Technology

Verizon said Thursday it is working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to recall 2.5 million hotspot devices after an investigation found the devices’ lithium-ion batteries could overheat and pose fire and burn hazards. The Ellipsis Jetpack mobile hotspot models MHS900L, MHS900LS, and MHS900LPP were imported by Franklin Wireless Corp. and sold between April 2017 and March of this year, according to the CPSC. The model numbers are all for the same device but vary depending on how the customer purchased the device — through a consumer prepaid or postpaid plan. “The safety of our customers is our highest priority,” Verizon said in a statement. “We are taking the situation very seriously, and we are working diligently to determine the cause of the issues with the supplier and t...

I love it when companies go public. I am never more excited than when I get to read a mandatory S-1 filing for the first time. Anything could be in there! Maybe the company has wildly more people using its products than I would have guessed. Maybe the company is surprisingly profitable. Maybe the company is WeWork! Anyway, there is a new Robinhood regulatory oopsie in the news, and it’s made me even more eager to find out what’s lurking in that document. If I do not get the Robinhood S-1 soon, I will die. The company has confidentially filed to go public, but what fun is confidentiality? There might be some juicy shit in there! Start-up sloppiness Here’s the shape of the new thing: Robinhood allows customers to trade fractions of a share — something that makes it easier for ordinary invest...

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children — the 2005 CGI spinoff film that dared to ask “What if the already incredible, intricate story of Final Fantasy VII was made even more confusing?” — is getting a 4K HDR remaster this summer. The newly updated version of the film is due to arrive on June 8th, setting up a week of narrative whiplash for Final Fantasy fans who will also get to enjoy the PS5 upgrade of Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade on June 10th. One might think Advent Children would be a good next step for fans who have only played the modern Final Fantasy VII Remake as a way of preparing for future remade installments. That instinct, I can assure you, would be wrong. The film is actually a pseudo-sequel to the original Final Fantasy VII game’s epic and occasionally bewildering story, a...

Trevor DeHaas is auctioning his 2017 tweet of the “dinner” he received at Fyre Fest as an NFT. But unlike the Fest itself, the tweeted photo of the limp cheese slice on wheat bread with some greens and a sad tomato in a styrofoam container isn’t a grift; as first reported by Axios, DeHaas is hoping to raise $80,000 which he plans to put toward his medical bills. “With how hot the NFT market is right now I figured I’d give it a shot and could hopefully raise enough money that I wouldn’t need to rely on a GoFundMe to pay for my medical expenses,” DeHaas said in an email to The Verge. “The last thing I want is to guilt trip someone into buying the NFT and copyright to pay for my medical expenses but I would like the auction winner to know that their money would be going to a good cause.” The ...

Square Enix has released a 16-minute trailer for the Final Fantasy VII Remake Orchestral World Tour, and if you’re a fan of the game’s fantastic soundtrack, I highly recommend watching this video from beginning to end. Watching the songs performed by a live orchestra brought a huge smile to my face. The trailer features three songs: a medley of the game’s opening, including the bombastic title fanfare that still gives me goosebumps; “Stand Up,” the song used during the Honeybee Inn dance scene; and a medley of the classic battle theme, “Let the Battles Begin!” More than 100 musicians perform the arrangements. If you want to try to catch a show for yourself, you can see the schedule of upcoming performances on the tour’s website. Sadly, the tour isn’t currently scheduled to take place anywh...

Amazon is adding a new streaming option to its Luna cloud gaming platform that will cap resolution at 720p to help improve stability for players on slower internet connections. Right now, Luna streams only at 1080p, with 4K coming at some point in the future. Yet even at 1080p, internet connections that struggle to keep up with the high bandwidth demands of cloud gaming might result in latency, lag, and audio issues for the player when using a service like Luna. Now, Amazon says those using Luna in its early access beta — the platform has yet to release to the public — can toggle on the 720p streaming mode in the settings panel to help with performance. “One of the most requested features is the ability to play at lower resolutions to match unique internet connection speeds and bandwidth d...

