Technology

GameStop has sold PC gaming hardware for a while now, including entire gaming laptops, monitors, headphones, mice and speakers, but in the post-stonks era it apparently wants a piece of Best Buy and Newegg’s desktop components business as well. Most prominently, the company has started selling Nvidia RTX 3000 series graphics cards — where by “selling,” I mean engaging in the same sort of barely-there, blink-and-they’re-gone listings as every other purveyor of GPUs. As PC Gamer reports, GameStop made its entire weekly circular ad revolve around PC gaming this week, including several GPUs, motherboards, a power supply, and a case: GameStop’s weekly circular for March 21st-27th. Back in reality, though, GameStop sold out of these GPUs days ago, roughly the instant they first went on sale. Jud...

George R.R. Martin, the author of the A Song of Ice and Fire book series that was turned into HBO’s smash hit Game of Thrones, has signed a huge new deal with HBO to make content for the network and HBO Max, according to The Hollywood Reporter. It’s a five-year deal worth “mid-eight figures,” sources told THR. Although Game of Thrones ended in 2019, HBO owner WarnerMedia has already announced a prequel series, House of the Dragon, based on Martin’s 2019 book Fire and Blood. And there are five projects in development based on the Game of Thrones universe, THR reports. Martin is also developing series for HBO based on the novels Who Fears Death and Roadmarks. My worst fear, though, is that this huge new deal keeps Martin from working on the sixth book in the A Song of Ice and Fire book serie...

Virtual band Gorillaz’s debut album is turning 20 years old today (a fact I’m going to try to immediately forget), and in celebration the group will be carrying out the usual anniversary celebrations: re-releasing albums, selling new merch and, according to NME, selling NFTs. This news has Broken me. At this point, it’s pretty clear that NFTs are a thorny environmental issue — while it can be hard to calculate exactly how bad they are in terms of carbon emissions, the picture is not looking good. In general, upon seeing the torrent of NFT news, it’s been easy to needle people about participating in a marketplace that is doing actual damage to the world: “Okay, Brand, hope this marketing stunt was worth setting the Earth on fire?” Turns out it’s not as fun when someone you actually like is ...

The OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro are now certified for use on Verizon’s network, which means Verizon customers will be able to use the phones with the carrier’s 5G network; without certification, the phones would be limited to LTE. The news was announced today by a Verizon representative, but the timeline is a little unclear. OnePlus had said it was working with Verizon, but there were no promises that it would be done by the phone’s launch. The 5G story has been a bit confusing for the OnePlus 9 series phones from the start. Only the Pro model has the ultra-fast mmWave, and at announcement, the phones were only listed as 5G-compatible on T-Mobile’s network. Even with today’s news, that still leaves AT&T customers who buy a OnePlus 9 paying for 5G they can’t currently use. OnePlus’ carrier comp...

The OnePlus 9 is a very good phone that holds its own against other (often more expensive) flagships. It has all the things that truly matter: a great screen, excellent performance, good battery life, and a capable camera. But for better or worse, it still doesn’t feel quite like a device that’s well-suited for the mainstream. It misses a couple of features present on the competition like a stabilized main camera and broad 5G support. Instead, it offers some neat but arguably not as useful extras, like really fast charging and an excellent ultrawide camera. It leaves this device in somewhat unusual territory: it’s good and well-priced, but it’s not the Android flagship I’d recommend to just anyone. Verge Score 8 out of 10 Good Stuff Snapdragon 888 chipset provides excellent performance Big...

The OnePlus 9 Pro is a legitimate flagship phone that is genuinely competitive with the best Android phones on the market — at least from a features and quality perspective. Yet in terms of market and mind share, it’s still destined to be a niche device for a small group of enthusiasts looking for a specific kind of elegance in their Android device. And that’s great. If you live in the US and you’re buying an Android phone, chances are very high that you’ll end up with a Samsung Galaxy phone. Samsung has the carrier relationships, quality, and marketing that have led directly to market share. LG, Motorola, and even Google sell more phones here than OnePlus does. But after nearly seven years and dozens of phones, OnePlus has established itself as a brand that can make great phones that are ...

