Technology

We’re nearly six months into the life of the current generation of game consoles, but there are still vanishingly few high-profile exclusives that show off what the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X can do. After getting through the initial wave of launch titles, I’ve spent most of 2021 using my PS5 to play Fortnite. But this week sees the launch of Returnal, a PS5 exclusive that comes with some caveats. It’s challenging and complex, making it the kind of game you’ll die in repeatedly. But it also might be the best showcase for Sony’s new console yet Returnal puts you in the spaceboots of an astronaut experiencing the worst case of deja vu imaginable. After crash landing on a mysterious alien planet, she soon realizes she’s stuck in a loop; every time she dies, she heads back to the crash si...

The Moto G Play is the least expensive of four phones that Motorola introduced for the US market earlier this year. Introduced at $169, it’s already enjoying an apparently permanent $10 mark down, placing it firmly in budget territory. Most of what you’ll find on the G Play’s spec list makes a lot of sense given that price point: a 6.5-inch 720p LCD with standard refresh rate, Snapdragon 460 processor with 3GB of RAM, and a generous 5,000mAh battery. There’s another factor that might sway some shoppers toward the G Play, too: as LG leaves the budget phone space and its remaining stock disappears from retailers’ shelves, Motorola’s budget-friendly phone will be one of a smaller number of options. In the US. we haven’t seen the kind of sub-$150 devices from Motorola that the company has intr...

No matter how much web browsers improve, it feels like they can’t keep pace with everything we want to do. Open one too many tabs on a few-year-old laptop, and your fan starts spinning, your battery life dips, your system starts to slow. A faster or cleaner PC might fix it, but a startup called Mighty has a different idea: a $30-a-month web browser that lives in the cloud. Instead of your own physical computer interacting with each website, you stream a remote web browser instead, one that lives on a powerful computer many miles away with its own 1,000Mbps connection to the internet. Suddenly, your decent internet connection would feel like one of the fastest internet connections in the world, with websites loading nigh-instantly and intensive web apps running smoothly without monopolizing...

Vivaldi announced today that it’s updating the desktop and Android versions of its Vivaldi browser with the ability to block annoying cookie preference pop-ups. Thanks to the passage of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you’ve probably had to click through at least one dialog box asking if you’d like to manage how a site tracks you. Vivaldi’s new update lets you avoid those notifications — with some major caveats — while theoretically still keeping you safe from tracking. Vivaldi’s logic for the new feature, affectionately called “Cookie Crumbler,” is that while giving users control over how they’re tracked is good, doing so through a pop-up “leads to clicking ‘allow’ or ‘accept’ without realizing that unwittingly users just gave permission for trackers to cre...

Amazon workers at four different facilities near Staten Island have begun the process of unionizing with the Amazon Labor Union. The organizing effort is being led by Christian Smalls, a former warehouse worker who was fired in March after organizing a walkout to protest unsafe working conditions during the pandemic, according to Protocol. The company has responded by posting anti-union messages on TV screens at JFK8, the fulfillment center where Smalls used to work. “KNOW THE FACTS BEFORE YOU SIGN A UNION CARD,” reads one of the messages obtained by Motherboard. “If someone asks you to provide your personal information or sign a union card, do not release your personal information without knowing all the facts.” Several hundred workers at JFK8 have already signed cards in support of the u...

HBO Max’s upcoming ad-support tier will cost $9.99 per month, or $5 less than the standard $14.99 per month that the regular version of HBO Max costs, according to a new report from CNBC. The upcoming ad-supported tier is still set to launch in June and will feature a few major differences from the $15 per month plan — including access to WarnerMedia’s same-day theatrical release strategy for films like Dune or The Matrix 4, which will be limited to subscribers to HBO Max’s more premium tier. WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar has also confirmed in a March analyst event that HBO original shows won’t get ads added in, so customers won’t have to worry about Euphoria, The Sopranos, or Game of Thrones getting interrupted by commercials. HBO, for less The $9.99 price tag would mark a new low price for...

