Technology

Hello Games is releasing a major update for No Man’s Sky today. Called “Expeditions,” it adds seasonal events to the game in which players begin from the same planet and set off on a plotted journey. The developer released a short trailer alongside the news today. Each expedition is themed and is intended to bring the game’s community together in a shared adventure. As players progress, they’ll earn exclusive rewards for their troubles, including parts and ship designs. The update will also include quality-of-life fixes to UI, combat, and more. Hello Games has continued to update the game extensively since its release in 2016. This year marks No Man’s Sky’s fifth anniversary; the developer has said previously it has more content in store to celebrate that milestone. In February, Hello Game...

The Crew Dragon capsule poised to fly four civilian astronauts to space this year is getting an upgrade: a glass dome will be added at the top to give space tourists a 360-degree view of the cosmos. Plans for the window were announced on Tuesday as SpaceX and the team managing the tourist mission, Inspiration4, revealed the full crew for the upcoming expedition. The glass dome-shaped window replaces Crew Dragon’s docking adapter at its nose since the spacecraft won’t be docking to the International Space Station. It’s similar to the famed cupola aboard the International Space Station, but Crew Dragon’s appears to be an uninterrupted sheet of glass, with no support structures dividing the window’s view. Crew Dragon’s protective aerodynamic shell that shields the hatch door area during launc...

Google will not introduce a 60 minute call limit on free Google Meet users at the end of March, the company announced in a tweet. Instead, it will now be begin on June 30th. Until then, anyone using the service’s free version will be able to host calls up to 24 hours in length, which Google refers to as “unlimited.” This is the second time Google has pushed back the introduction of call limits since opening up the service to free users last April. A 60 minute limit had originally been due to come into effect at the end of September, but that deadline was later pushed back to March when it became clear that many of us wouldn’t be able to celebrate the holidays in person with our loved ones. Google hasn’t explicitly said why it’s extending its deadline this time, but the continued pandemic r...

President Biden plans to announce a sweeping infrastructure plan Wednesday that includes $100 billion to connect every American to high-speed broadband internet over the next eight years. Biden is scheduled to unveil his $2 trillion “American Jobs Plan” in Pittsburgh later on Wednesday. The long-awaited infrastructure and jobs package contains funding for broadband expansion, semiconductor manufacturing, and slew of other interests like public transportation and helping consumers purchase electric vehicles. On a call with reporters Tuesday, an administration official said that the package would be paid for by changes to the corporate tax rate. Biden’s $100 billion figure for broadband expansion trumps most other efforts Biden’s $100 billion figure for broadband expansion trumps most other ...

Four years after accusing Qualcomm of abusing monopoly power to charge phone makers additional licensing fees for its modems — and seven months after seemingly losing that battle in a federal circuit court — the Federal Trade Commission has decided to throw in the towel. It’s no longer planning to appeal to the Supreme Court, which means the case is done. If that were all, I probably wouldn’t be writing it up for The Verge since things are exactly where we left off in August. But then I saw the FTC’s explanation for why it’s dropping the case, and… well, just read it: Given the significant headwinds facing the Commission in this matter, the FTC will not petition the Supreme Court to review the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in FTC v. Qualcomm. The FTC’s staff ...

YouTube has announced it’s experimenting with hiding dislikes to discourage “dislike mobs” from deliberately downvoting videos from creators and channels. The experiment is a different implementation than the solutions the company had previously discussed, but it is similar to other attempts platforms like Instagram have taken to nip targeted attacks in the bud. In the current setup, stats for both likes and dislikes are viewable in a creator’s individual YouTube Studio page, but only likes will be displayed publicly on a video. In a support article explaining the test, YouTube says that dislikes can negatively impact a creator’s well-being and “may motivate a targeted campaign of dislikes on a creator’s video.” Basically, the idea is that seeing a dislike number and watching it go up coul...

Two weeks ago, after YouTube revealed its definition of hate speech was so narrow that it couldn’t remove a wildly racist tirade for being wildly racist, we wondered out loud what it would take for YouTube to stop promoting conservative commentator Steven Crowder as an official YouTube Partner and allowing him to profit from those tirades. Today, we have a partial answer: YouTube has officially suspended Steven Crowder’s main channel from the YouTube Partner Program indefinitely, which includes removing his ability to run ads. It’s also banning him from uploading videos for a full week after his latest infraction: a now-removed video that reportedly challenged the legitimacy of the vote in Nevada. YouTube has a policy against false claims that the election was stolen. Crowder has already a...

Gocycle, the maker of some of the most eye-catching and adaptable electric bikes on the planet, is back with its fourth-generation e-bike. The G4 series brings a new motor, better tires, lighter carbon-fiber components, and more to improve upon what’s already one of our favorite e-bikes. But before you get too excited, know that the G4 range starts at a suggested retail price of $3,999. The G4, G4i, and G4i Plus models are all available for preorder now. For the money, Gocycle makes a very premium e-bike that we’ve found to be equally suited to long commutes and multimodal travel due to its compact quick-fold design with wide high-volume tires. That tradition continues with the G4 models. The new motor is probably my favorite change and the feature I’m most excited to test. To start, the c...

Snap, the company behind Snapchat, is planning to continue its push into hardware devices with a new pair of augmented-reality glasses and a drone, according to a report by The Information. The Spectacles will reportedly include displays so the wearer can see the AR effects without having to use their phone — a feature that was notably missing from the all the Spectacles that came before. One of The Information’s sources says that the new Spectacles will be meant for developers and creators, rather than consumers — though you could probably argue that, at $380, the Spectacles 3 are already mostly limited to that market as well. As the article points out, though, the intention is likely to have the developers make lenses and experiences that consumers will use at some point in the future. S...

The ongoing global shortage for electronic components continues, and Foxconn — which handles manufacturing for Apple, among other major tech heavyweights — has announced that it’s starting to see the impact of shortages. According to Young Liu, Foxconn’s CEO, the company won’t be able to fulfill some of its orders due to those shortages, which he expects will last until at least the second quarter of next year, Nikkei reports. “The [supply in the] first two months of this quarter was still ok, as our clients are all very big, but we started to see changes happening this month,” Liu reportedly told investors during the company’s latest earnings call. The impact of the shortages isn’t expected to be large, at least for now: Liu expects that the company will only miss around 10 percent of its...

It feels like just about every big tech company is working on a Clubhouse-like social audio feature — Twitter’s Spaces feature is rolling out now, Facebook is reportedly building one, Spotify is making one, Mark Cuban has one, even Slack is getting in the game. But now, the idea of the shared audio space, which started on Clubhouse largely as an exclusive club for tech venture capitalists and elites, has come full circle. Professional social network LinkedIn is working on an audio networking feature of its own, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. “We’re doing some early tests to create a unique audio experience connected to your professional identity,” LinkedIn said in a statement to TechCrunch. “And, we’re looking at how we can bring audio to other parts of LinkedIn such as events and gr...

If you’re shopping for a gaming headset, you have a lot of options. While there are some great ones out there, it’s easy to pay too much, to accidentally purchase a headset that doesn’t work with your desired console or platform, or to get one that’s just uncomfortable. Knowing a thing or two about headphones might aid in your search, but gaming headsets have only gotten more complicated to shop for — especially the wireless ones. For instance, wireless headsets made for Xbox operate without a dongle via Microsoft’s proprietary wireless protocol. They’ll only work on Xbox consoles or a PC that has one of Microsoft’s Xbox Wireless Adapters plugged in, in most cases. Conversely, if you get a multiplatform wireless headset that includes a 2.4GHz wireless dongle, it’ll likely work on the likes...