list. Here’s the official support list: Chromecast with Google TV Hisense Android Smart TVs (U7G, U8G, U9G) Nvidia Shield TV Nvidia Shield TV Pro Onn FHD Streaming Stick and UHD Streaming Device Philips 8215, 8505, and OLED 935 / 805 Series Android TVs Xiaomi MIBOX3 and MIBOX4 If you don’t see you...

Honor has released a couple of official images for its upcoming 50 series smartphone via its Weibo page and Twitter. The images focus on the rear of the phone, showing an eye-catching pair of circular camera bumps. The Honor 50 series is currently due to be announced on June 16th. Amidst a sea of square and rectangular camera bumps, the dual circle design is an interesting look for Honor’s next flagship. It’s also a style that Honor’s former parent company Huawei is planning to use for its next flagship, the similarly-named P50. It’s possible that the two companies finalized their designs before Huawei sold off Honor late last year, but it’ll be strange to see such similar looking devices released from two distinct manufacturers within such close proximity to one another. From the images i...

Being able to sample audio from other users’ videos is one of TikTok’s greatest strengths. It allows memes to percolate across the platform and lets users discover new content by watching videos with the same sound. Soon, YouTube will expand this feature in its TikTok competitor, Shorts, letting users sample sounds from any content uploaded to YouTube. YouTube officially announced this feature last month in a community support post, but tells The Verge it should now be available for the first time in new markets as part of the launch of Shorts in the UK, Canada, and a number of Latin American countries (including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela). The YouTube-sampling tool will then roll out to other Shorts markets including the US in the coming weeks. Shorts ...

As we await the beginning of Apple’s latest WWDC keynote and all of the new software products it will unveil, let’s talk about metaphors. Specifically, the metaphors we use to talk about Apple’s ecosystem. The go-to for years has been it’s a “walled garden” — here’s Joanna Stern at the Wall Street Journal making that case in a literal walled garden — but I’m not sure that’s the best one anymore. It’s worth kicking around some different ways of describing Apple’s ecosystem in this moment because of the nature of keynotes — even online-only keynotes. Apple is the master of crafting narratives around its products that become an organizing principle for understanding what those products are. Those narratives aren’t intellectual exercises, they’re stories told to change how you feel about Apple...

Jeff Bezos is headed into space, and he’s taking his brother with him. The Amazon CEO announced the news via a video on Instagram (below). In it, he says he and his brother Mark will be launching into space on July 20th aboard a rocket built by Bezos’ space company Blue Origin. The firm announced in May it would be targeting this date for a first crewed flight, but did not say that Bezos himself would be taking part. In the Instagram video, Bezos says that taking a journey into space has been a lifelong dream for him, and that it will be “meaningful” to have his brother along for the ride. “You see the earth from space and it changes you. It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity. It’s one Earth,” says Bezos. “I want to go on this flight because it’s the thing I’ve wante...

On Monday NASA’s Juno space probe, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016, will get a close-up look at Jupiter’s biggest moon Ganymede, the agency said in a press release. It will be the closest NASA has gotten to the largest moon in the solar system for more than 20 years— Galileo cruised by Ganymede in 2000— coming within 645 miles of its surface. The information Juno gathers will give insight into the moon’s composition and ice shell, as well as provide data for future missions to Jupiter. “Juno carries a suite of sensitive instruments capable of seeing Ganymede in ways never before possible,” said principal investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “By flying so close, we will bring the exploration of Ganymede into the 21st century, both compleme...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Sunday that the automaker’s Model S Plaid Plus is “canceled,” since the basic Plaid is “just so good.” Tesla has been teasing its Model S Plaid since 2019, and Musk said late last month that delivery for the vehicle — which will have top speeds of 200 mph and range between 390 and 412 miles— would be pushed to June 10th as it needed “one more week of tweak.” He also tweeted Sunday that the Plaid could go from zero to 60 mph in under two seconds (a statement he’s made previously). 0 to 60mph in under 2 secs. Quickest production car ever made of any kind. Has to be felt to be believed. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 6, 2021 The Plaid Plus was supposed to have range of more than 520 miles, but its specs on Tesla’s website Sunday are greyed out, although the site stil...

It hit me this morning that there is no new episode of Mare of Easttown on this evening and I felt a little sad, but wow what a finale. Emmys for Kate Winslet and Julianne Nicholson, please (and be sure to read Sophie Gilbert’s excellent analysis in The Atlantic of the way women and mothers were centered in this very good series). I did not correctly predict who the killer was (but ICYMI, Stephen King did and don’t click that link if you haven’t watched the finale because obvs, spoiler). All this is to say I am in the market for a new show so I just started Hacks and can’t wait for the Loki premiere on Wednesday. The (unintentional) theme(s) for this week’s trailers roundup: Memories and nostalgia. [embedded content] Roadrunner This documentary about Anthony Bourdain, who died from suicide...

Apple needs a distraction, and it needs one fast. On Monday, the company will hold its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2021) during one of the most fraught moments for developer relations in Apple history. While Apple emerged from the Epic v. Apple trial in a seemingly strong legal position, its reputation took a body blow. Evidence revealed the company doesn’t “treat every developer the same” — it cut special deals with big companies like Amazon and Hulu and made arbitrary, cutthroat decisions to lock competition out and lock users in. Developers have known or suspected these things for years, and at first, online reactions seemed muted. This is the third year in a row that the shadow of antitrust regulation has hung over WWDC, after all, and so far the company has largely em...

Twitter announced earlier this year it was working on a Super Follows feature that would allow some users to charge followers and give them access to extra content. On Sunday, app researcher Jane Manchun Wong tweeted screenshots of what she says it will look like. According to Wong’s research, which is typically very accurate, the Super Follows program will be limited to Twitter users with at least 10,000 followers, who have posted at least 25 tweets within the past 30 days, and are at least 18 years old. As Twitter has referenced, one of the main features of Super Follows will be bonus content, such as exclusive tweets for Super Followers. Wong also discovered a list of content categories that Super Follows users would choose from to describe their content (such as “sports” or “podcasting...