Technology

Since 1996, spacejam.com has been an internet time capsule like few others still in existence — a largely pristine sample of the early World Wide Web and all the most advanced multimedia offerings available at the time, such as animated GIFs and Windows 95 screensavers. But 25 years later, it’s finally been supplanted; the new sequel Space Jam: A New Legacy, starring LeBron James, has taken over the URL to showcase the new movie’s very first trailer. Here’s what spacejam.com looks like today: But before you go boycotting the sequel, you should probably know that the original Space Jam website isn’t dead yet. In fact, it’s just one click away at spacejam.com/1996, and the new website lets you that original Space Jam logo (in the upper-right-hand corner) to go back in time again. Here’s that...

If you’ve been eagerly waiting for Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga to fulfill the incredible promise of its stirring trailer from last August (see above), I have some bittersweet news: the game’s been delayed again. Developer TT Games tweeted on Friday that “we won’t be able to make our intended Spring release date,” which itself was a delay from the game’s original 2020 launch window. Bittersweet, because the delay does comes with the promise that it’ll be the company’s “biggest and best-ever LEGO game,” which is exactly what that trailer looked like last fall. It’s been sixteen years since the first Lego Star Wars, and I can certainly wait a bit longer if there’s a chance of achieving that goal. We’ve seen far too many games shoved out before they were ready, and I can think of at lea...

Welcome to April. This month began with, frankly, too many brands insisting on making fools out of themselves. But now that the prankster holiday is behind us, we’re focused on deals that are still happening. This has been a fun week to write about deals because a little bit of everything has seen a discount. There have been several deals lately on game subscriptions, so my colleague Taylor Lyles put together a big up-to-date guide to help you find the best prices. Nomad’s Base Station Pro is half off until Saturday night If you have an iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods and are still lamenting the fact that the AirPower charging mat never released, check out this deal. Nomad’s Base Station Pro does what the AirPower promised to do — charge three devices simultaneously — and you can get it f...

This is a surreal moment in the pandemic, brimming with hope and fear. Here in the US we’re at the last leg in a marathon — vaccines are here, and appointments to get those shots are becoming more plentiful. People are planning for the moments they’ve put off for a year or more. The finish line is in sight. At the exact same time, our will to power through to the end just slammed into a wall. Restrictions are lifting while cases are still high, sending case counts through the roof. Hospitals are getting crowded again. Testing has dropped, leaving us with incomplete information as new variants take hold. “We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope,” said Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prev...

Amazon has issued a rare public apology — but not to its workers, and with no real admission of guilt. Over a week ago, the company was caught publicly lying to Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) that its workers never feel the need to pee in water bottles (which is, in fact, a well-documented issue at Amazon because of how it robotically tracks and fires its laborers). Now, late on the Friday evening before Easter weekend, when few (hat tip to GeekWire) are paying attention, the company is apologizing to Pocan — and no one else. Amazon only apologizes for not being “accurate” enough, too — not for actually creating and contributing to situations where workers pee in bottles. The @AmazonNews account didn’t bother to tweet any of this, BTW In fact, Amazon goes so far as to suggest the whole pee bottle ...

Google is killing off its dedicated Google Wifi app for managing its routers, rolling that functionality over to the Google Home app as the company continues to “help our customers control and manage all their connected products in one place and enable routines across them.” The switchover to the Google Home app will come in two phases: first, Google will disable most of the functionality of the Google Wifi app on May 25th. Starting then, users will only be able to view the current status of their networks — but any changes, including adding new routers or access points — will have to be done in the Google Home app. Starting on May 25th, users will have to use the Home app to make any changes to a Google Wifi setup Then, sometime in June, Google will remove the Wifi app from the Play Store...

Dish Network issued a new letter to the Federal Communications Commission this week, as reported by Axios, highlighting the urgent situation it faces if T-Mobile moves ahead with its planned January 2022 CDMA network shutdown. “We believe that T-Mobile’s actions raise significant competition and public interest concerns,” the letter states. It would be a blow to Dish’s business, but most importantly, millions of Boost Mobile customers would feel the impact as a result. Boost Mobile, a former Sprint MVNO sold to Dish as part of T-Mobile’s acquisition, serves 9 million customers. According to the letter, more than half of them rely on CDMA service. Its prepaid service is an accessible alternative to contract plans for low-income customers; there’s no credit check required or even a credit ca...

The global chip shortage has been a growing concern in the tech industry (and it has even grabbed the interest of the US president) as it starts to affect the production of more and more products, from cars to graphics cards to game consoles. For a great explanation of all the factors that have led to the shortage, you should read Bloomberg’s breakdown. It digs into factors like pandemic-fueled demand and the small number of companies actually able to produce the chips that now power so much of our digital lives. One of the most interesting features of the article is an interactive graphic that shows the customers and industries that make use of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which gives a great idea of the scale and potential downstream effects of the manufacturing bot...

Microsoft has updated its events website to reveal the dates of Microsoft Build 2021. Per the new listing, the annual conference will take place from May 25th–27th this year. It will also be held virtually, along with many of Microsoft’s 2021 events. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the dates to The Verge. “Please stay tuned for more information to come,” the spokesperson said. “Microsoft Build is where developers, architects, start-ups, and students learn, connect, and code together, sharing knowledge and expanding their skillset, while exploring new ways of innovating for tomorrow,” the website reads. Microsoft’s Build-specific website still includes information about Build 2020 and does not appear to have been updated with the new dates yet. Microsoft Build 2020 was also held remotely...

From consoles to cars, it seems like everyone is having a hard time getting enough chips Contributors: Verge Staff As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, demand for tech products suddenly spiked, just as it became difficult for chipmakers to know how much production capacity they actually needed. Now, anyone looking to build something with a computer chip in it has to deal with a global shortage. It’s affecting the production of everything from the obvious, like the 5G rollout and GPUs, to things you wouldn’t necessarily expect, like trucks and cars. Even large companies like Samsung are having to reevaluate plans to make sure they’ll be able to get the chips they need. The problem has gotten so bad that US President Joe Biden has pledged to address it, but industry insiders say the problem will be...

Google’s next Pixel flagship — the presumably named “Pixel 6” — will reportedly feature a Google-designed GS101 “Whitechapel” SoC (system on a chip), a first for the company, as reported by 9to5Google and XDA-Developers. 9to5Google’s report claims Google is working on two phones that will feature the Arm-based GS101 — presumed to be a flagship device to succeed last year’s Pixel 5 and a Pixel 4A 5G follow-up. XDA’s report, meanwhile, goes into further detail on the new SoC, claiming the GS101 chips will feature a “three cluster setup with a TPU (Tensor Processing Unit)” for machine learning applications. (For reference, Qualcomm’s own flagship Snapdragon 888 uses Arm’s Cortex-X1 / Cortex-A78 / Cortex-A55 as a triple cluster CPU setup.) Additionally, the new SoC may feature an integrated se...

Spotify’s much-anticipated in-car gadget, a voice-controlled music player known colloquially as the Car Thing, has just shown up in a handful of in-app renders unearthed by MacRumors contributor Steve Moser, who found the images in Spotify’s app code. These renders match up quite closely with photographs of the real deal submitted as part of filings to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which The Verge reported back in January. Thanks to these renders, we have a much cleaner look at the evolved Spotify Car Thing design, which includes a large knob on the right, a color screen, and four buttons on top. Earlier official company renders from back when the product was formally announced in 2019 showed off a much smaller screen. Yet, Spotify’s design has since moved much closer to a s...