Technology

Samsung has announced two new Windows laptops running Arm-based processors. The Galaxy Book Go and Galaxy Book Go 5G both use Snapdragon chips from Qualcomm rather than Samsung’s own Exynos designs. The Galaxy Book Go is an entry-level model that starts at $349. It has the updated Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 processor that Qualcomm announced last month, as well as 4GB or 8GB of RAM and 64GB or 128GB of eUFS storage. The display is a 14-inch 1080p LCD and the laptop is 14.9mm thick, weighing in at 1.38kg. The Galaxy Book Go 5G, meanwhile, uses Qualcomm’s more powerful Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 processor — though other laptops with that chip aren’t exactly powerhouses — and, as the name suggests, it includes 5G connectivity. Despite running on a Snapdragon chip with an integrated LTE modem, the $349 Gala...

The FBI has said that cybercriminal group REvil (also known as Sodinokibi) was behind the recent attack on meat supplier JBS (via The Record). This follows a statement from White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, which indicated that the attack likely came from a Russian-based organization. REvil has previously been implicated in the recent Apple and Acer ransomware attacks, as well as last year’s Travelex attack. The JBS intrusion, however, could have wide-ranging effects: the company is the world’s largest meat processor, and the incident shut down some of the largest slaughterhouses in the US. New FBI statement: “We have attributed the JBS attack to REvil and Sodinokibi and are working diligently to bring the threat actors to justice.” pic.twitter.com/JPZtygT8N9 — Natasha...

Apple employees are being asked to return to the office three days a week starting in early September. Tim Cook sent out an email Wednesday informing staff of the change. “For all that we’ve been able to achieve while many of us have been separated, the truth is that there has been something essential missing from this past year: each other,” he said. “Video conference calling has narrowed the distance between us, to be sure, but there are things it simply cannot replicate.” Cook said that most employees will be asked to come in to the office on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, with the option of working remotely on Wednesdays and Fridays. Teams that need to work in-person will return four to five days a week. Employees also have the chance to work remotely for up to two weeks a year, “to...

The agency has picked two new robotic missions to explore the hot hell-world of Venus, Earth’s neighbor and the second planet from the Sun, administrator Bill Nelson announced on Wednesday. The two missions, DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, were among four competing proposals under the latest round of NASA’s Discovery Program, which manages smaller planetary exploration missions with a slim budget of roughly $500 million each. “These two sister missions both aim to understand how Venus became an inferno-like world capable of melting lead at the surface,” Nelson said during his first “State of NASA” address at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, DC on Wednesday. “They will offer the entire science community a chance to investigate a planet we haven’t been to in more than 30 years.” DAVINCI+, slat...

Ethereum mining is coming to perhaps an unexpected place: Norton 360, the antivirus software that many readers will know from setting up new computers for their parents (via BleepingComputer). In its press release, Norton claims its brand is a perfect fit: people looking to mine crypto won’t have to dig through the dark, scary parts of the web, where they could possibly find “unvetted code.” The company also says that it’ll store users’ crypto wallets in the cloud, with its own Norton Wallet. As far as actually using their gains, a Norton spokesperson tells The Verge there will be a button that allows users to “pull money into Coinbase.” Until now, Norton claims, people who wanted to mine had to disable their security software to do it, which made things harder for them. While that somewha...

This week, Apple brought its Apple TV app to many new Android TV devices — not just the Nvidia Shield. And Apple was smart to widen that support — the expiration date for free trials of Apple TV Plus is swiftly approaching, with many customers about to see their subscriptions end July 1st. That gives Apple a month to win over Android TV users by letting them watch flagship shows like the earnest and delightful Ted Lasso on the big screen, a show whose second season will premiere near the end of July. The rollout of the Apple TV app to Android TV OS devices started Monday at 8AM PT, a Google spokesperson confirmed to The Verge. As a caveat, the Google spokesperson clarified that support does not extend to third-party operator set-top boxes, so, for example, devices like AT&T’s Android T...

