Technology

Twitter Blue — the social network’s first subscription product that adds an undo button to tweets among other minor additions like changing the color of icons and adding folders for bookmarks — launched on Thursday. It’s limited to Canada and Australia for now but has already garnered attention for lacking the features people would be willing to pay Twitter for, like no ads, or better tools to handle harassment. Which makes Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s thread today, the day after the product launched, somewhat humorous and frustrating. What can we say: the guy loves to talk about bitcoin, even when other more pressing matters are at hand! Square is considering making a hardware wallet for #bitcoin. If we do it, we would build it entirely in the open, from software to hardware design, and in c...

Apple’s new Siri Remote introduced a gesture that makes it easy to scrub through content by turning the control pad into a scroll wheel. But a number of Apple TV users noticed that the feature doesn’t work properly on some services, like HBO Max, or at all on others, like Disney Plus. A spokesperson for Disney Plus confirmed to The Verge that the feature — one of the best on the redesigned Siri Remote — isn’t supported on its service. It’s not a service issue, though, but instead related to custom video players. Some streaming apps available on Apple TV use their own players, while others use the tvOS media player. The jogging gesture works with streaming apps that use Apple’s native media player, but it is not yet supported for third-party developers that use a custom media player, and th...

Linux gamers using Valve’s Proton compatibility tool to run Windows games will be getting a performance upgrade in the future: Nvidia has announced that it’s working with Valve to bring FPS boosts using its DLSS technology featured on its RTX cards. It’s almost enough to make me want to revisit Linux gaming. DLSS, or Deep Learning Super Sampling, is a technology that lets gamers get more performance without having to give up too much image quality. It does this by running the game at lower-than-native resolution (say, rendering the game at 1080p when your monitor is 4K), but then upscaling the image to native resolution using some mightily impressive algorithms. The tech will, of course, be exciting for people with Linux gaming computers, but it’s also interesting considering the rumors of...

Pidgeon Pagonis, an intersex activist, noticed last week that the #intersex hashtag wasn’t working on TikTok. They couldn’t click the tag on one of their own posts and trying to search for intersex pulled up a “null” page. This was the second time Pagonis noticed the tag disappearing, and they worried that TikTok had banned it just as they were about to start a series of celebratory videos called Intersex Joy. Pagonis usually feels safe on TikTok because people on the platform are generally receptive to intersex topics. After growing up with secrecy, lies, and shame around being intersex, Pagonis sees TikTok and other platforms as spaces where intersex people “can connect with each other and also advocate for ourselves and each other, and then other people can learn about intersex.” But wh...

Some 150 birds named for people tied to slavery and white supremacy could eventually get new monikers as part of an ongoing reckoning with racism within the world of birding. That includes Jameson’s firefinch, named for a British naturalist who bought a young girl while in Africa “as a joke” and then drew pictures of her being brutally killed. In a new story this week, Washington Post reporter Darryl Fears breaks down the horrific history of ornithology that has managed to be scrubbed clean in many history books. Indigenous peoples understood the animals long before white settlers supposedly “discovered” them Fears also writes about the names these birds already had, given to them by Indigenous peoples who understood the animals long before white settlers supposedly “discovered” the creatu...

Road deaths jumped 7.2 percent in 2020 from the year before, hitting a 13-year high, even though people weren’t driving as much, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). But while NHTSA’s numbers paint a grim picture, they offer only a glimpse at what’s shaping up to be a historically bloody year of driving. Overall, 38,680 people died in car crashes in 2020, the highest number since 2007. But it’s worse than it sounds, since the number of miles driven in the US dropped by 13 percent. That means every mile someone drove last year was more dangerous than it was the year before. Heeding the call to “stay home,” Americans drove less during this pandemic year. But those who did get behind the wheel engaged in more reckless behavior, like drinking and driving, sp...

The new Alienware M15 R5 Ryzen Edition is a slight undoing of progress, depending on how you look at it. As many gaming laptops are going thinner, this one is heavier and thicker than previous generations. Its design has been tweaked slightly in ways both good and bad, and it has fewer ports than before, too. Despite all of that, it’s a cause for a small celebration because of the Ryzen processor it uses, marking AMD’s return to Alienware products after a 14-year gap when the brand exclusively used Intel CPUs. And it’s a welcome return, even if this laptop won’t appeal to everyone. AMD’s high-end mobile processors have been a boon to gaming laptops for the last couple of years, bringing long battery life and fast performance that sometimes outpaces and undercuts laptops that have competing...

A sales rep at a T-Mobile store in Fort Worth, Texas has filed a gender discrimination suit against the company after a member of the HR team inappropriately questioned her about having an OnlyFans account. Caitlyn Stevens had been working at T-Mobile for nearly seven years when a male colleague became angry with her about how she was handling a customer interaction, the complaint says. He approached her “in a physically aggressive manager,” forcing a coworker to step in and stop the man from hitting her. Stevens reported the incident to the store manager. Rather than disciplining the male colleague who’d allegedly tried to hurt her, the manager relocated Stevens to a different location, according to the complaint. The location got less foot traffic, resulting in fewer sales for employees,...

Apple’s annual developer extravaganza, the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), is coming up fast, kicking off with the keynote presentation on June 7th at 1PM ET. Like last year, WWDC will be an entirely digital and online-only event due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and for the keynote, that means we can likely expect another tightly produced video highlighting everything Apple has in store. While we aren’t expecting any announcements on the level of Apple’s shift to custom silicon in its computers, which was WWDC 2020’s big news, Apple presumably has some notable changes in the works for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and its other operating systems. And if the current rumors pan out, we could also see brand-new MacBook Pros with the return of some long-missed features, such as MagSafe charging. Re...

Apple’s over-ear AirPods Max are $30 less than usual at Amazon and Best Buy today. Normally $549, every color option is $520 (Best Buy has most, but not all, colors at this price). Are they worth the purchase even with this slightly more affordable cost? If you’re a discerning shopper looking for unparalleled design and build quality, as well as great sound quality and ease of use, then perhaps they’ll be worth it to you. This price is hundreds more than the likes of Sony’s WH-1000XM4 and Bose’s Noise Cancelling Headphones 700, both of which will serve most people very well. My colleague Chris Welch notes in his review, though, that the AirPods Max are tough to beat on the little details that might make a big difference with your day-to-day use of them. Things like the comfort, intuitive D...

Gus may have antlers like a deer, but he’s a puppy dog at heart. The main character of Netflix’s new series Sweet Tooth, based on the comic by Jeff Lemire, is a young boy struggling to survive in a world ravaged by a pandemic. But while the world around him descends into chaos, Gus, played by Christian Convery, never loses his sense of wide-eyed optimism. His ears perk up — literally — if he hears about chocolate or candy apples, and he has an almost naive belief in people who shouldn’t always be trusted. At a time when we’re inundated with grim post-apocalyptic stories about how dark humanity can get, Sweet Tooth and its adorable lead offer something very welcome: hope. Most of the set-up is familiar territory. A pandemic has killed off much of the human race, and those left behind are at...