On May 3rd, Fortnite publisher Epic Games will finally have its day in court, forcing Apple to defend kicking Fortnite off the iOS App Store last year. Epic’s antitrust lawsuit is bigger than a single game; it’s a direct challenge to the App Store model, the most significant legal challenge Apple has faced since the Xerox days. Last night, both sides filed a document called a “proposed findings of fact,” essentially laying out every factual claim they’ll rely on in their arguments. The documents run more than 650 pages in total, giving a detailed roadmap of how each side sees the case — from the early days of the iPhone to Epic’s specific preparations for picking this fight with Apple. But the filings also bring the case into focus, raising three questions that will be central to the trial...

Facebook is adding additional labels to posts from Pages that appear in users’ News Feeds in a bid to reduce confusion about their origin. These labels will include “public official,” “fan page,” and “satire page.” The company says it’s already started testing the deployment of these labels in the US, and will gradually add them to more posts. Facebook hasn’t offered any explanation as to why it’s adding these labels, but identifying satire seems particularly important. Take a look at the social shares for any news articles written by well-known satirical sites like The Onion or The Babylon Bee and you’ll find plenty of people taking these stories at face value. In such a context these posts are essentially a type of misinformation, even if their creators did not intend this. Even high pro...

Last month during its virtual GDC presentation Intel announced Bleep, a new AI-powered tool that it hopes will cut down on the amount of toxicity gamers have to experience in voice chat. According to Intel, the app “uses AI to detect and redact audio based on user preferences.” The filter works on incoming audio, acting as an additional user-controlled layer of moderation on top of what a platform or service already offers. It’s a noble effort, but there’s something bleakly funny about Bleep’s interface, which lists in minute detail all of the different categories of abuse that people might encounter online, paired with sliders to control the quantity of mistreatment users want to hear. Categories range anywhere from “Aggression” to “LGBTQ+ Hate,” “Misogyny,” “Racism and Xenophobia,” and “...

Lenovo’s next gaming phone leaked earlier this week, but now the company is officially sharing details about the new device, called the Legion Phone Duel 2. It’s a beast in every way — with a 6.92-inch screen, this is a gigantic phone that houses two batteries, two USB-C ports, and two actual spinning fans, as well as a camera bump that makes us slightly regret we already used the “that’s no moon; it’s a space station” joke on the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra. Some of its features are carryovers from Lenovo’s original Android gaming phone, the Legion Phone Duel, including the twin USB-C ports and a pop-up selfie camera designed for streamers. Like the original Duel, Lenovo also maintains the unusual choice of centering the phone’s other two cameras around back, but now that raised camera bump houses...

Samsung’s Galaxy SmartTag Plus, the souped-up version of the company’s Tile-like SmartTag Bluetooth tracker (which was released earlier this year), now has a release date: it’ll be out on April 16th for $39.99. That’s a $10 price increase over the standard SmartTag, which runs for $29.99 — but the SmartTag Plus has one notable improvement. It features an ultra-wideband (UWB) radio, allowing users to track it more accurately when it’s nearby than the standard Bluetooth setup. The UWB radio actually enables a new AR mode, which can help show users exactly where their missing tag is. To use the new UWB mode, you’ll need both a Galaxy SmartTag Plus and a compatible UWB-equipped Galaxy phone, a list that currently includes the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, Galaxy S21 Plus, Galaxy S21 Ultra, and the Gal...

Twitter’s already building a competitor to the hot social audio app Clubhouse, but apparently, it’s discussed outright acquiring the company, too. Bloomberg reports today that Twitter held discussions with Clubhouse about purchasing the app for around $4 billion. These conversations have reportedly stalled, and it’s unclear why. It’s also unclear whether Twitter or Clubhouse approached the other first, which could speak to how either platform is feeling about the competition in the social audio space. Bloomberg also reported yesterday that Clubhouse is now looking to raise money at a $4 billion valuation; it’s possible that number came out of these Twitter discussions, or that Clubhouse is shopping that figure around. Clubhouse launched last year and popularized the idea of hosting live au...