Apple’s iPhone 12 lineup maintained enormously strong demand from consumers from January through March, according to the company’s fiscal Q2 earnings posted today. Apple reported record March quarter revenue of $89.6 billion, up 54 percent year over year. The iPhone took in just under $48 billion, jumping up by 66 percent from a year ago. Sales of Mac and iPad hardware also surged for yet another quarter, up 70 and 78 percent respectively, due in part to continued remote work and schooling necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. That success might slow down as some regions of the world return to a sense of normalcy, so most eyes — as usual — are on the iPhone. It’s been reported that the iPhone 12 mini isn’t doing as well as Apple hoped, but other models are clearly hits with consumers. “Th...

Facebook’s ad revenue was up more than 45 percent during the first three months of 2020, soaring to $25.4 billion — or about seven times what Twitter makes in an entire year. But the company sees some potential problems on the horizon that could limit continued growth: regulators are closing in on ad tracking practices, and a feature launched this week by Apple could harm its ability to target ads. “We continue to expect increased ad targeting headwinds in 2021 from regulatory and platform changes,” Facebook CFO Dave Wehner writes in the company’s Q1 2021 earnings release. Wehner specifically calls out iOS 14.5, which includes a feature that lets iPhone and iPad users easily stop apps from tracking them in certain ways. Facebook expects to start seeing an impact from the changes to iOS rig...

When Facebook users tried to view a hashtag calling for the resignation of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday, they instead saw a message saying that Facebook was temporarily hiding the posts in order to keep the community safe. Buzzfeed News reports that the posts were hidden for about three hours. Facebook has now restored the posts and told The Verge it is “looking into what happened,” echoing a public statement from a member of its communications team. The temporary suspension of the hashtag is likely to fuel concerns about the influence that Modi’s BJP party wields over Facebook operations and social media in general. Last weekend, Twitter hid tweets critical of various officials after receiving an emergency order from the government. India is currently currently seeing ...

Michael Collins, the witty “forgotten” astronaut of NASA’s legendary Apollo 11 mission to the Moon, died of cancer on Wednesday, his family said. An icon of space exploration and an eloquent storyteller (who, arguably, had the best sense of humor among the Apollo 11 crew), Collins passionately advocated for further exploration of other worlds. Astronauts, NASA officials, and others in the space community who are heeding his advocacy mourned his death today. Collins was the Columbia command module pilot who stayed in orbit around the Moon in 1969 while his crew mates, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, descended to the lunar surface and became the first two humans to set foot on another world. Aldrin, now the only living Apollo 11 astronaut, mourned his fellow crewmate in a tweet. “Dear Mike,”...

AT&T says it will now offer a prepaid 5G data-only plan with up to 100GB of data for $55 per month — a big upgrade from its previous offering of 40GB for $75. The new pricing extends to Cricket Wireless customers as well as AT&T’s direct prepaid subscribers, though those on Cricket won’t be able to access the 5G network. These plans allow customers to buy data for their tablet or mobile hotspot separate from their voice plan. That 100GB is a lot of data at a lower price than the other major carriers are offering; currently, T-Mobile has a prepaid data-only plan of 50GB for $50 and Verizon has a 30GB plan for $65 per month. It may be no coincidence that Verizon and T-Mobile are also eager to expand their own 5G and LTE-based fixed home wireless products, but AT&T may have a litt...

Amazon has announced that over 500,000 of its workers will get a permanent increase in their hourly wages starting in mid-May, from as low as an additional 50 cents an hour to as much as three extra dollars per hour (via GeekWire). That’s a substantial chunk of its 1.3 million person workforce getting at least a small pay bump, and the company shared that it’s investing over $1 billion in these pay increases. Amazon said that it’s also on a hiring spree for “tens of thousands of jobs across our operations in the US.” Amazon previously recognized its warehouse and delivery workers with a $2 pay bump last March as the company worked to meet increased demand during the pandemic, but that was a temporary raise that disappeared in May 2020, shortly after the United States had reached 100,000 de...