The Apple Card experienced an outage on Wednesday that reportedly affected users’ ability to make payments, manage their cards, and see recent transactions, according to Apple’s status page. Interruption in service appears to have started at 6:17AM PT today and lasted for a little over five hours, ending at 12:19PM PT. Apple’s credit card solution is managed almost entirely through the built-in Wallet app in iOS, where users can pay off their credit card bill, see recent transactions, and make payments through Apple Pay. Apple said that all users were affected by today’s outage, but it wasn’t clear if every user experienced all of the possible issues the company reported. My colleague Mitchell Clark was able to pay off a portion of their bill and see the transaction show up in the Wallet a...

If you hop into a game of Fortnite right now, you might get teleported across the map by a mysterious laser beam that appears out of the sky. Yes, seriously. Watch it happen in this video from streamer Ali “SypherPK” Hassan, which I’ve also embedded below at the right timestamp. [embedded content] While it’s hard to tell exactly where the laser beam is coming from, it’s hard to think that it isn’t coming from some kind of UFO or alien… thing. The abductions started happening in Fortnite Tuesday evening, just one week before the game’s next season begins on June 8th. And a few other hints seem to indicate that Chapter 2 Season 7 could be alien-themed in some way, too. Check out this video teaser that apparently is on TikTok, for example, which features the tagline “they’re coming” and...

Amazon tells its warehouse employees to think of themselves not as overworked cogs in an enormous, soul-crushing machine, but as “industrial athletes,” and to prepare their bodies for that experience like someone training for a sporting event, according to a pamphlet obtained by Motherboard. The comparison is a troubling euphemism for a company whose workers have almost double the amount of serious injuries as the rest of the warehousing industry and who reportedly are often unable to take bathroom breaks. The pamphlet tells employees that some of them will walk up to 13 miles throughout the course of the day, burning an average of 400 calories an hour. It also suggests all sorts of ways to help workers prepare for the athlete life, including changes to their diets and sleep schedules and ...

Brood X is back and ready for action. After a 17 year nap, the cicadas of the Eastern US have emerged to scream, mate, and perhaps pick up a fungus that turns them into “horror movie sex bots.” While some people have been dreading the return of the screeching multitudes, others have eagerly awaited the brood with tasty bug recipes in hand. But before you run to the nearest cicada cookout, be aware that you’ll probably want to avoid these crunchy morsels if you have a shellfish allergy. If you’re allergic to shellfish, it’s entirely possible that you’ll have a reaction to eating certain insects. After all, what are shrimps and lobsters but bugs of the sea? Seriously, in the colonial era lobsters were only food for poor and incarcerated people, because they were seen as bottom-dwelling roach...

Microsoft is planning to detail its “next generation of Windows” at an event later this month. The software giant has started sending invites to media for a Windows event on June 24th. Both Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and chief product officer Panos Panay will be presenting at the Windows event. Microsoft’s Windows event will start at 11AM ET / 8AM PT on June 24th. The invite comes just a week after Nadella teased a “next generation of Windows” announcement. Microsoft is expected to detail its next significant changes to Windows, and they will likely include a number of visual enhancements. We’re expecting to see some significant UI changes to Windows under something codenamed “Sun Valley.” Microsoft’s event invite even appears to tease a new Windows logo. Microsoft’s Windows invite. Micro...

Nvidia just announced its new $1,199 RTX 3080 Ti graphics card, and it’s set to release tomorrow, June 3rd. It hasn’t exactly been easy to buy a graphics card as of late, though, and it seems extremely likely that demand for this new card is going to be through the roof. If you’re looking to try to pick one up, you might want to consider Best Buy, which has announced that customers will be able to line up at 81 of its stores for the chance to snag a Founder’s Edition of the card. Here’s the full list of participating stores, if you want to see if one near you is included. On that website, Best Buy notes that staff at participating stores will hand out tickets for the cards at 7:30AM local time, and if customers receive a ticket, they’ll be guaranteed to be able to buy a card at 9:00AM loca...