Amazon received Food and Drug Administration authorization for a COVID-19 test made by its subsidiary STS Lab Holdco, and it plans to use it for its onsite coronavirus testing programs. The test is done using a nasal self swab that can be done either under the supervision of a health care provider or as part of an at-home kit where a patient takes their own sample and mails it to a centralized lab. “Amazon plans to use the Amazon Real-Time RT-PCR Test for Detecting SARS-CoV-2 (Amazon Test) as part of the company’s overall Coronavirus Disease 2019 (“COVID-19”) preparedness and response program,” the FDA’s authorization reads. The authorization also describes Amazon’s employee-screening program. Some Amazon employees will be automatically given testing appointments around every 14 days. The ...

Locations for H&M clothing stores in China were not showing up on Apple Maps searches in China on Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported, amid growing anger among Chinese consumers at the company’s decision to stop sourcing from the Xinjiang region. The company has more than 400 stores in China, but all H&M locations are now missing from maps, ride-hailing, and e-commerce applications, the Journal found. Apple relies on Chinese mapping company AutoNavi for its Apple Maps in China. It was the latest of several Western brands, which also includes Nike and Adidas, that are facing calls for boycotts in China. The US announced last year it would stop imports of cotton and other goods from Xinjiang, over allegations the Chinese government uses forced labor in its production. Earlier th...

As a ‘90s kid, I used to dream of winning the Nickelodeon Super Toy Run — five minutes to fill a Toys R Us shopping cart with anything I liked. I had my route all planned out: stacks of video games, a few choice Lego sets, and then a fill-up at the Nerf aisle. The world is very different right now, of course, but Nerf may have just announced a modern, grown-up version of the dream: it’s hiring a chief TikTok officer to dream up the company’s marketing for three months, giving one lucky influencer $30,000 and “a massive amount of Nerf products” in exchange for helping Hasbro figure out how to entice Gen Z. [embedded content] Oh yeah, this is definitely a marketing stunt. But it’s also a real job on the company’s real career site, and you’ll have to submit a real job application and intervie...

The Volkswagen Group has wrapped a multiyear internal investigation into Dieselgate, and it says it will try to pry compensation from former CEO Martin Winterkorn and former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler to make up for some of the massive financial damages that resulted from the emissions cheating scandal. The law firm Volkswagen hired to perform the investigation covered more than 65 petabytes of data, including some 480 million documents. About 1.6 million of those files were “identified as relevant, screened and reviewed,” the German automaker says. The law firm also performed 1,550 interviews and reviewed files from prosecutorial and judicial proceedings around the world that came as a result of the company’s actions. The internal probe was “by far the most comprehensive and complex investig...

Rival satellite internet companies OneWeb and SpaceX are vying to snag lucrative deals to provide broadband internet to Earth’s northernmost latitudes. OneWeb’s launch of 36 satellites this week inched it closer to its goal of beaming internet into the region by year’s end. SpaceX’s Starlink, which is already providing internet to thousands of consumers through a beta program, is eyeing the same area. Billions of dollars in government funds are on the line for companies that can connect the region. The Arctic is a nearly broadband desert for the US military, and the UK is willing to spend big to connect rural areas to the internet. SpaceX is reportedly eying a chunk of the UK’s new $6.9 billion Project Gigabit program, which aims to provide “lightning-fast” broadband internet to areas with...

If you’ve been waiting for a discount on Amazon’s Fire HD 10, now is a good time to buy. Amazon is selling the tablet, which includes 64GB of storage, for only $108 today, the lowest this configuration has gone down to on the site to date. Alongside USB-C compatibility, the Fire HD 10 includes expandable storage of up to 512GB via microSD, longer battery life than smaller models, and a 10.1-inch screen. Amazon Fire HD 10 (2019, 64GB) $108 $190 44% off Prices taken at time of publishing. Amazon’s first USB-C compatible device, which features a 10.1-inch screen, 64GB of internal storage with the option to expand via microSD, and a second antenna to maintain a better Wi-Fi signal. Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ Sanrio amiibo cards are available starting today. These card packs are being sold ...